Students as customers

I got up this morning to find myself without water in the house. None, zero, all dry… With my beautiful morning face, I went downstairs to check out what was going on, if they were cleaning the water tank and hadn’t let anybody know. Obviously, the only good-looking guy in the building was going to work and had the privilege to see such beautiful image… Well, I contacted the guys in charge and they’re still figuring out what happened. In the meantime, I called the school and said I was stranded because I just couldn’t go to work as I were! No shower, no-show.

Alright, working from home then, which isn’t so bad because I’m watching the World Cup, England’s playing Slovenia and I do hope the boys win! You already know how I feel about who should be the World Cup winner!

I read this fascinating article yesterday in the NYT about university teachers in Texas having a “contract” with students and abiding by that contract. Also, the implementation of teacher evaluation based on student’s feedback. This is all wrong, man…

I’ve been a teacher for seven years now — there was the year-an-a-half break in London, but I was a student there, so still in classroom — and I can’t help wondering what’s happened along the way. I do a different job now but whenever necessary I teach, I prepare classes and I research material. In fact, I’m coming up with all the activities for the winter workshops the school is offering… Anyway, that’s not the point. The point is that I couldn’t help thinking about our situation at the school after reading that piece.

When our school had a change in management — a hostile takeover perhaps — teachers became mere puppets, having no control over the material and the classes. I was in their shoes up to a year ago and can tell you that the situation is brutal. All teachers now have to treat the students as customers and they (the teachers) are evaluated by the number of people that come back for another term. Tough situation… So, the difficult part here is getting teachers and students to meet halfway. While teachers try to get them to communicate and put into practice what they’ve studied, the students don’t seem to be willing to help, because they think that showing up for class means they will learn automatically and further practice outside the school isn’t necessary. So, obviously the lack of SOME dedication will reflect in their results. Students really get mad and blame the TEACHER for their poor results. And the fact that there are language schools popping up everywhere isn’t helping either, because teachers go to class having in mind that if they aren’t just what students want them to be, if they don’t do just what students want them to do, they run the risk of losing these guys to other schools that promise people they can be fluent in English in just six months. I’m sorry, but the only way you’ll be able to speak English in six months from scratch is by going to England (or Canada or U.S. or whatever other country) and living there for six months and having no contact with Brazilians whatsoever. And I still have my doubts whether somebody would be able to pull it off in six months…

So, the “contract” is that in six months, or one year and a half in most cases, the student will be an advanced speaker of English, even though their writing is laughable and their speaking is just a frustrating translation from Portuguese into English, which can sound really weird in most cases. But what’s the teacher supposed to do? If they tell students that they’re not making any progress, the students go look for another school that offers what they want just to find out that in six months they haven’t learned anything for the same reasons they didn’t back in the other places. If teachers DON’T tell students that their English sucks and just keep allowing them to advance to the next level, the students will find out about it the hard way, in a job interview or when they travel abroad and figure out that they can’t communicate with native speakers or foreigners.

The question is: is it OK for the student to be a customer? Should we keep them happy so that they come back the next semestre or the next month in order to keep our based-on-results jobs? Or should we treat students as students, working on their weaknesses, pointing out their strengths and assisting them, not worrying if you’re being funny or not?

I’m just glad that the guys I teach are a little different and I still have some freedom to prepare my classes…

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Comedy show Fox & Friends is the gift that keeps on giving! Unfortunately I missed it today trying to figure out what had happened to the water in the building, but I’m glad that Time magazine made the highlight available online. Basically, according to Gretchen Carlson, being the president is just like being a TV anchor. Yeah, I can see the similarities… But that isn’t as surprising as seeing that Fox News is actually defending BP and slamming the government over the 20-billion-dollar escrow fund. Or is it really surprising?… Media Matters explains.

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Another TEDTalk available in Portuguese. I’ve translated this great talk by Brian Cox where he shows the importance of space exploration and the investment in this area, accompanied by great images! The reviewer was Fernando Marinheiro and the talk is available here.

P.S.: England qualified!!! This is the year! It was actually the first time I enjoyed watching a game during this World Cup…