The Airing of Grievances
Don't get me wrong. I love my students. The students I'm teaching now are overall the best students that I've ever taught - motivated and energetic with great attitudes to boot. I cherish the freedom I have to create lesson plans that engage them and suit their levels. What I don't appreciate are some of the practices of the company I work for.
I work for a private company in Japan that contracts out English programs (curricula, teachers, the whole kit and caboodle) to universities. Universities do this to save money on direct hires of English instructors. On a personal level, I've had no issues with the individual staff members I have dealt with, but I've a lot of issues with how things are done - especially the inconsistencies.
One inconsistency is based around the curricula. The curricula are cobbled together and the curriculum from one course for one set of students is often carried over almost verbatim to other courses despite the students' levels and goals being completely different. Even within a particular program's curriculum, the goals of a program don't fit the needs of the student. At the last university I was teaching at last semester, many of the students couldn't utter complete sentences in English and didn't have much of a desire to travel abroad, but they were expected to learn the language to navigate immigration, airports, and hotels. What they really needed was an introductory-level communications course. Not surprisingly, the company has an incredibly small curricula staff, and even small errors within the curricula are not updated from semester to semester.
Most recently, I had a disagreement with one of my bosses about how to address plagiarism in the classroom. The students gave individual presentations about a month ago, and after reading their presentations, I found that plagiarism was quite an issue despite warning the students not to do it. So, now that the students are gearing up for group presentations, I asked if I could take some time to teach a mini-lesson on how to avoid plagiarism with paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting, and citing sources. Unfortunately, I was told that there wasn't enough time to teach those sorts of skills. So, what was my boss' solution? Make an even MORE strongly-worded warning. Two other Japanese staff members agreed with me that, from their personal experience as students, they didn't know how to avoid plagiarism even while the teachers asked them to write in "natural English". They also agreed that Japanese students aren't taught how to avoid plagiarism. If students aren't given the tools to avoid plagiarism, how can we reasonably expect them not to plagiarize on an assignment that demands a lot of research?
Finally, 30% of my students' grades this term will be a skills report card. However, this is not a "progress" report because it doesn't take into account how the student has improved over the course of the semester. Instead, the students' score will be a snapshot of where they are now. I think this immensely unfair to the low-level students who have worked hard over the course of the semester to improve, but whose skills are simply not where the more advanced students' skills are.
A more serious issue is that of our pay. Because of changes in government regulations benefits, we are paid by the hour now instead of a standard flat amount each month. Some of us have gotten slight raises out of this, but some who have been with the company for several terms have gotten their monthly salary lowered significantly. What's more, the company only pays us for 5.5 hours a day even though most of us are required to be at our universities for 8 or 9 hours. Well, not surprisingly, there have been a lot of problems with teachers dipping out early or not even teaching all their classes. And why not? If we're paid for only 5.5 hours, then we should only be working for 5.5 hours. I'm still not sure how this is legal, but I've been told that it's a loophole.
Despite all of these grievances, I think my company is the best of its kind in Japan from what I've heard about other people's experience with similar companies. Additionally, I think my company is great if you want to come to Japan for a one semester teaching experience, or if you need a stepping stone to start working directly with universities in Japan. However, they aren't good for long-term employment!
I work for a private company in Japan that contracts out English programs (curricula, teachers, the whole kit and caboodle) to universities. Universities do this to save money on direct hires of English instructors. On a personal level, I've had no issues with the individual staff members I have dealt with, but I've a lot of issues with how things are done - especially the inconsistencies.
One inconsistency is based around the curricula. The curricula are cobbled together and the curriculum from one course for one set of students is often carried over almost verbatim to other courses despite the students' levels and goals being completely different. Even within a particular program's curriculum, the goals of a program don't fit the needs of the student. At the last university I was teaching at last semester, many of the students couldn't utter complete sentences in English and didn't have much of a desire to travel abroad, but they were expected to learn the language to navigate immigration, airports, and hotels. What they really needed was an introductory-level communications course. Not surprisingly, the company has an incredibly small curricula staff, and even small errors within the curricula are not updated from semester to semester.
Most recently, I had a disagreement with one of my bosses about how to address plagiarism in the classroom. The students gave individual presentations about a month ago, and after reading their presentations, I found that plagiarism was quite an issue despite warning the students not to do it. So, now that the students are gearing up for group presentations, I asked if I could take some time to teach a mini-lesson on how to avoid plagiarism with paraphrasing, summarizing, quoting, and citing sources. Unfortunately, I was told that there wasn't enough time to teach those sorts of skills. So, what was my boss' solution? Make an even MORE strongly-worded warning. Two other Japanese staff members agreed with me that, from their personal experience as students, they didn't know how to avoid plagiarism even while the teachers asked them to write in "natural English". They also agreed that Japanese students aren't taught how to avoid plagiarism. If students aren't given the tools to avoid plagiarism, how can we reasonably expect them not to plagiarize on an assignment that demands a lot of research?
Finally, 30% of my students' grades this term will be a skills report card. However, this is not a "progress" report because it doesn't take into account how the student has improved over the course of the semester. Instead, the students' score will be a snapshot of where they are now. I think this immensely unfair to the low-level students who have worked hard over the course of the semester to improve, but whose skills are simply not where the more advanced students' skills are.
A more serious issue is that of our pay. Because of changes in government regulations benefits, we are paid by the hour now instead of a standard flat amount each month. Some of us have gotten slight raises out of this, but some who have been with the company for several terms have gotten their monthly salary lowered significantly. What's more, the company only pays us for 5.5 hours a day even though most of us are required to be at our universities for 8 or 9 hours. Well, not surprisingly, there have been a lot of problems with teachers dipping out early or not even teaching all their classes. And why not? If we're paid for only 5.5 hours, then we should only be working for 5.5 hours. I'm still not sure how this is legal, but I've been told that it's a loophole.
Despite all of these grievances, I think my company is the best of its kind in Japan from what I've heard about other people's experience with similar companies. Additionally, I think my company is great if you want to come to Japan for a one semester teaching experience, or if you need a stepping stone to start working directly with universities in Japan. However, they aren't good for long-term employment!
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete