Another Work-Related Diatribe

I'd sort of promised myself after my last work-related entry that I was going to stop complaining about work.  I know it's starting to get annoying (and I also know I'm expected to write about rainbows and pony-farms and bubbling syrupy goodness about the awesomeness that is Cambodia.  Not diatribes).  I understand that.  I really do.  I know you're tired of hearing about it, but in light of this week's events, I feel it is necessary to give an accurate picture of the realities of teaching English in Cambodia.

In most normal institutions world-wide, it is considered normal to give class evaluations at the end of the term--not smack in the middle of it.   I was unpleasantly surprised this Wednesday, then, when I was unceremoniously booted out of each of my classes (in the middle of a lesson!) for mid-term evaluation purposes.  All the more so considering that in my particular institution, it was only at the end of last term that evaluations were given at all.

I was furthermore unnerved on Thursday when a member of admin decided I needed a "surprise inspection".  Unnerved, and even insulted.  She sat in on my class for 40 minutes to take notes on my every movement.

Now, I don't want to be the whiner here, but I have to say I don't think much of these evaluations.  I have had the misfortune of seeing the questions on it, and they are about basic matters of procedure (Does your instructor dress properly?  Does your instructor come on time?  Does your instructor assign homework?).  Nowhere is it asked if the course content is OK, or how the instructor could improve the teaching of the course.  In other words, the evaluations are not that helpful.

Moreover, the feedback can be downright insulting.  I received very bad marks on my last evaluation, to be honest.  Now I personally can't take this stuff seriously at all (I literally threw my evaluation in the trash, so I don't even remember what it said) but some people really took theirs hard.  One instructor was in a rage because one hater had circled all 1s (on a scale of 1-5).  Another got even worse marks than me and was almost in tears and considered quitting his job entirely.

Virtually everyone was dissatisfied.

Why we're now being evaluated and inspected (and insulted) twice per term, I don't know; but I can tell you that it's not doing anything good for morale.  In my case, you will be unsurprised to hear, it's only succeeding in building an adversarial relationship between me and the administration and, worse, between me and my students.  It's hard NOT to think of people as adverseries when they exist solely to judge you and/or control your efforts.

I said as much to a co-teacher while I waited outside during an evaluation.  She is quite involved in school politics and informed me that the president has basically gone off the deep end and won't listen to reason.

AND WAIT TILL I TELL YOU ABOUT EXAMS.

We have a famous writing program, which is probably our institution's major appeal to potential students.  We teach them how to write academic English.  Exams are consequently geared towards grading their ability to construct intelligible sentences, use grammar accurately, and write acceptable paragraphs.

This does make it a pain in the ass to grade exams, that's true.  But grading them by hand is preferable to the totally unjustified method that will soon be in place:  We're now being ordered to give multiple-choice exams.  That's right, students can sit next to each other and fill in a bubble sheet to prove they know how to "write English".  I can stand there trying to prevent five rows of eyes from copying off their neighbors' bubble sheets.   Yes, they can prove to me their ability to use English grammar and write coherently with a multiple choice exam.  That's right.

The exams will be graded by the scan-tron that the president (who has never taught a class in his life) just invested in to make us "more competitive".  We can watch the $10 000 machine grade our exams while sipping water from the $3 000 purifier, all the while searching for ink for our markers and complaining about our paychecks that haven't risen since 1994.

You heard me.