Foreigner4: well i guess it's not just me then, what you guys have been discussing really irks me. what i mean is, that the vast majority of "managers" (if you can call them that) and owners of language schools here have this weird notion that as teachers we don't have options, or worse yet that we don't have to deal with any variables beyond what they perceive (usually none).
The problem, as I see it, is that a good teacher doesn't make a good manager. And equally so, a good manager doesn't always understand what teaching is about. There's one school in Poznań which has a very good Callan teacher as a director, ex state school teacher, brilliant English, etc - but she's a dreadful director. She's brash, rude and has no issues with lying to paying customers just to get them to come back - literally to the point where people are being deluded into believing that they're better than they actually are.
I've managed to make connections with the few good ones in the area but it's like most of them have no concept of what makes a good manager: intolerant? check unimaginative? check irrational? double check. These people see students and teachers as cash cows and nothing more. If the students are happy, then they think the lesson must just be one big party, if the students are working hard then they think the teacher is too strict.
My school operates purely on student satisfaction, thankfully. We're expected to bend, twist and do whatever it takes to make them happy - which is good, because it encourages creativity and keeping them occupied for the entire time. Of course, people are a bit odd and like being bullied into perfect pronouncation (which I don't understand! I'd go mad if someone was correcting my Polish constantly...) - but the deal is that the overall aim is to keep them happy and keep them coming back, because it's what pays our wages.
I'm sure they have no bloody idea what it is they envision their service to be other than a means to pay for their material aspirations.
I'm sure you're right, too. There are exceptions, but as far as I can tell, all the schools in prominent places (like on Plac Wolnosci in Poznan) seem to run as factories. There's even one school here that has glass walls in the classrooms, so you can be observed constantly - which really isn't good for someone's ability to let a lesson flow.
tonykenny: I've heard many similar stories from the TEFL world, so many 'schools' realyl ripping the teachers off. They don't seems to realise that if they have happy teachers, they have happy students who come back.
It's such a basic thing that it surprises me that more people don't understand it. One interesting example is that some schools insist on their teachers being well dressed - despite the fact that people don't want to be confronted by someone wearing a suit after a long day working.
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