Specific Individual Expat Teachers You'd Like To Send Back Home- Via Catapult

Is the concept of "TOPIC" really this difficult?

Anyway. The guy with the Ukerainian money is still in town. I'm happy to report that he got his shit together and currently seems very successful. He won some battles that needed to be won, and last I heard was making about 3 times my salary.
So, ya just never know...

Aaand, to make another desperate attempt to wrestle this dog's head back onto its original topic, let's go with a name that came up earlier and elsewhere.

MW became very well-known in the online China EFL world through two channels:

1) Under a swarm of pseudonyms he was long the loudest, meanest, and stupidest troll on Dave's ESL Cafe...a place where "loud", "mean" and "stupid" are already impressive demographics indeed.

2) Under his own name, he plastered the internet with some "scholarly" (in about the same sense that the backs of breakfast cereal boxes can be considered "scholarly") articles loudly claiming that- gasp!- Chinese schools, and in particular Chinese EFL programs, are crooked and low in quality.

Well, a few years ago I had the pleasure of working with MW, at a nasty little Chinese/Australian JV foundation program in Shanghai.

While still unpacking, he immediately started demanding that the school administration, which for several years had steadfastly refused teacher demands to provide soap and toilet paper in the faculty bathrooms, install a high-grade video/satellite system that would enhance his weekly Movie Nights AND allow the students unfettered, uncensored access to international English-language news and other programming.

You can only imagine how well that  one went over...

Once classes got underway, it quickly became apparent that, despite all his moaning about educational programs here, MW was the biggest fraud in all of China. Despite the fact that he was teaching upper-level Marketing and Business classes, he refused to touch a textbook or follow a syllabus. This yahoo was not capable of teaching a real class, even if you held him at gunpoint. His pedagogical method consisted of: showing movies. He would show a movie in one of each week's class sessions, then discuss it in the remaining sessions. His exams consisted of a quiz over the movies he had shown during the term. Again, these were supposed to be classes that would dovetail with a mainstream Australian Business curriculum...

After a few terms of this he was finally given the bum's rush...even this skanky little brothel of a JV college couldn't stoop this low.

Sometime later, his internet career was brought to a halt by a revelation. Someone from the Spoon found and posted the status of his license to practice law in the USA: he'd been barred, I think for several instances of serious perjury. It was also revealed that he'd received official complaints for forcing his errant female housekeepers, probably confused and terrified Latinas and/or Filipinas, to jog naked around his neighborhood.
What a guy.

Last I heard he was bouncing around brief tenures at various colleges.

Let's end this nonsense once and for all. Wind up the Saloon Trebuchet, throw this bozo into the bucket (naked would be a nice extra touch...) aim it vaguely at the obscure Pacific island he last lived in, and let that mutha fly.
Good riddance.

Yes, he was a maroon.

Bloody NSWmen!  Maroon is NOT moron!!  You morons.  The Maroons are a great football team.  Back off.

aim it vaguely at the obscure Pacific island he last lived in, and let that mutha fly.

What did that island ever do to you?

Rude, obnoxious FT who figured he wasn't re-employed because I was coaching teams and speakers for comps.  Any day he wanted he could have come and helped - as did the previous Japanese teacher.  But no, he preferred to complain - and then refused to turn up at his goodbye/thank you/here's your gift dinner.  Guys like this give all FTs a bad name.

Have any of those self professed sagging foreigners actually  married these girls?
I think it would be the least they could do.

This truly is an unfair situation.  Are there any Chinese men who would become so mesmerized by my blond hair that they would marry me and do my housework?

Actually, given how many Chnese women die their hair blond, and all the rubbernecking inspired by laowai with blond and red hair, I'd think you'd just need to find a guy with enough cajones to come up and talk to you.

No one's ever found any stats that I've seen, but anecdotally it seems the divorce rate of local/foreigner marriages is nasty high.  But I know a ton of happy couples- a few unhappy ones, too.

but I figure if you tried to call them Brits - particularly the Northern Irish you'd have a minor problem on your hands!! Same with the Scots.

Aussies tend to think of Kiwis as their slightly retarded young siblings - which doesn't go down too well with the Kiwis (don't know why!).

I think each country has a pecking order of relationship - that no other country accepts!

NORTHERN IRELAND is part of England. Try Southern. And for God's sake don't try to involve the Scots.

I was born in New Zealand. My mother's 7th generation Australian. I'm the only offspring of my parents to be born in NZ.

My BAD!!  I intended all to lump all the Irish in there.  I haven't met one yet who called him/herself British.  And the same with the Scots - the ones I have met are pretty proud of being from north of the border. And most people with Scottish or Irish (even Welsh or Cornish) ancestors proudly claim that nationality for them, rather than British.

Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom. Definitely NOT part of England. They would feel most emphatic about this.

Can't you Commonwealth types keep these things straight?

Back to the topic, now, please.

My mum was born in Northern Ireland and calls herself British. My mum isn't a teacher here, though.

Sorry Raoul.Back to topic, or nearly.

I would like to trebuchet some of the Chinese teachers here back to where they came from. Straight up for a long way so they come down in the same place would be fine. One bloody idiot is trying to get my students to mispronounce words the teacher can't say properly, saying they are right and implying I am wrong, so the students are getting confused. So I corrected the grammar in one of their notes to me and sent it back. I was tempted to give it a mark out of 10, but refrained.

Ok boss I know I am off topic but I want to add to Mr. Nobody's comment.

I agree!!

Why do the Chinese teachers teach English in Chinese?  I had two of my EFL students take an extra grammar course with a Chinese teacher in her class.  She taught in Chinese and spoke very rapidly too.  I gave them heck for writing in Chinese in their text book.  That is when I was told that she taught in Chinese so they had to write in Chinese to keep up with her comments.  She would say an English word or grammar point and then talk about it in Chinese.  She even had them translate the English stories in the text back into Chinese - WHY??

How much depends on the level of the students?  I know if my French, German and Japanese teachers had only spoken in those languages, I would have learned even less than I did.  My Chinese teacher makes me translate the readings back so she can see if I have actually understood them - the grammar and tenses (or lack thereof).  My Tan teacher explains the grammar in English to me so I can understand it. 

For low level students sitting in a classroom, I think there definitely needs to be a fair bit of native language explanation.  The higher the level, the less need.  If you are living in a country where you are immersed in the language, then you should quickly need less explanation.

But - giving wrong information is not helpful! That needs to be fixed and soon.

Ok LE, I understand.  However, at the Uni level I would have thought they had enough English to not need the class taught in Chinese. 

These students I was talking about had one year of English in the EFL program at my Uni.  They were taking the grammar with students from the Chinese main Uni.  Maybe those students didn't have enough English to understand everything in English or maybe they were taught in Chinese because it was easier for the teacher.   

I know. It's my own fault.

The concept of "Specific Individual Expat Teacher" is not sufficiently clear.

And the price set for starting a new topic is really prohibitive.

Mea Culpa...

Tres Amusant.
Raoul old buddy, if there's one thing I've learned when trying to teach teachers, it is that it is impossible for them to follow instructions or stay on-topic.
The fact that they complain about the same qualities in their students doubles the irony.
I used up my best teacher story early in the thread. But I'll throw in Oscar [not his real name]. A retired high school department head from the USA. Never married. Catholic, with lots of little plaster Marys hanging up in his flat. Said he was a virgin: don't know why, as no one had even asked him if his next time would be his first anyway.
The reason he came to China? Boys, and lots of 'em. You all know how Chinese college boys fondle each other, bear hug from behind, sit on laps etc. Not gay, just expressing friendship. Well, Oscar was their friend too. Beer parties and dancing at his place for the lads, holding hands around the campus. No problem for the admin. I've never been able to work this out. Male FTs cracking onto female students ["fair yonge skolars"] is disapproved of, and rightly so, but overtly homosexual behaviour was openly tolerated.
Any ideas?

I think the title of the thread says it all. Trebuchet. Perhaps with a little flaming oil to improve visibility at night.

(Hey, Boss, maybe it's because we are out of the habit of following instructions here. I mean, take a look at the instructions we are given in this place. China, I mean. Following instructions here can lead to all kinds of complications.)

Yes, we are difficult cats to herd...
It's almost enough to give one sympathy for the people who manage us and our schools.


Note the strategic use of the word "almost": fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.