Topic: Pathetic salary levels

[Thai Me Up]

Thanks los_teacher.  I know we have gripes about Thai recruiters and callous treatment received as guest workers, but check this out.  I was invited by a New York City teacher recruiter to an interview in San Francisco, but my recruiter ditched my interview.     That's right, the recruiter was a no-show.  When I tried to telephone the recruiter's telephone number she gave at the hotel/interview site, my call went to a New York City answering machine.

I returned to my home and wrote an email to the effect, "Don't you think you should let me know if you can't make an interview?"  I received an email that stated, "Sorry you had a misunderstanding about the interview time, but there  was a 'computer error' on your email and the interview time was supposed to be 1:00 pm, not 10:00 am.  Besides, you haven't taken xyz course so we'd be wasting our time in meeting with you anyway."

It gets better.  I sent my valid passport to the US Passport agency to have pages added (I paid $60 for expedited service), and the agency "lost" my passport and check.  Now I'm out of luck.  It's amazing to me that I've been jerked around WORSE in my own country than in the 1-1/2 years I worked in Thailand.

[bomha]

22 Contract Periods has been the standard for the last five years (in my experience).  I have seen them as high as 24 and as low as 18, even 16 in a few select schools, but that is pretty rare.  It is 22 max at my school, but in actually the teachers only do 20

Not so in my limited experience and observation.  My last contract limited me to less than 20 hours per week.  My first full time gig was ten hours per week, plus other duties as assigned, which they promised me would not add up to a total of more than 15, which it never did.  Other things about the assignments sucked the big lemon, but I never worked 20 hours per week in contact classrom hours.

One aspect of the job seems to be ignored by the Thai school bosses: most of us have not been catatonically teaching the same garbage for ten years to classrooms of 48 students.  Most of us must create original lesson plans that are creative and effective, for each class we teach.  Some of us have taught Maths, Scienes, History, or PE in addition to English - a variety of academic disciplines which most Thai teachers of English would not touch with a three meter pole.  Ask your tenured Thai teacher of English to teach your maths class, 100% in English!

[no homework today]

I have just noted that the interview I talked about in posts 58 and 60 has now appeared under another agency for the same job. The advertizement is a bit deceptive as it says up to 40,000. Seeing that was 3 weeks ago it highly suggests they can’t find any teachers to fill the positions they had. They also were not looking for a whole army of teachers either, only about 5 to 7 as I recall.

Read this anyway you want but I see it as the first signs of the shortage surfacing. Why would one agency of sorts farm out to another looking for teachers?

there is another very attive thread in the ajarn.com forum call "teachers wages supply and demand" on this topic. It is a newer thread but is very popular with several thousand views.

[bomha]

I have just noted that the interview I talked about in posts 58 and 60 has now appeared under another agency for the same job. The advertizement is a bit deceptive as it says up to 40,000. Seeing that was 3 weeks ago it highly suggests they can’t find any teachers to fill the positions they had. They also were not looking for a whole army of teachers either, only about 5 to 7 as I recall.

Read this anyway you want but I see it as the first signs of the shortage surfacing. Why would one agency of sorts farm out to another looking for teachers?

there is another very attive thread in the ajarn.com forum call "teachers wages supply and demand" on this topic. It is a newer thread but is very popular with several thousand views.

To nohomeworktoday: I think maybe the school could not get qualified applicants, and switched agencies.

There is a similar thread on ThaiVisa http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=116042 with over 3,000 views and about 80 posts, entitled New School Year Positions and Salaries.  It seems that, at least outside Bangkok, not many positions are advertizing on ajarn.com.