HOW TO COVER YOUR ASS
CYA. An American military acronym which stands for "Cover Your Ass." According to Tom Clancy, anyway. Of course I've never been in the army or anything, are you fucking crazy?
So. The students go to your manager and bitch about you. You suck ass! You lick balls! You stink like a crack whore's crotch on a Sunday morning!
Actually, it won't be so simple. Usually it will be a student or two going to a secretary who speaks their native language, who will pass the message on to the director or manager, who will pass it on to an assistant director or academic manager, who will tell you about it. Naturally by the time you actually receive the complaint, it will have been hugely magnified and perhaps altered completely.
Many complaints will be pointless and/or completely fucking stupid. Many will be completely the opposite of what they taught you in your training course. But most schools, as I have said many times, will basically expect you to do whatever the students want, and if you don't make the students happy, you will be in grave danger of getting tossed out on your ass, no matter whether you're doing everything '"right" in the World According to CELTA or not.
Essentially it's a hopeless situation; if nine students like you and two vocal ones don't, and they go to the office and say, "We hate English Teacher L!, and all the other students don't like him also!" it's very likely nobody will ever go bother to ask the other nine students what they think.
And do you think anybody is going to believe YOU when you say you were doing everything right?
Get real.
Anyway, students will in general complain for completely stupid, personal reasons that have little to do with teaching, but they will generally have to cough up a couple of legitimate reasons why they don't like you.
So, with that in mind, there are a couple things you can do to cover your ass.
First: GET SOME SHIT IN WRITING FROM THE STUDENTS ABOUT WHAT THEY WANT TO DO IN CLASS.
This is known, professionally speaking, as a "Needs Analysis."
Oh, now, of course, it's good to do a Needs Analysis to find out what you should do in class to teach the students, but it's even more important to have one so that when the students bitch that you're doing too much or too little of something, you've got something to toss in the DOS's face and say, "But this is what they told me they wanted to do."
So, on the first day, get each student to write something like this: "I believe the class should consist of ________% reading, _______% writing, ________% speaking, and ________% listening. I believe we should do _______ pages of homework a week. I think we should play games in class _______ time(s) a week. I think we should listen to songs in class ____ time(s) a month. I think _____% of a typical lesson should come from the class text book."
Now of course, whatever they say in the beginning won't be even close to what they really want, and the students will all give wildly differing responses, but that isn't the point. The point is that you can use it to justify whatever you did or didn't do. Figure up a class average for all those things, and this will give you a fool-proof defense against complaints that you're doing too much or too little of something.
A meaningless statistic, undoubtedly, in any real sense, but when they try to fire you because the students don't like you, you can raise holy hell with this information. "MY GOD! I WAS JUST DOING MY JOB AS BEST I KNOW HOW, AND YOU WANT TO FIRE ME! WAIT TILL I PUT THIS ON THE INTERNET!"
Second: TAKE CAREFUL ATTENDANCE NOTES.
"Oh so Mr. Lee complained? Well. . . let's see. . . he missed five classes this month, and was late six times. Hmmm. Well, what exactly did he complain about?"
So of course you'll probably have to keep attendance notes anyway, but also keep track of who has arrived late. Believe me, most people will arrive late, and most people will miss a shitload of classes. When you hear of complaints, pull out the attendance sheet and start sniping.
Third: KEEP YOUR LESSON PLANS, AND BUST THE DOS'S BALLS
There is one excellent reason to save lesson plans: being able to toss them at the DOS when he tells you there's been a complaint about you, and ask him, "And what exactly have I been doing wrong?"
I mean, really, HE knows the students are probably bitching about something irrational, and YOU know he knows it. But rampant pseudoprofessionalism demands that we keep up appearances. So put the fucker on the spot and force him to be very specific about what you have done wrong and, most importantly, how it could be done differently.
I suppose there's the chance that he might have some good suggestions, but in all likelihood he's just going to have to admit that the students complained that "Teacher no funny!" or "Teacher no speak me long time!" or "Teacher no have clean socks!" or some other nonsense.
Anyway, that's your first line of defense. This is a topic I've thought a lot about over the years and I will most certainly write about it at greater length in the future.