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A
couple months ago, I told Webmaster Phil that I would be willing to author a few
paragraphs about my experience teaching in Thailand. He said he would appreciate
that and so here they are:
I moved to Thailand from America on September 25, 2001. I had come earlier in July/August to interview at several schools in Bangkok and Chiang Mai. I was fifty-five at the time and was unwilling (terrified) to just quit my job of twenty years, pack up, and trust that I would be able to find work. As it turns out, doing that would have worked out fine, but I know I felt a lot more secure, while quitting my job and making the change, knowing I had a good position waiting for me here.
I should mention that I have a master’s degree in T.E.F.L. I had been working at a university in America (not teaching) and had free tuition as one of my benefits. When I decided to act out my decade-long dream to come live in Thailand, I got my master’s first. I also taught for two semesters in America before coming here. I say this because a master’s degree (and some experience) was required for both the jobs I have had here.
Let
me tell you, while I think if it, that I have not regretted coming to Thailand
for even one minute. I’m not happy every moment, but I have zero regrets about
having come here. I am sure I would be full of them if I had not.
Thailand
is an amazing country, just like the slogan says. The people are wonderful and
it’s definitely an adventure to live here. However, I wouldn’t say it’s
for everyone. Do your homework. An interesting site is
http://www.stickmanbangkok.com/
on which there is a (150 page) section on teaching in Bangkok. A good site to
visit if you want to work at a university is
http://www.inter.mua.go.th/glance/index1.html
which lists every university in The Kingdom and helpfully sorts them by private
and public. You are on the definitive site for job hunting.
I
have never been interested in working at any position other than a full-time
lecturer at a university. I would not be good teaching kids and I have no
interest in language schools or traveling around doing corporate work. There are
some tempting jobs at resorts down south teaching hotel staff. The pay is good
– about 40,000 baht per month – but some properties that employ English
teachers are a bit isolated. I decided to work at universities and am now
working at my second.
My
first post was as the full-time contract advisor of Fundamental Skills in the
English Department of a big government university in Chiang Mai. At the time,
the school had six “contracts” and twenty-five part-timers. It was a fine
job in most ways. The campus is very beautiful and Chiang Mai is a nice town.
I’m in BKK now, and I miss many things about CM. For instance, I had a nice
studio apartment in a great building with a beautiful mountain view for 5,000
per month.
The
single biggest difference between the various universities in Thailand is
whether or not they are government schools. Most people here would generally say
that the best universities in the Kingdom are Chulalongkorn, Thammasat, and
Kasetsart. All three are government schools. The problem with all pubic schools
is the pay. The current remuneration for a full-time contract at government
schools is 25,580 baht per month.
That
isn’t much and the number hasn’t changed in many years. Government schools
(as of the last time I had inside information) are supposed to start
cost-recovery next month. In my opinion, that process could get ugly. I
certainly wouldn’t be hoping for a raise this year if I were at a government
school (not that you’d ever have gotten one before).
I
have been in touch with a former colleague who’s at Thammasat (Rangsit) now.
He gets a lot of extra work outside his contract – seven hours a week at 1,000
per hour. That schedule comes to about 55,000 per month if the extra work is
steady, which it never is. More importantly, seven hours a week, outside normal
hours, is a lot of work.
My
contract in CM only called for teaching seven courses a year, three in one term
and four in the other. That’s only nine contact hours a week for one term and
twelve hours a week for the other, and there are plenty of weeks with no
classes. Don’t get too happy – they have plenty of other work for you to do.
Edit this and then proofread that. Write a test, take a meeting, and by the way
- be there 9 to 4:30 weekdays. After a couple months I noticed I was working
seven days a week to keep up. I mentioned this to my supervisor and was told
that everyone was working evenings and weekends. The workload did get better
after my complaint, but I lost political points. Don’t imagine those are
unimportant. I had been told that I would have the opportunity to teach extra
classes for extra money, but I only got one extra class in a year.
Supply
and demand in Chiang Mai has kept the price for teachers low. My school paid the
part-timers 250 baht per hour - with fifteen hours a week the maximum permitted.
That’s only 16,250 per month if you have work every week, which you never do.
Good luck during the long summer vacation. Most of the part-timers had second
jobs at language schools. The most convenient way to live while working at a
government school is to have your own money.
250
baht per hour was the standard at language schools as well. Everybody wants to
work in Chiang Mai. The best job I ever heard of in CM was at the British
Council for 30,000 per month, and if you’re not English, save your time.
Anyway, I couldn’t live on 25,580, even in CM. It can be done for sure, but
not living in the style I prefer. I have a car, I go out a lot, and I don’t
like to skimp. Luckily, I don’t drink. Forget about saving anything.
The
facilities at the university left a lot to be desired. There were six computers
for all the teachers, but that didn’t matter much because the connection was
so slow you couldn’t really do anything on them anyway. I did all my computer
work at home on a much faster connection (which was still slow).
Another
thing I never got used to was the lack of air-conditioning. I never had a
classroom with aircon. Half my classrooms didn’t even have a fan. Yes, Chiang
Mai is a little cooler than Bangkok, but it still gets plenty hot. I started
wearing white shirts because they don’t look quite as bad when soaked in
sweat. Some teachers carried their own fan around, but I couldn’t do that.
Government
schools are bureaucratic. They are not open to change. Everything is done “by
the book”. The textbooks I used were grammar-based and produced by the school.
Since the courses for which I was mainly responsible were taught to the whole
university (sometimes forty sections), there was zero room for creativity.
That’s fine if you like that. Get your teacher’s book and (after reconciling
it to the text) find that for the first ten minutes of the lesson for Tuesday
you do so-and-so. The next fifteen you do this-and-such. There were coordinators
and co-coordinators for every course. There were overall coordinators,
sub-overall coordinators, and test committees. And if your grammar knowledge
isn’t perfect - keep it to yourself. I’m serious.
Don’t
get me wrong – I’m very proud and happy to have been at the school in CM. My
colleagues were very nice, the students were fine, and my lifestyle was good
(with a little help from savings). As I mentioned, the campus is beautiful. It
was the perfect place to start, but I finished my one-year contract and moved
on. Most of the best teaching jobs are in Bangkok and that’s where I am now.
Had
I started in BKK, I may have been swamped by culture shock. This is a town that
eats the weak. It’s huge, the air is dirty, the traffic is as bad as
its reputation and it’s hot as hell. I pay 15,000 a month for my apartment
(but it is nicer than my place in CM). You can get an apartment for a lot less,
but I like a nice apartment, I live alone, and I want to be relatively close to
my work. (You really don’t want to set yourself up with a cross-town commute
in Bangkok). The Big Mango is not without some considerable advantages as well.
It took some getting used to, but I’m happy here now.
I
have a great job now. As you might imagine, I’m at a private university. I
choose not to name it. I want to write some details and don’t want to
compromise the privacy of my administration or my colleagues.
My
base pay is 40,000 baht per month before taxes, which run a little under 10%.
Eight periods a week of seventy minutes each are required to earn base. That’s
nine hours and twenty minutes of contact a week. You could live here in BKK on
40,000 – plenty of people make it on less. For me though, 40K here is about
like 25K was in CM. The good news is that at my current school I make a lot of
money besides the base salary.
Permit
me to remind readers of a fact I mentioned at the start of this story. I have a
Master’s of Science in Education with a major in Teaching English as a Second
Language. By the time I accepted my current position, I had been teaching almost
two years, the second at a good school in Thailand. Competition for jobs at the
top tier schools is keen, even at the government schools. From my experience,
without a master’s, they’re impossible to get. I take my responsibilities
seriously, as do all my colleagues. I’m twice the age of some of them, but we
are all professionals. We’re held to a high standard.
I
am allowed to teach up to a maximum of six extra hours a week. I rarely get that
much. This summer I will have two hours a week of extra work. For the fall term,
I will have five extra periods per week, the same as I had last semester. This
extra work is paid at an extremely good rate – over 1,250 per hour. I made
exactly 73,000 in April, my best month yet and pretty close to the best month
possible. I will average a little over 60,000 per month (before taxes) year
round. I don’t feel guilty when I cash my checks.
That’s
because thirteen periods a week is plenty of work. That’s fifteen hours and
ten minutes a week of contact, which is a lot, even if you have only three
different courses. I teach only four days a week, so I have a day that I have to
be in the office but don’t teach. That’s a pretty good thing. It gives me
time to plan lessons. I get Sundays and Mondays off. That will change to
Saturday and Sunday next semester. I shudder when I read ads on this site that
offer a pittance for 25 contact hours a week, sometimes five and a half days a
week. That would be too much, even if you had only one course.
I
signed a two-year contract last October. I get two weeks vacation per year and
two paid weeklong semester breaks a year. Arranging time off for Christmas is no
problem. In CM, I got the two weeks vacation but no other time off, and
couldn’t go home for Christmas because we had midterms then.
My
hours are actually worse now, in that I have to be at work from 8:30 to 5:00.
But in six months at my current job I have done the same amount of those
time-consuming extra jobs that I used to do in a week in CM. Now, I mainly
teach. The rest of the time in the office I use to plan lessons and meet with
students. Nobody is watching so I could actually do pretty much as I please, but
it’s OK with me to be in my office - it’s nice.
Another
great thing about my current school is the facilities. I have a computer on my
desk and the connection is good. I have my own (little) office. Every inch of my
campus has aircon. I have a computer in every classroom, most with Internet. I
have digital overhead projectors and sound systems. I do most of my lessons on
PowerPoint or MSWord and use the Internet a lot.
Another big difference between my two schools is the help I get with visas and work permits. Now I go with the International Affairs Liaison in a chauffeured aircon university car, smile on cue to the official (to whom I am not required to speak), and pay the fee. In CM they told us (approximately) where the Immigration, Employment, and Tax Offices were located and sometimes provided the requisite documentation. Other than that, we were on our own. It was frequently a nightmare. I couldn’t recommend working for a school that doesn’t give you some help with Immigration, and I personally wouldn’t work without a permit.
A
huge difference between the two jobs I’ve had is in the way the fundamental
responsibilities are delegated. In Chiang Mai everything was provided and there
was no room left for a single discretionary activity. By contrast, my current
school gives me total freedom. I get a course description and decide everything
else for myself. I select the textbook, design the curriculum, syllabus, and
outline and teach (usually) all the sections of the course. Total freedom does
bring total responsibility. I prefer this way.
One
final difference is quite important to me. I’ll be fifty-eight this year. At
government schools you may not have a full-time contract after the mandatory
retirement age in Thailand, which is sixty. You may continue as full-time
part-time but you may not have a contract. At private schools they are much less
strict about this. Since I don’t have much savings, can’t take even early
Social Security until I’m sixty-two, and have no plans to go back to America
to teach, this is a very good thing.
That’s
about all I have to say for now. I hope my words have been some help.
Ajarn
A
Here is a ranking of language schools in Chiang Mai that I constructed after conducting a fact-finding mission and is based on hard evidence from interviews with rivals and former teachers. I think it is fair and if anyone challenges it, I have data on class size and all of the other relevant info. Chiang Mai is vastly different from Bangkok for several reasons: 1) population size (2 million in the province, 150,00 in the city); 2) 100 baht an hour for a group class is considered expensive; 3) courses for young learners are tricky to schedule because most take extra classes (science, math, Thai, etc) on Saturdays, leaving only Sunday); and 4) most schools close at 8pm on weekdays and 5pm on weekends, with few able to offer morning or aftermoon group classes unless they are corporate ones.
Ranking of
Language Schools in Chiang Mai |