One of the first rules in “real” stakeholder relations is attend to the negative. There are only so many carpets to sweep things under. Obviously in this part of the world there are more carpets and maids wanting to sweep.
For anyone who visits the TES forums, you will notice that they suffer from the phenomenon of the disappearing thread. Some suggest this is due to their revenue for advertising positions being more important than what appears on their forums as a service to teachers. I think this is true and what you need to keep in mind is what TES does is not provide a not for profit service for teachers to communicate with each other, but rather a thinly veiled service which is simply an add on to their real purpose. They do have pretty specific terms and conditions of agreement on their forums, and many that post do breach these terms and conditions. At the end of the day this is not a negative aspects of a service TES provides, but rather inflated expectations of those that use those forums.
Now that is all very well and good, but the fact is there are many schools that have very little mention on the TES forums, and believe it or not I am in no way referring to any school, organisation, or country in particular! There are obvious reasons for lack of information –
A: The school is great and no one ever feels the need to vent;
B: The school is not great and too many people feel the need to vent;
C: The school is ok but a few disgruntled staff have felt the need to vent too much which has been taken into an open forum;
D: Not one of the schools staff has ever heard of TES.
I personally find the TES forums entertaining; not because of what is there, but because of what is not (actually more what was there but isn’t). So what would I do rather than worrying about negative posts on TES?
Simple... attend to the negative. This means being transparent, and believe it or not once you actually cross that chasm it is quite easy to manage transparency. Why do so many schools in this region have such a high turnover rate? This cannot always be blamed on the transient nature of expat teachers can it? At the same time it also cannot be constantly blamed on poor management or administration can it? If people would actually attend to the negative everything might make a bit more sense. Manage expectations, because believe it or not the Middle East is not a teaching utopia but neither is anywhere else!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
I only visit the TES forums now and again. For out and out bitching, DAve's eslcafe has a good few rants. No schools in the ME region seem to be advertising, but any time a thread is negative about one of Dave's advertisers the rumours are that the threads get killed (mostly schools in china). There's some international school gossip over there, but for the UAE it's mainly uni level.
I think it is a case when you lack transparency it only fires up the gossip. Daves and TES can be great sources of entertainment, the one problem though is that if we had actually been watching particular threads we may have had second thoughts about either of the positions here in the Gulf.
I find many of the negative discussions on Daves are at times related to a lack of change management ability by various institutions rather than real hidden agenda style mismanagement (not saying that doesn't exist though). People just don't like change, and sometimes it seems even more difficult for them to swallow when they have moved halfway around the world.
You're absolutely right about the management issues. If you can just lay low and avoid getting caught up in the staff room moaning sessions, you can survive a lot of the institutions. I worked for some real pieces of work in the UAE, myself. I always try to post reasons why one might still want to work for School ABC, rather than say "Don't go there!". People need to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly, and the make up their mind for themself.
Post a Comment