Those that can't......

October 16, 2005 10:10 AM

One of the most fascinatingspecies in Bangkok are surely the ex-pat Teaching English as A Foreign Language (TEFL) teachers, as this diary will attest. Englishdroid is a similarly bleak look at TEFL dealing with those everyday aspects aspects of teaching like shagging students, and the cringe inducing The Satanic Units - The Course Book From Hell. If blogs are more your bag, just check out the Tefl Daily Grind, with gloomy reports inside the frontlines of hopeless Thai school beaurocracy. If you still fancy trying your hand at teaching in Thailand, why not check the place that offered you 300 dollars a month isn't on THIS list. Could it be unscrupulous agencies are raking in millions of baht sending fly-by-night foreigners to teach English at public schools, or the certificate forger shops setup next to police stations. ...and if Bangkok's not your bag there's always the restive South, where teachers are in great demand.
posted by ldma (30 comments total)

That's really interesting. I met a guy in Seoul who was a fired English teacher caught up in some intrigue involving the criminal underworld.

A fascinating species all over the world.
posted by johngoren at 10:42 AM on October 16, 2005

If they are "ex-pats," how were they formerly "pat"? "Expatriate" isn't hyphenated and neither is its short form, "expat." (I checked Oxford.)

Yours pedantically –
posted by joeclark at 10:45 AM on October 16, 2005

Related
posted by the cuban at 11:00 AM on October 16, 2005

I taught English in Taiwan for ~8 years. I consider myself one of the more dilligent teachers, and I ended up heading a curriculum development project for one of the biggest buxibans on the island.

One of the best Taiwan/expat-related websites out there is Forumosa. The forums there are a pretty good summation of the expat community in Taiwan -- some insane, some very nice. Another one is from a Mefite, Poagao. And another one of my favorites is the Taipei Kid.

And remember, Taiwan != Thailand. I keep having to tell people that...
posted by jiawen at 11:08 AM on October 16, 2005

I heard that Bangkok is an oriental setting, and the city don't know what the city is getting.
posted by ilsa at 11:22 AM on October 16, 2005

This is great. A good friend of mine just returned from doing JET for a year (Engrish in Japan) and had a blast, but decided that one year was long enough. It's interesting to note cultural differences in the classrooms among different Asian nations.

Sleeping with students is never a good idea though, anywhere.
posted by bardic at 12:13 PM on October 16, 2005

After 4 years teaching in Bangkok, I disagree with bardic. Sleeping with students is an excellent idea, just disastrous if put into practice.

Seriously, there were a hell of a lot of incredibly dodgy teachers in Bangkok. Makes me shudder to think of some of the people I came into contact with ...
posted by Pericles at 12:40 PM on October 16, 2005

Well, I would imagine that most of the people intrested in doing something like this would go to japan, and only the shadier ones to bancock. If you're intrested in this stuff a great book is Standard Deviations by Karl Taro Greenfeld. He talked about working in Japan and then flying out to the rest of asia on cheap vacations.
posted by delmoi at 1:34 PM on October 16, 2005

Most Westerners in Asia recognize English teachers as the untouchables of the expat caste system. It's not that teachers are sleazier than most. (Journalists are almost always sleazier.) But teachers are usually eyes-wide, fresh-off-the-boat do-gooders full of optimistic exuberance and thus deserving of mockery and disdain.

Naturally, the only people more reviled than English teachers are tourists.
posted by soiled cowboy at 6:50 PM on October 16, 2005

Sleeping with students is never a good idea though, anywhere.

You've obviously never seen what Thai students look like.
posted by soiled cowboy at 6:57 PM on October 16, 2005

and only the shadier ones to bancock.

Ahem, I think it's shady precisely because they don't ban that sort of thing....
posted by jonp72 at 7:25 PM on October 16, 2005

You've obviously never seen what Thai students look like.

Only problem with Thai girls is you never know which one is actually a guy.
posted by zardoz at 9:52 PM on October 16, 2005

if you like ex-patin asia blogs, here is the China blog list, dominated by english teachers.
posted by afu at 12:02 AM on October 17, 2005 [1 favorite]

Jiawen: I don't think I belong to this species, actually, as I only taught English for about two weeks back in '92 or '93. But thanks for the mention. I do know quite a few English teachers here in Taiwan, but they're so varied it's difficult to think of them as a single type of person.
posted by Poagao at 12:46 AM on October 17, 2005

Only problem with Thai girls is you never know which one is actually a guy.

Might this be of assistance....

(old but I still get it badly wrong.)
posted by ldma at 12:54 AM on October 17, 2005

A female aquaintance of mine taught English to young children in Japan. Her stories turned me off to the experience, but she made a point of explaining that it was different for female teachers. The first problem was that she wasn't really teaching them much English, but since they were so young, that's understandable.

The second, bigger problem was that she was required to smile. All. The. Time. No matter if your students yell and scream and hit you, no matter if your supervisor treats you like an ignorant leper, no matter if the parents are insulting you. She ended up injuring some nerves in her face because of the constant required smiling.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 4:32 AM on October 17, 2005

Obligatory post of one of the funnier and more enlightening ESL blogs out there. If you haven't read this yet, it's a hoot :D

KANCHO!
posted by eurasian at 7:49 AM on October 17, 2005

Most Westerners in Asia recognize English teachers as the untouchables of the expat caste system.

Maybe in business/diplomatic circles snobby people think like this to reassure themselves of their own importance, but I believe most westerners, at least in Japan, do not distain English teachers. Westerners who spend lots of energy mocking other Westerners, be they teacher or tourists or hostesses or whatever, are nothing but insecure fools.
posted by dydecker at 8:02 AM on October 17, 2005

soiley cowboy, now I notice that you are in Thailand, where the situation is probably different. I imagine it's hard to generalize across different countries in Asia where attitudes to Westerners and types of Westerners are very different.

When I went to Thailand I noticed a couple of back-to-nature types who had been in the country six months sneered at me when I did dumb tourist things like ask directions. Weird.
posted by dydecker at 8:12 AM on October 17, 2005

I noticed a couple of back-to-nature types who had been in the country six months sneered at me when I did dumb tourist things like ask directions.

Of course. You were a n00b.
posted by soiled cowboy at 8:39 AM on October 17, 2005

So how long have you lived in Thailand, soiley monkey? I am curious to know how lonh the condescending foriegner thing actually lasts.
posted by dydecker at 9:03 AM on October 17, 2005

er, soiled cowboy. Sorry about that.
posted by dydecker at 9:05 AM on October 17, 2005

I've lived here for nine years. It is an interesting phenemonen, the condescending foreigner thing, although it's not limited to foreigners abroad. Every social system needs a bottom stratum and those most recent to the scene are the easy victims. Witness the way n00bs (like myself) in the MeFi community are occasionally treated to extra-large servings of disrespect.

It is silly and childish, but I don't think it's really as serious as I'm making it out to be. Most expat social circles that I know of are welcoming to recent arrivals, tourist and teacher alike, but all rookies take a degree of ribbing in any situation.
posted by soiled cowboy at 9:24 AM on October 17, 2005

Civil_Disobedient : "The second, bigger problem was that she was required to smile. All. The. Time. No matter if your students yell and scream and hit you, no matter if your supervisor treats you like an ignorant leper, no matter if the parents are insulting you. She ended up injuring some nerves in her face because of the constant required smiling."

This comes down a lot to who you work for, though. That is, if you work for an English school, your primary duty is providing a service that keeps your customers from becoming excustomers. So you have to have the salesman smile. If you're a teacher in a high school, however, that isn't the case. The important thing isn't having your students like you (it's not like they're going to quit high school because you aren't smiley enough), but having the parents of your students like the grades their students make on standardized tests.

I don't know for sure, but I would imagine that that's more-or-less the case in most countries, Asian or not. (Change "score on standardized tests" to "ability to speak the language" for less test-oriented cultures)

dydecker : "Maybe in business/diplomatic circles snobby people think like this to reassure themselves of their own importance, but I believe most westerners, at least in Japan, do not distain English teachers."

I agree, kinda. Most of the expats I know don't disdain English teachers, but they do pity them. Then again, most of the expats I knew used English teaching to get in the door, so they realize that it's not that teachers are losers, but that teachers are going through a really shitty middle step to getting a decent job that doesn't inspire pity.

The only disdain I see regularly is for military folks stationed here.

What you do get, with any new expats, is what looks a lot like disdain: that is, I have no interest in socializing with newly arrived folks, be they teachers or tourists. That's not because they're teachers or tourists, but because everything is new to them, so conversation tends to be about really exciting things (for them) that have become commonplace (for us). It's just a phase for them to go through, but while they're going through it, it's about as exciting as hearing a new parent gushing about how their kid can poo, or roll over, or learned to crawl. It's awesome when it's your kid, but not so much when it's someone else's. So the inclination to avoid them comes off as "thinking you're better than them", when in reality it's just "knowing that the topics of conversation they find interesting now, you don't".
posted by Bugbread at 9:43 AM on October 17, 2005

Perhaps also it's a product of economics. In a cheap country like Thailand or Malaysia, or even more so in Indonesia or India the cost of living is low so those who are there teaching English are probably not careering and are just working to support a fun and free lifestyle. Whereas expats employed by foreign companies tend to live in a world of maids and cars and that needs a whole different level of salary to support it. But in richer countries like Japan and Korea the wage and lifestyle difference between the career expat and the "lowly" English teacher is not so huge, and therefore the respect the job commands is maybe a bit different.
posted by dydecker at 10:13 AM on October 17, 2005

BTW I'm not an English teacher but most of my friends are and frankly, I think it's a worthy job and doesn't deserve to be disparaged.

It's certainly more worthy than me sitting in front of this computer.
posted by dydecker at 10:16 AM on October 17, 2005

“That's really interesting. I met a guy in Seoul who was a fired English teacher caught up in some intrigue involving the criminal underworld.
posted by johngoren at 10:42 AM PST on October 16 [!]”

It'd be a bad idea in Thailand. Although it's not as bad as a lot of places in the Americas you've got your Chiu Chow, United Wa State Army, etc. - triads (like 14k or Shui Fong) - organized crime types like the mob in the US. This is all second hand, but from what I hear you can screw with those guys all you want (metaphor). The ones you leave the fuck alone are the Jao Pho. Partly because they give to temples and help out the infrastructure, but also because they have the cops and the military.
Just passing along what I've heard. Underworld intrigue seems like a bad idea whether your an English teacher or not.

Hmmm...new Tom Clancy novel based film? 'The English Teacher'


So... are martial arts teachers revered? Or would I be a n00b too?
posted by Smedleyman at 4:21 PM on October 17, 2005

Dunno about Thailand, but in Japan a non-Asian martial arts teacher would be quite the novelty item, about as revered as one of those one-man-bands with the bass drum on their back, accordions under their arms, and harmonicas in their mouths. Respected for skill, but considered amusing in every other way. Unless, of course, someone saw you in action, at which point you'd probably be revered slightly to greatly (depending on your skill) more than an Asian martial arts instructor.
posted by Bugbread at 4:39 PM on October 17, 2005

There are a quite a few Western martial arts teachers in Bangkok. You could contact these guys if you're looking for more information.
posted by soiled cowboy at 6:29 PM on October 17, 2005

Ooh! Mixed martial arts. My bag! Thanks soiled cowboy.

" in Japan a non-Asian martial arts teacher would be quite the novelty item"
posted by bugbread at 4:39 PM PST on October 17 [!]

I got that sense competing. That and I'm one of those human-Yeti hybrids. The Robin Williams type that looks like I'm wearing a sweater when I take my shirt off. They get a kick out of that.


"Unless, of course, someone saw you in action,"
posted by bugbread at 4:39 PM PST on October 17 [!]


Heh heh: "Ooooh, that talking gorilla can really kick ass!"
posted by Smedleyman at 4:49 PM on October 18, 2005