A Showdown With Admin Looms

Tomorrow (Friday 6th June) will be the day of a showdown between myself and my nemesis as admin. I am anticipate it may be my last day of employment in the EP.

Since the day I started, one particular member of admin has made it perfectly clear that she does not believe that a 23 year old can be a competent English teacher. 7 months down the road I now find myself at this point.

She has seemingly gone out of her way to make my life as a teacher as miserable as possible. During my first week of work she handed me a large wad of essays to mark. All of these essays were done by M4 and M5 students. I myself taught M1 and had no idea what grammar points she was looking for in those essays. 7 months on they are still safely locked away in my cupboard.

When midterm and final exams came round she made a point of asking me to make some changes to my exams. Asking me to make changes once or twice seems reasonable. Asking me nine or ten times then changing the whole thing herself on the day of the exams is not. To add insult to injury she managed to lose questions 21-35. Not once, but twice.

I have a mere 9 months experience of teaching english as a foreign language. I do not consider myself to be the perfect or ideal teacher. I do however consider my teaching to be adequate and I consistently make the effort to be better. I accept that there are many teachers with much more experience than I, able to teach to a higher standard. Everyday I work hard to close the gap.

I'm not a college drop-out, or a backpacker on an extended excursion to Thailand. I hold an honours Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology. In addition I have earned a CELTA, and in a couple of years I will return to University in order to obtain a PGCE. I take my teaching seriously, this is my career.

I have an open door policy with my lessons. If a parent or another member of staff wants to sit in my lessons - they are more than welcome. I am not afraid to be observed teaching and I have nothing to hide. This week my nemesis decided to take me up on my offer and sat in 2 of my lessons. She also sat in the lessons of the 5 new foreign teachers who have joined the EP. The new foreign teachers replace the old foreign teachers. 5 teachers leaving over the summer should set of a few alarm bells.

She decided to evaluate todays lesson on a very official looking observation form. The form itself is rife with errors so I believe it to be her own work. Tomorrow we will meet to discuss my evaluation, I have already seen that I have been absolutely panned in all categories.

I am ready to defend myself vigerously in the imminent onslaught of criticism that she will shortly unleash. In a way it almost seems like a bad joke that I will receive criticism from one of the most incompetent "professionals" that I have ever worked with.

Part of me wants to sit there and listen to all she has to say. When she is finished I want to stand up, clear my throat, raise 4 fingers and defiantly shout F*** You B****.

Another part is urging me to take my record of achievement with me to our meeting. When she is finished I will show her my degree certificate and calmly tell her how hard I worked for it. I will then enquire how much her degree cost (she admitted she paid for her degree to a thai colleague who I know fairly well). I will then show her my feedback from the 2 teachers who taught my CELTA course. Between them they have over 30 years experience training teachers. I will then look at her form and enquire how many years experience she has observing and training teachers. I will then take out the comments written by my M1 students at the end of last year. 90% of which are positive.

This semester I was given different courses to teach. Instead of teaching English Foundation to M1 students and Project work for M3 students I now teach Listening and Speaking to M1 and M2 students. My other 4 periods are spent teaching an M2 writing course.

No offence to Listening and Speaking teachers, but I consider the courses for M1 and M2 to be Mickey Mouse. There's no real meat in the course. There's no present perfect simple tense, no passive voice, no adverbs of frequency. There also aren't any cds and so I am forced to read the tapescripts aloud because parents moaned we weren't using the book yet.

My nemesis' dislike of me was surely down to more than just my age I thought to myself towards the end of last semester. My girlfriend works as the EP's accountant and I "accidently" saw the salary of my nemesis. Despite working at my school for close to 15 years she still earns slightly less than me. That's only the base salary however, including kickbacks and backhanders she earns significantly more than I do.

A third and final part of me is warning me to choose my battles and to smile through the pain and punishment I am sure to experience tomorrow. That part is telling me I will have a complete year of experience at one school to go on my CV and is worth the hassle.

Which part I will choose to listen to is not yet decided, and probably wont be until our meeting is over tomorrow. Whatever happens I have enjoyed the ups and the downs of teaching in Thailand and this experience isn't going to persuade me to change my career.

Finally there's a large group of people who I haven't yet mentioned, ironically they are the most important people in all of this. My students. I am lucky to have taught some of the most creative and most talented young people I have ever met. Whether I stay or go, It has been an absolute pleasure to help improve their English ability. I wont forget them.