I am really sick of those Nazi re-enactment kids

There is a reason this was OK but the high school students' Nazi re-enactment was not
From here

...and yet here I am writing about them. 

Make no mistake, however, I am sick of them. I just don't want to hear about it anymore, and I won't write about them again.

I'm not going to get into the "but their freedom of speech!" retort because it's intellectually shallow. These kids have freedom of speech - they have not faced and will not face criminal charges for this. Freedom of speech never gave anyone the right to freedom from criticism or backlash from the public regarding what they've expressed.

I'm also not going to get into "why is it so taboo?" It's not taboo. Movies and even war re-enactors re-enact painful scenes from history, including the horrors of Nazism, fairly frequently. If the subject matter is handled sensitively then there's generally not a problem with it. The issue here is that it did not meet that standard. This is true for historical re-enactments of all sorts for a variety of purposes.

Remember how we all watched a re-enactment of executions under the White Terror during President Tsai's inauguration? Remember how, while people remarked on it, there wasn't this kind of critical backlash? Because the re-enactment had value: learning value, historical value, emotional value. Nobody (well, nobody with any sense) thinks that such re-enactments should be forbidden or are all in bad taste, no matter what. It's how the events are handled when acted out, and why the re-enactment is staged in the first place, that matters. (Edited to add: not everyone thinks that the re-enactments in the inaugural play were handled well - I too have some criticism of them, but overall do feel they had historical value if, perhaps, it was not portrayed as accurately as it could be).

Also on the trash heap: "well they don't know that much about WWII. The evils of Nazism haven't been ingrained in them the way they have in us". Sure, but there's no excuse for that. Just as we Westerners could stand a more comprehensive approach to Asian history - from the horrors of Mao to the White Terror to Pol Pot, Japanese imperialism and beyond - this should be better taught in Asian schools. In fact, even in Asia these subjects don't always seem to be fully understood: why is it that Chiang Kai-shek and Chairman Mao bobblehead toys can be purchased in half the gift shops of Taiwan? What is the purpose of making two brutal dictators adorable?

And yet another one for the dumptruck: "people do lots of worse things, Americans can be just as insensitive!" Yup. Thinking of all the idealistic young Westerners a generation ago who wore Mao suits to be "cool" (or worse, because they actually bought what Mao was selling) or make tasteless jokes about some of the more awful events and people of Asian history also makes me shake my head. But "they do it too" is not an excuse.

What bothers me, really, then, is the complete lack of value - historical, pedagogical, emotional - in this particular re-enactment.

The dramatically staged executions during the inauguration performance had historical value and emotional weight. Through them, we can be reminded of the horrors of the past - it pushes us to remember the history of agonies Taiwan has battled through and in some way pushes Taiwan to come to terms with its own history (something that is avoided more than it should be). Through the re-enactment, the horror of what took place in that era is laid bare, and it provides a useful lens through which to examine Taiwan's progress, current status and future. It was not a perfect dramatic performance, and there are reasons to criticize it - and the depiction of Han settlers driving out the original aboriginal inhabitants of the land - but nobody would say that no re-actment should have taken place. If it made you upset, good. It should.

There is similar value in films dealing with history, whether fictional, semi-fictional and documentary, and value in historical societies re-enacting battles and other scenes from potent events from the past: through them we can understand what it was like for the people involved, in some small way, and hopefully learn from it.

This, though? This was a group of teenagers choosing a decidedly un-fun subject and having, well, fun with it. It was not handled sensitively and, as a teacher, I fail to see what learning outcomes this might better bring about. What exactly did these students learn about Nazism by putting on snazzy uniforms and marching around? What of the weight and pain of history did this impart? What greater understanding did they gain? How did they learn to examine the issue critically, look at various sources and discuss the ideas within, or apply the lessons to the timeline of history, the world as it is today and the future?

There are certainly ways to teach Nazism in schools in Taiwan and elsewhere. The subject is not taboo - or should not be - and there may even be room for historical re-enactments if they serve a purpose.

However, one of the first things I learned in my teacher training is that every activity included in one's lesson should be carefully and critically evaluated for how well it will enable the class to meet its aims: how it will enable the learners to learn what you want them to come away with. Not only are we asked to look at each activity and decide if it is the best possible choice to propel the class toward successful learning, or if another choice might be more targeted, more efficient, more engaging or more relevant, but also if each activity is properly scaffolded and ordered to bring the class, in stages, through to a greater understanding of the subject (whatever level of understanding you have specified in your aims).

I am not a perfect teacher. Sometimes I get lazy - I try not to do it often - and perhaps I grab an activity because I'm short on time when another, more involved one might have been more fruitful. Sometimes I reflect on a class and think "that wasn't scaffolded as well as it could have been, I shouldn't have had to give such a long explanation of this or that issue". Sometimes I think "well, we met our aims, but I'm not sure that the level of understanding is as deep as I'd like it to be." I think all responsible, professional teachers think this way.

Certainly, syllabuses and curriculums are littered with pointless school projects that amount to wheel-spinning or extra whiz-bang showiness but do little, or nothing, to actually promote absorption of and understanding of the subject matter. Certainly - and not only in Taiwan - is critical thinking training often sacrificed for these surface-level school projects that are usually money and time sucks (or they are sacrificed at the altar of 'this is on the big exam so memorize what's in your book, we don't have time to think too deeply about it, you just need to answer some questions').

I can honestly say if I were tasked with teaching Nazism to a history class, this sort of re-enactment would have no place in it. Not because it is tasteless, though it is that, but because it lacks value. If, however, in some lesson a re-enactment, handled appropriately, did have value I would incorporate it.

I could give you a very long list of things that might be better included: from debates to class experiments (such as the brown eye/blue eye experiment) to readings (not only textbook readings but books such as The Wave, The Book Thief and perhaps even Stargirl which is seemingly unrelated but in fact carries that us-against-them mentality so intrinsic to the Nazis into the modern world in a different way). I am not afraid to face slightly unnerving lesson plans - if you are not unnerved by Nazism then you didn't learn it properly - and would not even be opposed to a class experiment where some children had to hide, others had to find them, and the hiders were punished if they were found whereas the finders were greatly rewarded - and to see if the finders were willing to capture the hiders for their reward, knowing the hiders would be punished. Then to bring them all back and talk about how that felt and why, and how it might manifest in the world today.

I might include something like the lesson told in a Facebook post that's going around:

When I was in 7th grade, our teacher put on a video and told us to take notes. Ten minutes in, she threw the lights on and shouted at Steven [Lastname], telling him he wasn't taking notes and he should have been. But the thing was, Steve was taking notes. I saw it. We all saw it. The teacher asked if anyone wanted to stand up for Steve. A few of us choked out some words of defense but were immediately squashed. Quickly, we were all very silent. Steve was sent to the principal's office. The teacher came back in the room and said something like "See how easy that was?" We were reading "Anne Frank."


But this? What does marching around really teach? Does mere imitation really have any value? Thea answer is no, and that goes for any re-enactment. Was the Wushe Incident re-enactment of any greater pedagogical value? I'd say no. Had the students chosen to re-enact events in a different way, with teacher guidance leading them to better understand those events through the resulting play, would that have been more valuable? Certainly.

It's tasteless, yes. It shows a deep and painful lack of understanding of important events in world history, yes. It also shows a lack of understanding of why the backlash was what it was - last I heard, the principle of the school was resigning but the students themselves did not really seem to understand what they'd done wrong or why they were being criticized so heavily.

All of that is true, but it's the complete lack of educational utility of the whole thing that really gets me.

All that said, I really am sick of this story and I'm going to stop talking about it now, or writing about it in the future.

The Master Hunt

If you've noticed that in the later half of this year I haven't been the most consistent blogger in terms of frequency of updates, it's because I actually have some exciting news!

First, I've been published! This isn't my first publication (I worked for a regional newspaper before I started college, and more relevantly have a story relating one of my experiences in Taiwan published here) but it is my first academic publication. It's not even all that academic, because I don't work at a university, don't have academically-based postgraduate education (my Delta is technically equivalent to a Master's but is more of a professional degree than an academic one), don't have a research budget and, thus, can't really do hard research. But, I did enjoy writing it, and hope you check it out - first link in this paragraph. I explore teaching note management skills as a method of introducing learner autonomy into the classroom, with an exploration of my own note-management teaching strategy.

Second, I've been accepted to grad school! I'll be starting at this program at the University of Exeter in July 2017. It's a program with a special schedule made for people like me who can't just up and move to England, or somewhere else, for postgraduate study but don't have a lot of options where they live. I applied quite early, but I was ready to and the platform was open, so I don't feel too weird about that. I would have gone this year if I'd had the money. That's what took away my blogging time, to be honest.

Anyway, I have a few thoughts on my process of researching, choosing and applying for Master's programs as an American in Taiwan. I am sorry to say that while there are some good things, it's mostly bad news. That is unfortunate not only for Taiwan, but also the USA.

A dearth of options in Taiwan

My biggest hurdle was finding a good program - I started in Taiwan but just couldn't find one that quite met my needs. I may not be in Taiwan forever, so I did need something from a school that is highly regarded internationally. I'm sorry to say that nothing on offer in Taiwan fits the bill. NTU is the only university of international repute, and doesn't offer my desired program. That doesn't mean other universities are necessarily "bad". They are not, however, universities whose degrees will get you noticed abroad.

There are MA TESOL and MA Applied Linguistics/Applied Foreign Languages programs in Taiwan: Shi-da, National Taiwan University of Technology and other schools offer them. Many are taught in English. They would not, however, help much internationally. Also, testimony of what one actually learns on these programs from a friend who did one in teaching Chinese turned me off to the idea of studying in Taiwan. He was, shall we say, less than impressed.

I have heard that there's a Master of Education program available through a small university in the US that allows you to take classes here, but that was something someone told me - I haven't found any evidence of its existence in my research. Anyone?

Columbia University Teacher's College Tokyo would have been an option, but they are apparently closing the campus - at least, a friend of mine went there so I know it's a real thing, she says it's closing, and I can't even find a reference to it existing online. Not that it matters: the tuition was similar to that in the US, and I can't afford US tuition. So, studying in a fully face-to-face program from Taiwan was quickly dismissed as 'not an option' for me.

Distance programs aren't great options

There are a number of distance programs: Nottingham, University of Southampton with the British Council and more in the UK (many, many more - I couldn't possibly link to them all), USC and Anaheim in the US (these were the only two distance programs I could find) - but I didn't want to do a distance Master's.

Why? The first reason is that, rightly or wrongly - and I happen to think wrongly - distance-learning postgraduate degrees tend to get the side-eye from academic institutions looking to hire, even if they are from reputable institutions (they also run the risk of not being recognized in Taiwan). The second is that I did distance learning for my Delta. It was fine, but I want something different. I want to actually meet people in person and have real-time discussions using my actual voice.

...neither was going abroad

So, I looked into what it would take for me to do a face-to-face Master's outside of Taiwan. Brendan and I are super-solid, I knew we could weather this, though I didn't particularly want to be apart for a year or two. I looked at King's College, Durham, University College London and more in the UK (not even going to bother with links, you can Google those yourself) and very few choices in the USA, because I honestly could not afford US tuition. I also looked at York University in Canada, but couldn't have afforded to live there and pay tuition. The same is true for the universities of Melbourne, Brisbane and Queensland, which I also researched. I looked at Germany, as well, but most schools (at least the ones I looked at, including Bonn) want you to pass a German proficiency test even if you are taking a program in English. I doubt I'd have the time to learn German at that level, so...no.

My country of origin is not affordable

In fact, I only looked at two face-to-face programs in the US: Columbia (because if I'm going to commit I may as well aim high - also I wouldn't need a car in New York and it's close to family) and SUNY Albany, one of the bigger campuses of my state university system and the only one to offer an MA TESOL. State university tuition would have been "cheaper" (cheaper than Satan's own private university pricing, so that's hardly a consolation) and at the time I was thinking I could live with my grandfather. He's since moved and that is no longer an option.

This is where I throw a lot of shade on the USA.

Total tuition for the programs noted above that are based in the USA:

USC Rossier School of Education (online) - approximately $50,000. They bill it as being the same as face-to-face: you videoconference the classes and they treat you as though you are 'there'. You're not residing there, though, so I do wonder why the tuition has to be as high. They don't need to worry about space, maintenance, grounds, utilities or security during my residency because there isn't one.

Anaheim University (online): A little over $20,000, including inexplicable fees such as a "graduation fee" and a "thesis fee" (which is apparently to print and bind your thesis, but $450? Are they binding it in unicorn leather? What the hell?) I appreciate that they are trying to break down exactly what your $20,000 is paying for, and I appreciate that their tuition is more similar to what UK schools charge. But the breakdown doesn't make them look good. My 'graduation fee' is all the fucking money I pay for my fucking degree, not some $300 you tack on. No. Not Okay. Also, I have some serious side-eye for charging for an online degree what UK schools charge for a face-to-face degree. Why exactly does it have to be that high?

SUNY Albany MA TESOL without state certification (which I don't need) - face-to-face: $12,000 and change, per year, 2 year program so $24,000 total. For in-state tuition.

Columbia University - face-to-face: fuck that I'm not even going to bother, what the fuck makes them think a fucking English teacher can afford to pay that shit back, fuck you, a fucking pox on your house!

In comparison, the distance programs in the UK cost about 7,000 pounds, and face-to-face cost about 15,000 and change - for the whole program. This is for international students - don't forget that. What that translates into in US dollars is changing by the day, but suffice it to say the total tuition for an international student (did I mention international), not in-state or even a citizen, is cheaper than going to my own state university in the US which is supposed to be the affordable option.

My program at Exeter is quite a bit less than that, and I'm an international student.

English teaching isn't a particularly highly-paid profession - I could never have afforded to pay back US tuition. It's just not feasible.

It is really sad that my own country couldn't make it possible for someone whose career requires postgraduate education, and who would certainly do well in it, to actually get it.

This is a prime reason why I do not intend to return. Why should I give "back" something to society through teaching and education that society doesn't see fit to give me? I appreciate my basically okay public education through secondary school but the US tertiary and postgraduate system is completely, and utterly, fucked. I want nothing to do with it.

But thanks, UK!

To end on a high note: when I got my offer letter I walked down the street alternating between feeling like this, and like this.

Update on the Fu Jen University Protests

So, thinking there would just be an "update - agreement reached, strike worked!" type post, I read up on the "resolution" to the Fu Jen Catholic University's protest and hunger strike to remove the unfair - and I say that unequivocally - curfew on the women's dorm when no such curfew applied to the men's.

I was wrong. There is a lot to say about this. First, a question - it doesn't seem like the curfews are abolished effective immediately but will be abolished at some point in the future. Is that true, or did I misunderstand the (somewhat poorly-organized) article?

First and foremost, while I maintain that this is not completely attributable to "Asian conservatism" but is also in large part a symptom of "religious conservatism" (I am not a big fan of mainstream Catholic or any religious conservatism, if you hadn't noticed, and would never tolerate it being imposed on me) there are positive and negative things about the fact that the women had to protest, but also that they won.

The good: well, that they won. That civic activism actually means something and gets something done in Taiwan, and it shows that the "passive/listens to authority/Confucian values" nonsense so many people ascribe to the Taiwanese are false. They are willing to fight! How do we know? They keep doing it! From The Republic of Formosa to 228 to the Kaohsiung Incident to the farmers to the White Lilies to the Sunflowers (the aptly-named Red Shirts didn't seem to have that much of an impact, though I admit bias in not caring for their agenda), if you say the Taiwanese are not willing to fight, you need to read a goddamn history book.

That the youth have not lost hope, that they're willing to fight and they are not the strawberries their condescending parents make them out to be. How many of those older folks calling the young generation 'strawberries' would have fought to end an aspect of gender discrimination in their schools? Their own parents were the ones doing most of the fighting for democracy - what did they fight for? That this sort of activism, which seems to be dead or ineffective in the US - still has power here. I hope that never goes away.

The bad: that they had to protest at all. Their position was reasonable, their goals logical. They should have been able to talk it out with the administration without having to make a massive fuss about it. It reminds me of my own occasional skirmishes at work. While I am always quick to say that my current employers - both of them - are generally very good, and I am in a much better position than the vast majority of English teachers in Taiwan now that I work at a truly professional level (yes, I welcome your hate for saying that in the comments), I have to say this: in the past, at one employer, when I've had to fight for something I deserved, be that enrollment in Laobao (labor insurance) or a well-earned raise, I have felt like attempts at talking about it reasonably are met with resistance, or at the very most no action. It has left me, on a few rare occasions, with the feeling that if I want something I deserve, I must fight for it more strongly than I should have to. I should be able to sit down and talk it out and reach a reasonable solution without having to, I dunno, threaten to quit (a real threat, not a bluff - I was ready to quit over getting a real raise). But, nothing happens until I pull out the big guns, at which point I get what I want but am told I didn't have to pull out those guns. Except I DID, because if I hadn't I wouldn't have gotten anywhere! And I know this from having tried that route and not having gotten anywhere!

Anyway. Ahem. I shouldn't have had to take the nuclear option, and FJU Cinderella shouldn't have had to either. A hunger strike should never have necessary, and it says something rather damning about FJU and Taiwan in general that they did, even as it says something good about the students being willing to organize and fight in the first place. When will we get to the point when reasonable goals don't have to be fought for with hunger strikes and occupations?

Second, I've spent the past week or so asking around to see on an anecdotal basis what the dorm rules are like across Taiwan. I asked people who attended and stayed in dorms at NTU, NCCU, Kaohsiung Medical College, Zhongxing, Yangming University and noticed a comment on my blog from someone who stayed at the dorms at Wenhua. According to these people, Wenhua also has discriminatory curfew policies, and NCCU has no curfews of any kind but makes men sign in and wear ugly orange vests - a perfect deterrent to getting laid? A "don't fuck me" vest? - when visiting women's dorms, but women can visit men's dorms freely. The others either have equal curfew policies or none at all.

This seems to corroborate the data in the article above where well less than half of Taiwanese universities have discriminatory dorm policies.

All I can say is that it does point to Fu Jen being a special case, perhaps due to religious conservatism, but it's also far too many. Even 26% is too many to have discriminatory policies.

Finally, two points in the article:

The first is that refusing to support the protestors because as you "want to protect your daughter, not discriminate"? Screw you. Wanting to protect your daughter because she is female, but not your son in the same way, IS discriminatory. There is no way to separate the two. If you discriminate in whom you want to protect, you are discriminating. WORDS MEAN THINGS.

As a counterpoint, I loved how someone called out that whole "women are responsible for not being victims" line of thinking. Dangers to women in Taiwan are not women's responsibility to fight, they're society's responsibility to eradicate in men.

Along these lines, Taiwan's youth rhetoric on social issues is refreshingly modern. I'm a huge fan. Among the youth you don't hear any of the old "I heard this in Asia" tropes (e.g. "It's not racist because it's natural" or even worse, "there's no racism here because there are no black people here" or "of course we should have equality but women need to be extra careful") - they know racism when they see it, they are aware of intersectional issues and call out when something is race, class or gender-based (or, relevant for Taiwan, age-based), or some combination of same, or all three. They know sexism when they see it and are bracingly able to call out patriarchal ideas of blaming women for being the targets of men rather than blame the men for having targets in the first place. I am excited to see this generation grow into the new leaders of Taiwan. The folks in power may not get it yet, but they do.

And next, there's still a long way to go - the idea of implementing an electronic card system in place of the curfew so "parents can monitor their children's movements" is almost as problematic as an actual curfew! These aren't kids, they are legal adults. They're in COLLEGE. They shouldn't have to use a card that registers their comings and goings for their parents to check. I can't imagine accepting the idea of my parents monitoring where I was at all times of day and night when I started college at 16 (yes, 16. Yes, I'm bragging. Deal with it), even though I lived at home, let alone when I transferred and went away to university at 17. The idea of being monitored at 18, 19, 20? Not acceptable. What really needs to change is the idea that parents have such a right to control of their adult children. And that will be a much slower - but still possible - cultural change.

The Tale of Lance Lightning

I've sort of hesitated in writing this post because it forces me to come to terms with my past.

That sounds way creepier than it really needs to, but it probably got your attention!

Back in 2002-2003, when I was living in China, I had a coworker who was teaching at another branch of our small provincial English language center. He had a very memorable name - we'll just change his name to "Lance Lightning" - and was an retired-military Englishman with a grizzled-in-a-wiry-sort-of-way air about him.

We traveled to Kunming and Dali together - this is not as weird as it sounds - we got along quite well (I tend to get along with grizzled-Englishman types, the more sarcastic the better) and generally hung out going to tourist spots together, meeting up after breakfast because I was a poor kid staying in hostels and he could afford proper hotel rooms.

At one point, Lance mentioned something about teaching - some educational concept I hadn't heard of - and I asked him about it and where he'd learned it. It was probably something I really should have known about before embarking on a year of teaching abroad, like classroom management. He said he'd taken a CELTA course before coming and, quite offhand, that he did so because "if I was going to move abroad to do this, I thought I'd better to it right or it's not worth doing at all."

That's just the sort of person Lance was. And although I was a feckless 22-year-old at the time, that attitude appealed to me. It's a part of why we got along - he didn't suffer fools (and I suppose that because he suffered me as his weird pink-haired coworker-and-traveling-companion, that I must not have been as much of a fool as I now see myself as having been, and I probably liked the validation).



Me and my weird pink hair in Kunming, late 2002 - it was way pinker than this old photo makes it seem.

Anyway, I remember wishing I'd had the forethought and money to have done it that way.

In Kunming, Lance and I stopped at one of the famous temples - either Yuantong or Golden, I don't remember which. It was cool and overcast, a bit drizzly. So much for the famous Kunming weather! Leading up to it was a very long staircase of marble or granite, really onerous to climb. Being a retired army guy, Lance jogged up at a comfortable pace and met me at the top. I climbed comfortably for some time but was huffing and puffing and pushing myself forward by the end.

"Well, you made it," Lance said. "The key to getting up a long stairway like this isn't how strong you are. It's got nothing to do with muscles. It's all about the respiratory and circulatory system. If those are weak, you won't pump the oxygen you need to give you the energy to get to the top. You're not fat" (at the time I wasn't overweight, now I am), "but it looks like you've got some working out to do."

My first reaction was defensiveness - hey, I wasn't that unfit! - but I tamped that down. He was right (I mean I'm not sure about the exact physiological aspects, but generally speaking, he wasn't off base).

In later years I would look back at that moment - it wasn't just about climbing stairs. I wanted to teach as well as Lance could jog up and down those steps. Confidently, knowing what I was doing and how I should proceed, seemingly effortlessly (though it's anything but). Just as one might work out to improve respiration and circulation, I wanted to work out my mental muscles to be a competent, trained teacher.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

Over the next few years I backpacked around Asia, tried to work in finance, couldn't bring myself to care enough about the field to achieve anything within it (and I did try - I just inherently wasn't interested), got an evening job teaching ESL to Korean immigrants, saved some money and moved to Taiwan where I taught English again without any sort of qualifications or credentials for a few years before finally getting my act together and getting a CELTA, then moving on to Delta and IELTS examiner training. Eventually, I will get a Master's. I need it if I ever want to work in this field in a Western country.

Fast-forward to now, and that offhand comment from Lance is quite possibly a part of why I've since swung so far in the other direction - I have the zeal of the converted. I know the CELTA course is a quality course because I've done it. It won't make you a star teacher, but it will give you the basic competency you need to move on to better performance - something you aren't going to get from experience alone.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

Here's the thing - Lance wasn't a career teacher. He wasn't a seasoned professional. What I respected - and still respect - about this worldview is that he saw a fairly affordable basic course that would allow him to do his "retirement" job with a basic degree of competency, and he shut up and took the damn course rather than construct some unrealistic narrative in which he didn't need it, a narrative that would have insulted teachers, the profession of teaching, and the generations of hard work and research in education, pedagogy and second language acquisition that people have put into the field, all to make himself feel better about not taking his new job seriously. You don't need to be a career teacher to do this. You don't need to plan to stay in it for more than a few years. Even so, you can do better than showing up and pretending your accent and face is enough.



A dragon carving somewhere in the Golden or Yuantong temple, Kunming, China, late 2002.

Now, I advocate pre-service teacher training (as in, taking some sort of English teaching course before you actually begin working as an English teacher), specifically the CELTA, Trinity or equivalent, and will go so far as to say that a.) I think this, or something like it, should in fact be a legal prerequisite for employment in ELT in all countries and b.) I do not view ersatz "English teachers" who lack such qualifications as professionals.

I'll go even farther than that - not only should all English teachers have to get a basic, respected qualification (CELTA, Trinity or equivalent) but that if someone wants to open an English language center, they either need to be, or need to hire, someone with adequate credentials in ELT in order to ensure that the training, curriculum, materials, hiring etc. are all in line with sound educational practice. In short, to ensure that the school wasn't run by businesspeople whose only concern was profit and who were not concerned with the actual quality of the product being provided.

Perhaps it would be acceptable for someone to go abroad and teach English for a year or two without a CELTA if and only if the school in question had a qualified head teacher on staff who trained all new hires, and whose training was examined and approved by a higher accreditation agency or a committee within the Ministry of Education of that country. After a few years, however, it should be required that they either get a CELTA or equivalent (or take the TKT), or leave the field in that country. Government incentives to schools that help sponsor their long-term teachers to gain these credentials would be a solid step forward.

"But Jenna," you're probably thinking, "you didn't do that. You started as a backpacker-teacher! How can you then say that you don't think others should be able to do exactly what you did?"

And you'd be right. So before writing this post I had to think long and hard about why I now feel the way I do, and if it's fair to do so when I benefited from a system that allowed me to get a pretty well-paid job (by Taiwan standards) without having even remotely close to the qualifications I should have had to get it.

Here's what I've come up with: if I could do it all again, I wouldn't have started teaching without doing something like the CELTA first. In 2002, after graduating from college, deciding not to go into Peace Corps (long story), and choosing instead to spend a year in China teaching English, I would have instead delayed my trip by 6 months, saved enough to pay for the CELTA and living expenses in a relatively inexpensive country like Thailand, and done that before moving on to that first teaching job in China.

After all, the CELTA course cost a pretty packet for 2 people to do, with an apartment back home to pay rent on, along with living in a fairly expensive city like Istanbul, but it wasn't so expensive that I as a singleton couldn't have pulled it off in, say, Chiang Mai at age 22.

22-year-old me would have been pretty pissed to learn that she couldn't go teach English abroad without first laying out a few thousand dollars for a basic teaching qualification.

22-year-old me was also an entitled, spoiled idiot. An spoiled idiot who did not understand that she was not so special as to not need basic teacher training before, you know, teaching. That professional fields require, by their very nature, some sort of training to be taken seriously in. That I might have a natural knack for teaching but that's not enough to make one a professional- level teacher, or a "teacher" at all. I was playing teacher, like a kid might "play doctor" or "play firefighter" (or "play lawyer" if kids were inclined to do something that dull to kid sensibilities). That being a native speaker did not qualify me to teach English, just as being "good at math" or even "highly educated in math" does not qualify one to teach math. That being a native speaker of a language is not the same as understanding the underlying systems of that language, and even if you understand those, being able to teach them using sound pedagogy is a different skill entirely. That teaching is so much more than knowing something - knowing how to impart it is equally if not more important.

So yeah, 34-year-old me would tell 22-year-old me to suck it up, save up the extra money and do the damn course. Then she could bum around for a bit, but eventually, if she were to get serious about the job, she'd have to find a job under a real director of studies and improve her craft before moving on to higher qualifications.

With that in mind, reading articles like this bring me back around to that thing about my past that I don't like to admit: that I took the easy route, and that I regret it. I should not have been allowed in front of a class of students who were paying (or whose parents were paying) for the experience. It was one giant facepalm, and I didn't get better until I got some decent pre-CELTA training. My entire professional existence was probably one huge facepalm, in fact, until approximately 2009 when my experience finally caught up with my training. I was doing alright by the time I did the CELTA, but I was not a professional:

"It can easily be the case that native speaking teachers working abroad, in large part because they do not speak the local language, are excluded from the decision making process at their schools. This leads to the native-speakers feeling frustrated because they are not being taken seriously as professionals, while the non-native teachers sit quietly thinking, “Well, you’re not really professionals, are you? You were only hired because you’re a native speaker.”

And that's exactly it. If you're only hired because you happen to speak a language (or in many cases, simply look like you do), then how are you a professional? Professional work requires training and development. It needn't be a teaching license if you're not working with kids. It needn't be a Master's, just as you can be a financial professional with Series 7 and 66 certifications but don't necessarily need an MBA or degree in Finance.

As such, no, I don't think that what makes a good teacher is necessarily the piece of paper to say that they did this or that course - although the content of the courses themselves help. It could be done through more informal on-the-job training, but, honestly, most schools don't even offer that and those who do offer training of such varying quality that it simply cannot be the basis of "professionalism" unless it's either standardized by an accredited authority, or there is a way to show measurable outcomes (in much the same way that a business professional may start out with an unrelated degree but proves themselves through measurable outcomes that lead to promotion). The only way I see this happening in teaching is for everyone, at some point, to take a similar training course just as, say, financial advisors have to do with those Series 7/66 licenses.

22-year-old me would have been butthurt to hear that she was not a "professional". 22-year-old me was an idiot. 34-year-old me accepts it, and is still worried that, not yet having a full Delta, she is not quite professional enough. Incidentally, the end of that conversation with Lance about some aspect of teaching practice entailed me admitting I had no training whatosever, and Lance saying "you're pretty smart. You'll be fine." I see no reason why others can't be "pretty smart" too, and have no problem with kicking those who aren't out of the field.

What worries me is that a lot of these "native speakers hired as teachers" isn't just that they aren't qualified, as I wasn't (and so I can only imagine that in the classroom a large number of them are variations of the walking facepalm that I once was), it's that, like 22-year-old me, they get super butthurt if you say so. They don't like to hear that they aren't professionals, that perhaps their opinions aren't as valid as teachers with training, that there is a reason employers view them as replaceable and interchangeable and don't take them seriously (although I also get the feeling that employers purposely look for "teachers" they don't take seriously as native speakers without qualifications are much easier to "manage". If you are some rando businessman who started a school to make money but you don't know jack about teaching, then it can be quite inconvenient indeed to have a teacher with some training challenging your decisions, most of which are pedagogically crap).

They want to construct a narrative in which one learns to teach by doing it - forgetting first of all that "doing" doesn't mean much if it's not augmented by training and feedback from a professional who can point out where you're going wrong better than you can, and so if you learn by doing without that meaningful feedback (which most teachers at these schools don't get, as most schools don't have a competent, qualified head teacher or Director of Studies), you'll just pick up a bunch of bad habits that you won't even know you have (and will get very defensive about being called out on). Second of all that if you try to "learn to teach by teaching", along your path to learning you've just stepped on a whole bunch of people who've paid you to learn how to do something, and not even gotten a quality product out of their investment. How is that fair?

A system like the ones I proposed above - force English centers to have some modicum of professionalism before they open or to maintain their business, and force teachers to either come in with a qualification or only allow them to work for businesses that can provide training, and even then only for a specified period of time - would not be onerous. The regulations would be quite manageable for any business that takes itself seriously - any business you'd want to have around, in fact. It would get rid of the bottom-feeders and barrel-scrapers, and free up a saturated market so that better quality schools could open, hiring better quality teachers. It would be a net win. Sure, some schools would go out of business but as I see it, good riddance. And sure, some foreigners would find the CELTA/Trinity requirement too onerous and not choose to teach English. Again, I'm fine with that. We could use fewer "native speaker backpacker-"teachers". Open up the market to higher quality. And it would be a definitive step towards improving the profession and maybe those of us who take ELT seriously getting a little respect as teachers for once.

And, come on, all you "native speaker teachers" with no credentials? You can be better than whiny-ass 22-year-old me. Almost anyone can. If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right. 

Ears of Corn

Teaching English is a real job, but few people treat it that way.

Shibboleth shibboleth shibboleth!
Photo from here

Yeah, I know, that will shock exactly no one, except maybe those who were under the impression that teaching English could never qualify as an actual career (and I know a few folks who think this way). There are enough people on both sides to fuel many debates on LinkedIn, expat forums and TEFL forums, and yet nobody's written a truly thoughtful article or blog post on the subject. I found a few basic posts (like this one) that I don't think fully addressed the issue, and nothing that was comprehensive. I've written about it before, but I hadn't really found my voice on the subject yet.

My stance on it is basically this: teaching is a profession. It's as hard - or harder - than law or business and at times can feel like you work similar hours to those working in law, medicine or the higher echelons of business (all that talk about how teachers get their evenings and summers off? Bullshit. Plenty of teachers not teaching children in school systems don't get that time off, and those who do usually use it to do all of the spillover work which can't be finished during the school day, even with free periods. Continuing education, thoughtful marking of in-depth student work that goes beyond basic testing as well as planning good syllabi and classes all take time). It's a profession that requires a degree and certification as well as continuing education.

First tangent: a lot of people who don't fully understand the role race, class and gender play in our lives and what lives are on offer to us will often say "the reason women tend to earn less than men is because they choose less-well-remunerated careers such as teaching over well-paid ones like law". First of all, this is not true. Secondly, even if it were, the underlying assumption is that teachers are not well-paid because of something intrinsic to the profession. Perhaps that it is "not that difficult" (except it is), or that people who are passionate about it are more likely to do it despite the low pay (which is true - how often do you hear "I'm so passionate about law, I'd be a lawyer even if lawyers didn't earn a lot of money"?). But what I suspect is really going on is that it's not that women often become teachers despite the low pay; rather, teachers are poorly paid because they tend to be women. Gender discrimination at work (pun INTENDED). The teacher-and-nurse effect.

I just made "the teacher-and-nurse effect" up but it really needs to become a thing.

Most people would expect this of a math teacher, a history teacher, a Civics teacher, a French teacher, a Chemistry teacher, even an art teacher. They would never stand for "well I don't have any experience but I'm pretty good at chemistry and the school gave me a quick training session so let's go!". They would never accept a teacher for themselves or their children who was not trained, and they would want a teacher who was not only engaging and fun, but also had long-term course plans and class learning goals, and knew how to take concrete steps to achieve them. "Well, I'm being paid $15 an hour, I don't know a lot about history but I'll learn it and then teach it" or "I don't have a degree in Calculus but let's just figure this out together" would not fly. Not in a public school, not in a university, not in a center of continuing education.

Even if you took a foreign language - the sort of class that (obviously) most resembles a TEFL classroom - you wouldn't be okay with "I'm a native Spanish speaker, I have no teaching experience but I have this book, let's go through this together". Maybe that would be okay for a language exchange partner, but not a teacher. You'd want someone who actually knew what they were doing, someone who had training in pedagogy and methodology and knew how to impart knowledge of and fluency in Spanish unto you. Merely knowing something doesn't translate (pun intended) into knowing how to impart knowledge of something.

Basically, we expect our teachers in any other subject to be professional. We don't always treat them like professionals - we pay them too little and give them few resources and often even less respect, which is why some great potential talents in teaching don't go into the field - but we expect professionalism.

So why is it that we don't expect professionalism from English teachers? Why is this the one area of teaching - a profession - where it's not treated professionally? What is so different about teaching English as a foreign language that any inexperienced rando can get hired to do it, as compared to science, math, Civics or French?

I honestly can't think of anything. In terms of pedagogy, the methods used in language teaching don't differ that much from methods used in any other subject, including the difficult subjects such as Chemistry. In terms of content, I don't see how it's all that different from French class in my high school - the language has changed, but the ways of teaching it are more or less the same. There is really nothing special or different about TEFL/TESOL/ELT etc. as compared to any other subject you may wish to learn.

Before I go any further: I know that English is not the only foreign language to suffer the scourge of untrained, nonprofessional "teachers". Certainly the vast majority of Chinese teachers are awful, or at least wholly untrained. There are good ones, but pedagogy in Chinese and Taiwanese TCFL (Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language - I just made that acronym up) certification/diploma programs, if it is taught at all, tends to be taught very poorly, not relying on the mounds of applicable research available, not taking advantage of current practices in LT methodology, and generally outdated. In TEFL there is a (wrong) assumption that a native speaker just spending time with students will cause them to learn English (well, not entirely wrong: they will pick up some English, but not in any easily measurable way). There seems to be a different (also wrong) assumption that if you are a native speaker of Chinese, that telling the students all about the target grammar - all about it, even aspects they don't need to learn when first introduced to a concept - and then plugging in vocabulary, will cause them to magically learn Chinese with minimal practice required (certainly at Shi-da we didn't get nearly enough practice and fluency did suffer as a result). And again, that's not entirely wrong: if you attend a class like this, you will learn some Chinese. It just isn't the most efficient way to do so. Certainly language schools aimed at tourists in various countries employ untrained native speakers who have taken a quick introductory course.

All of those fall under basically the same rubric of the TEFL model that I'm criticizing. My attempt here is to compare TEFL to teaching as it is professionally considered, and to language classes done that way, by trained, talented and knowledgeable teachers.

So yes, quite clearly, TEFL is a real job. It's a real career. It's teaching; teaching is a professional occupation. It's no different from teaching Biology or Geography (which, I wish Geography classes would get an overhaul too. There's so much interesting discussion and learning fodder there, of the Guns, Germs and Steel variety, although maybe not so much the End of History or Clash of Civilizations variety, and yet it's so often reduced to memorizing capitals and main exports. Now that I'm gaining more knowledge of the various elements of good teaching, and being knowledgeable about Geography, someone should put me in charge of a Geography class - we'd have so much fun, ohmigod).

I do wonder if the lack of respect for pedagogy/proper methodology and what it can do for one's teaching is something more ingrained: public and primary/secondary school teachers are expected to have this training, but professors and other academics, mostly, are not. I think in four years of college classes that I had maybe three professors who actually knew how to teach. They were all very knowledgeable, some were quite well-known in their fields. But they didn't know how to effectively impart their knowledge: it was all lectures, Powerpoints, multiple choice and the occasional essay question. Part of that is, of course, huge class sizes especially at the lower levels, but part of it seems to be this pernicious idea that if you know something, then you know how to teach it. Professors know their subject, therefore they can teach it, apparently. Except they can't. Most of my professors would have benefited a lot from some training sessions, not in improving their own knowledge, but in how to get that knowledge to us in an interesting, motivating and relevant way.

If you do go ahead and get yourself educated - a Master's or at least a string of reputable certifications (no online weekend courses), or even better, both - and learn how to teach, it will show in your work. The difference between you - a professional - and an untrained 22-year old (or even an untrained 42-year-old) will be apparent. You will be able to lift yourself out of the Expat English Teacher Gutter pretty quickly. Anyone with a shred of sense or acumen will see the difference. It is absolutely worth it, and that's why I'm currently pursuing a Delta, and after that, hopefully a Master's (we'll see: I can't afford a Master's, won't take out more loans, scholarships and fellowships are hard to get for students not intending to enter a PhD program, and for American students tuition is preposterous - and foreign schools charge us international student tuition which is also preposterous. I could cash out my IRA for it, but that would be stupid. I could retire for a few months on that! WOO! PARTY WHEN I'M 90!!1! So...let's see if the winds of life blow me that way, or if they just blow).

So why don't people treat TEFL as teaching in a professional capacity? If there is nothing to differentiate it from any other kind of teaching, why does it get the shaft?

Three groups of people are affected by this: owners/bosses, teachers/"teachers", and parents/students (depending on the students' age).

From the boss' or school owner's point of view, this is obvious. They can pay an unskilled, untrained "teacher" far less than a real teacher would expect, and treat them like unskilled labor (something a real teacher would never accept). These folks - often twentysomethings with little life experience, though not always - will feel they've gotten a lot if you give them a slapdash bullshit training session made up of a mishmash of cribbed notes from teaching textbooks, strung together with vague platitudes about "keeping it fun" and "engaging the student", hoping that the interesting foreign-ness of the worker, with a smidge of charisma from that worker, plus a few textbooks thrown their way for material, will keep up the illusion that the students are getting a professional service - all for cut-rate prices (for the boss - the students or their parents pay a premium of course).

Some owners, I presume, know that they're peddling shoddy product. Others don't know the first thing about real teaching or what it takes to be a professional educator, and truly do think that all it takes to teach something - including English - is to know a lot about that thing. And who better to know about English than a native English speaker? Nevermind if they don't actually know all that much about the grammar or underlying structures or history of their own language, and therefore can't teach it. Nevermind that they are unaware of the latest practices or past research on teaching methods so they can't employ them in the classroom. Nevermind that they haven't heard of even the most basic concepts in English, Linguistics or pedagogy and therefore can't refer to them. If you've never learned, or heard of, IPA, you can't use it when it would be effective (and it isn't always). If you've never heard of a "student-centered classroom", you can't work towards creating one. If you don't know the difference between PPP, TTT, TBL, Dogme, TPR, Audiolingualism, Grammar-Translation or the Communicative Approach, you can't learn about, and practice, how to use them in your classroom at the times when they'd have the most effect, or when to avoid them. If you haven't read up on research into the best way to introduce new language, you won't be able to consider it when you plan a class, and your approach may be substandard (or it may just be different, if you are extremely talented. Most people are not). You may base some of your teaching methods on inaccurate or misguided assumptions about language learning, or not really know at all why you are doing what you're doing - which is rarely effective.

The first type of owner recognizes the shibboleths that distinguish teachers from "teachers"; the second doesn't. In both cases, they don't care.

From the newbie "teacher"'s point of view, it's a relatively well-paid job - for the country it's in at least - that they can get right out of school, no experience necessary, and they get to live abroad. Makes sense, even if from a professional standpoint it doesn't seem very ethical: I'm going to go and pretend to be something I'm not so some school owner can charge people rates for my work under the illusion that I have the credentials! But since when have ethics ever played a big part in prosperous business models?

In fact I'd go so far as to say that a lot of those twentysomething unskilled workers fancy themselves teachers: intellectually they know that a professional teacher must have training and experience that they don't have, but there's a bit of cognitive dissonance going on, fueled by not a small touch of defensiveness: they are teaching, and they want to style themselves as education professionals; they know they aren't, so they tell the voice in their head that whispers "you need more credentials, you need more training, you need more experience" to shut up, and they gas on about how they are real teachers, how they're just as good, how their bosses are lucky to have them. They don't seem to realize that the reason their bosses chose them was because they lacked credentials, and therefore the ability to seriously negotiate compensation and treatment, not in spite of their credentials in the face of their massive - often delusion-based - "talent". They're college grads, they're used to believing that no matter what they do they'll be professionals, they'll be skilled, they'll be worth something. They're used to having that belief reinforced. I don't blame them for wanting to believe that they are more than they are.

I am definitely guilty of this. I was guilty of it before I had training or experience, I was guilty of it before starting the Delta, and I might still be a tad guilty of it up until I enroll in a Master's program. Until I realized how bad I was, I thought I was pretty good. Then I got to be pretty good, and all I want to be is better. But that process took awhile. So, I know of what I speak.

I want to stop here and note a few things before I get back on track.

First, that I am somewhat grateful to the TEFL industry for being what it is. I don't think I would have gone into teaching otherwise, and I wasn't doing very well at the bottom rung of the office ladder. I need to write a longer blog post about this at some point, but this is one way in which the USA screws over its youth. I didn't know teaching was right for me when I went to college, and so I didn't major in it. I "wisely" majored in the subject I'd enjoyed most in high school: I chose International Affairs because it was close to Social Studies. Social Studies + history + travel + language? Sign me up! By the time I knew I not only wanted to teach, but would be very good at it with the proper training and guidance, I couldn't afford a Master's program. I still can't: the deal was that my folks would help me with college, but I was on my own for grad school, and I shouldn't go until I'd worked awhile and knew what I wanted. By the time I knew what I wanted, I didn't have the money because, well, wage stagnation and wealth inequality are real things. Now, I bet they actually would help me if I asked, but tuition at an American school is far higher than any of us can take on and international tuition is not much better.

So, TEFL allowed me a path into teaching that didn't require that I go get a Master's I couldn't afford, for a job that wouldn't pay me enough to pay it off in any reasonable amount of time. I am sure many very good teachers have taken this route, and the educational landscape is richer for it. I wholeheartedly support having this sort of route into teaching, although I'd like to see the model change (maybe a future blog post on that too - what a 'path into teaching, but not TEFL as it is now' might look like). I wouldn't be doing what I love today, with at least a shred of professional dignity, without that start as a twentysomething hack. I'd probably still be at some crap office job that I never got promoted out of, because I hated it enough to not be in a mental state to do well. It would have been a waste of a life.

Second, that as above, many good teachers do come out of this cesspit. The ones with a spark of natural talent that leads them to seek training and experience, to be better and to do better.

Third, that many schools, especially in rural or underprivileged areas, can't afford more than an unskilled twentysomething. There are professional teachers who would be willing to take a job like that, in rural China or a small Bolivian town or what-have-you, or even rural Taiwan, for low pay. A lot of them join the Peace Corps and do something like that. But not enough to meet the demand for English class among those with a bit of money in those places. Plenty of others would love the experience, but would expect a higher standard of pay and benefits that the school just wouldn't be able to offer.

In those cases, a twentysomething hack with a local teacher in tandem is still better than nothing, in terms of offering some sort of foreign language education to those who who want it and can afford it.

So, all that aside, back on track - what about the final group? Why do parents support this awful, unprofessional system? Unless they are paying markedly lower tuition (as may be the case with rural schools or schools in impoverished areas), they may simply be unaware. People without a background in education don't always understand what being an education professional is. That goes for students, school owners, parents and obnoxious people at parties who think they can tell you how to do your job. They may hear the teachers' and boss' "blah blah blah professional blah blah highly-trained teachers blah America blah" and believe them when they say that their words are "shibboleth shibboleth shibboleth", because they don't know better. They may just be lied to by the owner. They may know that the teacher is not a professional, but not realize that that matters and feel it's acceptable to pay high rates just to be in proximity to a native speaker. 

And of course, if they think it doesn't actually take that much training, talent, experience or knowledge for a native speaker to teach their language effectively, and that anyone who speaks English can do it, they'll feel more confident in trying to tell the teacher what to do (I will accept this from adult students in terms of what they want to learn, and will at least consider what they say when they express how they want to learn it. I don't teach children, but if I did, parents of children telling me what to do would get straight-up ignored unless their child was problematic and it was advice on how to deal with managing the behavior problem). It gives them a handy sense of superiority. Seems like a small thing to pay inflated tuition rates over, but what can I say?

That's really the crux of the problem, too: it's that school owners, often shrewd to the point of immorality, rake in huge sums of money by glossing over or entirely misrepresenting either teacher qualifications or the need for them. I suppose all's fair in business&war, and if someone is aching to pay too much money to get talked at by some white kid (because hiring practices really are racist), then they should be allowed to pay that money. If I want to pay a million dollars to snort cocaine cut with diamond powder, I should be allowed to do that (note: I don't want to do that). If a school advertises "look, we've got foreigners!" and folks line up to pay, then okay. If they advertise with "qualified, experienced native speaker professional teachers will help you gain fluency quickly and with ease", they're lying. Even f the "teachers" are qualified, experienced and talented, students still won't gain fluency quickly and easily. 

Presumably most parents and students want a good teacher for their money; a qualified and experienced one. Misrepresenting the teachers you are actually offering as worth the money - as more than they are - and then paying those "teachers" far less than you'd pay real teachers so that you can $$PROFIT$$, is thoroughly reprehensible. 

It also contributes to that same pernicious myth that it is not hard to teach well, that anyone can do it - and that for language teaching all you need is to speak the language, you don't need any knowledge of underlying structure, grammar, history or etymology. By hiring people who don't have that knowledge or ability (at least not yet), and paying them fairly well by local standards (although not well by international teaching professional standards), you're spreading the idea that this is all a teacher needs to be - that anything more is unnecessary, possibly even unwanted as it comes with demands for higher pay and better treatment. (That it also comes with better measurable outcomes for students is often ignored - I still don't understand why nobody, at least the students or parents, seems to care about this). 

That contributes to the norms of hiring cheaper inexperienced people, which makes it harder for the good people to get jobs. Quality goes down and fewer people bother to get qualified. Schools treat "teachers" badly, because these "teachers" are basically unskilled laborers, no matter how they're advertised. When qualified teachers want to get jobs, they often don't go into TEFL because they know it's a labor dispute minefield and their credentials likely won't be respected as they would in any other field of teaching.

That's a loss to us all. I suppose you could make the Libertarian argument that if quality goes down and nobody complains, then the quality was too high to begin with and if the market runs in that direction, then it should go down according to what people want. I reject this: those students still want to learn English. Whether or not you believe your "teacher" is a real teacher won't change the outcome of whether you've learned English to a satisfactory degree or not. It's like the market for medicine. Even if people are willing to buy your snake oil, the outcome will still be that patients won't be cured. In medicine (although not in homoeopathy) we have laws against this: if you are going to sell a product, it has to work. Learning a language is a lot more like medicine: you need a measurable outcome. It's not homoeopathy.

What's the solution for this? How do we get more people on the road to training, qualification and a professional career path and in the process raise the level of respect for TEFL as a career, as well as improve working conditions for those already in the field? How do we do that while also making it possible to become a teacher through a process of hard work and experience, without having to go back and get a degree that many can't afford, and when they were in school, didn't know they wanted?

I don't know. I suppose that really is the subject for another blog post.

I've gotten a lot of pushback on my stance on this issue in other discussion forums, so I'll just address some of the more common backwash here:

But certifications like CELTA and Delta won't make you a better teacher! If you are talented and have experience you can be a very good teacher!

I just don't believe this. If you are talented and have experience, you still need training to be a truly good teacher. It would be the rare prodigy who could do well without it. I don't care much where that teaching came from but I prefer reputable programs to "a teacher trainer at School X told me". Certainly it is possible to go that route and do well, but reputable programs are more likely to have measurable outcomes. 

The actual piece of paper you get for CELTA and Delta don't mean as much as what you learn in the process of getting it. It bothers me when people denigrate what you learn on these courses without having taken them, or worse, assuming that they are more than they are meant to be. While a piece of paper won't make you a better teacher, what you learn in order to get that piece of paper will. 

The only real pushback to this I've heard is "no it won't" and that's too ridiculous to bother replying to.

CELTA and Delta are nothing - real teachers need Master's degrees or a teaching license after their bachelor's degrees, like a PGCE.

I'm a fan of a two-pronged approach: a Master's is great for theoretical knowledge related to the English language and to teaching. I would like one someday and am currently deciding which kidney would garner the best payoff with which to pay for it. But from what I've seen during my time in the field, a Master's doesn't provide a lot of great on-the-ground practical teaching advice. I've noticed it in ivory-tower comments on LinkedIn full of advice that would make no sense in most real classrooms, and noticed it in watching other teachers who certainly had the qualifications but weren't very good with flexibility or trying different, more student-centered approaches. 

So, in order to get that practical knowledge, I believe it would be smart for most would-be professional English teachers to also have a CELTA or even a Delta. The CELTA is thoroughly practical, and the Delta starts delving into the theoretical. After that, a Master's is the next logical move, to expand your theoretical knowledge base.

It's not that I think Master's are worthless, or that CELTA and Delta are the gold standard, but that they focus on two entirely different things, which are both valuable if you want to be a true education professional.

Pfffff! But CELTA promises to make you a great teacher, as though it can stand in for a real teaching degree. It can't!

That's true, it can't. 

But that's also not what CELTA advertises. They advertise an introductory course that will help you to become basically competent in the classroom without making a right fool of yourself. If you pass, which most people do, you'll still need a lot of training at your first place of employment. The CELTA grading rubric spells this out. If you get a B, you'll need some training, but not as much. If you get an A, you'll be fine without training (but everyone can benefit from receiving it). Almost nobody gets an A - around 2-5%. I got one, but I'm just special like that. (Actually, I'm not. I had good training before I did CELTA). 

A lot of people seem to think the CELTA advertises as a teaching certification on par with a degree - it doesn't. Or they think what the CELTA claims it offers is more like what the Delta offers - it's not. If you're going to criticize CELTA, do it on its own merits. 

The reason schools hire those inexperienced teachers is that the "qualified" teachers don't want to pitch in and always demand more. They won't go outside and hand out fliers for the school, they want more money - it's no wonder schools go for the inexperienced ones. 

This is technically true, but that doesn't make it right. A teacher is a skilled worker - it doesn't make sense, in terms of resource allocation, to have your skilled worker stand on the streetcorner with a signboard passing out fliers (also it makes your school look ridiculous, but that's a PR issue, not a teaching one). If you had a college intern, and an experienced logistics professional, who would you send outside wearing a sandwich board? Who is worth more in the office, creating something great? 

And of course they ask for more money - they have embarked on a professional career path. They have paid - often out the nose - for education. Business, legal, medical and other professionals all expect to be paid accordingly - why wouldn't teachers? You get a quality outcome.

But you don't get a quality outcome! I've seen as many bad qualified teachers as I've seen good un-certified ones!

Something tells me that line of thinking comes from anecdata. Of course there are bad qualified teachers - there are also terrible lawyers and shitty speech pathologists and horrible doctors. But on average, not just along the lines of some anecdote about a bad teacher you knew once, but as a statistically significant group, teachers who are qualified do provide better outcomes than those who are not. I wish I could quote a study on this, but I can't. Someone should do a study. Especially as I'm putting on scientific airs I can't easily back. 

And those un-certified talented teachers? Probably got their training unofficially in one or more of their previous jobs. And that's great - I'm not saying they don't exist. I'm not saying they shouldn't be recognized (some sort of reputable program that could certify such teachers after a survey of their work would be great, but is not likely to come about and might not be trusted). But these are not Fresh Off the Plane kids we're talking about here. 

What a teacher does is not measurable, therefore it can't be jammed into a certification or degree program. 

First, all sorts of professions do things that are not measurable - social and political scientists comment and analyze non-measurable outcomes. They are still considered professions. (I know a lot of hard science types would like to think they're not, but I'd actually argue the soft sciences are more challenging as you're dealing with squishy unknowns - analyzing something immeasurable without as much access to clear data is much harder than analyzing based on hard results). 

Secondly, I would say that what teachers do is measurable, or at least it can be. The state of the global testing industry is pathetic, and I don't believe the tests given today consistently measure student ability or learning. But good testing is possible - tests with construct and content validity, integrative, direct tests...you could do a lot better than the way students are tested in most schools today and get a truly measurable outcome.

In my own work, I feel that what I do is measurable. My IELTS students come in, and when they go out their mock test scores are higher than when they came in, and they score higher on the real IELTS than they would have without my class. My long-term students show measurable improvements in systematic errors - if I wanted to, I could in fact graph their improvements in past tense consistency, correct usage of perfect aspect, correct usage of prepositions in various circumstances and more. I could measure how many sentences per speech block were correct at the beginning vs. the end of the class. I could do identical beginning- and end-of-course role plays that could be analyzed for language learned. 

But these certification programs all force students to adopt one kind of teaching style which may not be the best. And degree programs teach young teachers to stifle creative lesson planning.

Spoken like a person who has never been through a certification program (I can't speak for degree programs, but at least in my observation that's not the case). CELTA and Delta don't actually push one teaching style on you, and in my courses they've been pretty open to any style that's effective, and any style that reflects the teacher's personality. They're not trying to create clones or automatons. Sure, CELTA advocates the communicative approach, but what else would you advocate? There's nothing new on the horizon, or at least nothing so new that it's unseated the communicative approach, and it's arguably the best of the lot that we have, although it's okay to let ghosts of teaching methods past inform your lessons. And a truly innovative new idea, while unlikely from an inexperienced teaching student (few if any of us are nascent Steve Jobses of teaching), if effective, would probably be embraced or at least allowed to pass. 

"Theyre all 'student-centered classroom, less teacher talking, the activity must be communicative'! No creativity! It's mind control!" 

First, having been at the weird end of cult recruiters in my neighborhood (and it appears I'm not the only one - there's a new blog out exposing these people, but I won't publish the link until I vet it further and talk to some people), I have an idea about what mind control is, and teaching degree/certification programs ain't it. 

So what would be better - a teacher-centered classroom? More teacher talking (note: this can at times be okay - and in my CELTA and Delta courses it was seen as potentially okay, depending on what the teacher was talking about and why)? Activities that don't urge the students to communicate or speak? Huh? 

Creativity is usually enhanced by training and experience, not diminished by same. The most creative lawyers can be creative because they know the law and can pick it apart. The most creative doctors can be creative because they know enough to know where a new experimental treatment may come from. The most creative businesspeople can see opportunities because they know the market and have experience in watching it change. The most creative person on your team is probably not your intern (and if it is, then training that intern will make them more creative, not less). It's no different with teachers.

But small schools in poor countries or rural areas can't afford these fancy spoiled foreign teachers!

That's actually true, and it's one of the few times in which I'd say hiring an inexperienced native speaker is better than not hiring anyone at all. This isn't a black-white thing.

* * * 

Anyway, this has been a very long blog post, but one I hope people will read to the end. I've enjoyed writing it - I hope you enjoy reading it! 

Peace.