> Hi, Katy & all the ESL teachers:

> There are two faces of a coin. I did see all of them.

> Once I was assigned teaching Writing in a pretty famous language
> center to two classes. Most of the students were sent by corporate
> businesses. Many students didn't attend classes, not often handed in
> reqired assignments. In class, they dept asking HOW to WRITE. Told
> them that they could write whatever they way they want. I showed them
> lots of examples from famous novels. At a mid-term exam, lots of them
> failed. Many of them figured that they couldn't pass and sent the
> class leader to me for leniency. I gave them not favors, but I
> allowed them extra hours for reviewing. Then they went to the school
> admin who came to me to see if I would raise their marks which I
> refused. In order to keep that source of students, the school didn't
> fire me but assigned another local teacher to take my classes. By
> giving them a model composition, the students memorized the model,
> and all passed the course.

> In that same school, a Russian lady was hired to teach part-time
> English to a Saturday kid school. She was no good in English at all,
> but she took the job because she needed the money to support the
> family at home. She came to me every Friday evening, and then teach
> the kids the next day.

> In another school, there was another younger foreign teacher. He was
> doing photophy before. No degrees. His classes were said by his
> students the most boring. They complained but to no avail. He knew it
> was difficult to satisfy the audience.He came to me for advices very
> often.His students came to me for problems, too. Yet, whenever came
> to the re-imbursement of medical expenses, the school had no problem
> with him, and picking on mine very often. My plane ticket bought at
> rush season was re-imbursed the same as his at a lower rate at end of
> February. Since it was at the end of the contract, I even didn't have
> time to argue.

> Alex Wu

P.S. In one of the Writing class I mentioned, they assigned an English man to take over. I happened to see one of a corrected paper on the class foor. Out of curiosity, I read it and found lots of mistakes, spelling and grammar, were not corrected.