Some good news and some grey news....
The good news first - I had my interview for the CELTA course today and passed it. For those of you who don' t know, CELTA is a certificate course for ELT teachers. It's run by Cambridge University and is internationally recognized as one of the best damn qualifications you can get. It's expensive and time-consuming, but by all accounts it is one of the best things you can do if you have any desire to become a better teacher. I'm going to take it along with Dave, the guy who used to be an area manager for NOVA.
Which gets to the grey news. Not exactly bad, not exactly good. G Education, the company that bought NOVA and promised us the sky, is finally beginning to deal with the reality of its new business venture. First they told anyone who had opted, back in November, to take a 150,000 yen payout and come back in January that they were not, in fact, coming back. Now they've decided that the ideal student to teacher ratio in each branch is 40:1. Our branch has about 300 students and twelve teachers, which meant that five had to go on indefinite standby. "Indefinite" in this case probably means "until your contract runs out, after which we will be parting ways." I only know one of the poor souls who got the boot, and I can say that we've lost a good teacher.
I don't know who the other four are, but I do know that I'm not one of them. So, good news. BUT, the Japanese area manager (there are no more foreign managers anymore, by the way - they were all demoted to regular instructors) has decided that the instructors' days off should match the days that the branches are closed. This means that as of February 1st, my days off are Sunday and Thursday.
CELTA classes are on Saturdays.
We're going to try to appeal to the area manager's sense of reason and fair plaHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHA!!!!
Heh. Heh.... Whew, I nearly got through that one. Heh. Wow.
Anyway, we're going to see if there's any way to let us have those Saturdays off, at least until our paid holidays kick in and we can use those. I plan to try the soft-sell and remind her that, once we complete the course, she will have two instructors who are internationally certified at our branch - something the students will no doubt appreciate, and will have some kind of spill-over into the other instructors as well, since we all steal from each other. In any normal company, it is in the company's best interest for their employees to make themselves better able to do their jobs. But this is NOVA, so that kind of logic probably doesn't apply.
One way or the other, I'm taking the course. That's not open for debate.
Which gets to the grey news. Not exactly bad, not exactly good. G Education, the company that bought NOVA and promised us the sky, is finally beginning to deal with the reality of its new business venture. First they told anyone who had opted, back in November, to take a 150,000 yen payout and come back in January that they were not, in fact, coming back. Now they've decided that the ideal student to teacher ratio in each branch is 40:1. Our branch has about 300 students and twelve teachers, which meant that five had to go on indefinite standby. "Indefinite" in this case probably means "until your contract runs out, after which we will be parting ways." I only know one of the poor souls who got the boot, and I can say that we've lost a good teacher.
I don't know who the other four are, but I do know that I'm not one of them. So, good news. BUT, the Japanese area manager (there are no more foreign managers anymore, by the way - they were all demoted to regular instructors) has decided that the instructors' days off should match the days that the branches are closed. This means that as of February 1st, my days off are Sunday and Thursday.
CELTA classes are on Saturdays.
We're going to try to appeal to the area manager's sense of reason and fair plaHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAAHAHAHA!!!!
Heh. Heh.... Whew, I nearly got through that one. Heh. Wow.
Anyway, we're going to see if there's any way to let us have those Saturdays off, at least until our paid holidays kick in and we can use those. I plan to try the soft-sell and remind her that, once we complete the course, she will have two instructors who are internationally certified at our branch - something the students will no doubt appreciate, and will have some kind of spill-over into the other instructors as well, since we all steal from each other. In any normal company, it is in the company's best interest for their employees to make themselves better able to do their jobs. But this is NOVA, so that kind of logic probably doesn't apply.
One way or the other, I'm taking the course. That's not open for debate.