Teaching English in Vietnam

In the above pictures is an orphanage & school, along with a picture of some students and then my student Nhu & I. My experience working as a teacher had good points and bad/frustrating points.  By far, the best thing about teaching was the students in Vietnam. They were fun, mostly respectful, and overall not that hard to teach.  Most other teachers were pretty friendly too.

The worst thing about teaching was the administration and the work teachers have to do for no pay.  As a teacher at the school I was at, you’re expected to spend like 1-2 hours preparing a lesson for each class, dress up in trousers, a nice shirt & tie, travel to wherever that class is (it took 30-40 minutes to get to my school), get there about 10-20 minutes early, teach the class for 90 minutes on 30 minutes of material, learn to remember student’s names which you can’t say or spell, and then fill out an after class report by hand.  In the end you got paid a relatively low wage for only 1.5 hours out of every 5 hours of work/your time used up because of the job (1.5 hours prep + 5 min to change + 30 minutes travel to class + 20 minutes till class starts + 1.5 hours for class + 20 minutes to fill out after class report + 30 minutes travel home + 15 minutes to shower and change back into normal clothes). Also you were sometimes expected to attend “workshops” on your weekend for no pay also. Here is a quote, “I expect to see all the teachers of ****** (at the workshop seminar thing) for the teaching quality of Communication courses.”

Additionally the school had a “new policy” where the teachers had to buy (they were illegal copies, but asia pays no attention to copyright laws) of the teaching materials from the school for every class.  On top of them wanting you to buy an illegal copy of the book and cds for the class, the books the school had chosen for classes were cheaper books with blatant errors which any native English speaker could see.  I talked with another teacher and he’d told me that he told them he was not going to buy the books to teach the class and if they were going to make him pay, he’d leave.  Of course they tried to say to him later “okay just for you we can let you get the book  for free,” but he told me he told them “oh no, no sneaky rule bending, either every teacher gets the books for free too, or I don’t.”  He also said when he asked them why they made the policy that they said it was because the teachers were quitting and taking the books with them so the school was losing money on teacher’s books (and remember they’re talking about copies of books) and that this was their solution.

Communication between the school and I was terrible to say the least. They’d given me no employee’s name, position/title, or contact information or even said what they’d like me to do in class really, other than page numbers in a book. Two weeks after I started teaching, the guy who hired me called me over and said “What’s this?” pointing to my clothes. I said, “black jeans and a dress shirt?” Then he said, “company policy is trousers and dress shirt & tie. Also I heard you did not have the teaching book before the class this afternoon. We don’t want the students complaining about your dress or unpreparedness in teaching the class.” Then I said, “well now that I know you’d like me wear trousers and a tie I’ll go buy some, and as for the book, I tried to pick it up before and you didn’t have one for me, so today I came in an hour early to get the book and prepare for class. As for complaints, I’m pretty sure the students like me as a teacher and understand my lessons, have I had any complaints?” Then he said “No you haven’t had any complaints so far, but do you think an hour is enough time to prepare?” I said, “It isn’t ample time, but today is their very first lesson so it isn’t very difficult and there isn’t too much prep necessary.”

I was particularly frustrated with this guy even before this conversation as I had said I did not want to teach at this campus and was only available in the afternoons when I interviewed with him. Then he’d given me all my classes at this campus (the farthest one from me) and they were morning and afternoon classes, causing me to travel 2 times a day to the farthest campus from me, during a time I said I was not available. I was not even sure if I was going to get my pay in the end as they had not responded to my e-mails &/or messages, they didn’t tell me about the first payday (so I missed it), they hadn’t told me when they’d got replacement teachers for my class until I had already prepared and showed up to teach on my last days, and they hadn’t followed through on anything they told me they’d do. However I did get my pay with the help of other nice employees at the school, never hearing from the guy who was supposed to let me know.

As for anyone reading this wondering what the teaching English requires and/or actually involves, it is like this:

To teach English most places you need three things:

1. be a native English speaker (they don’t say it but I think they prefer it if you’re white too).

2. have a 4 year degree at an accredited college

3. have a TEFL certificate (you can get good one at www.icalweb.com for $265)

To teach english in vietnam I know one guy who just has requirement #1 and after you get a job then pretty much all the schools here don’t seem to care a whole lot about #2 or #3 because you have experience.

There is a Vietnamese teacher and you the foreign teacher for one class. The Vietnamese teacher teaches like 2 out 3 classes and the foreign teacher teaches the 1 out of 3 classes the Vietnamese teacher doesn’t teach. There is no paper grading or test writing/grading or contracts (maybe there are teaching contracts some places). All the school really cares about is what the students are saying about the teacher, because the more positive things the student say to their friends or whatever, the more likely they’ll come to that school (there are lots of English schools competeing) and the school will get more money due to more students and most everything in Asia in general is about money. If a cop pulls you over, you’re pretty much expected to bribe them and they’ll let you go. Some schools are shady and won’t pay or will put it off as much as possible.

There are places in Saigon you can live where it costs around $250/month for a studio type thing with electric and internet included; this is where a lot of teachers live. I’m not positive but I think it is better to work for schools and/or corporations that require some sort of experience and/or qualifications so you can get better pay, probably have a better idea of what is expected of you, and feel confident that you’ll actually get the money you worked for without having to seemingly fight for it.