Great, easy job if you're NOT a qualified teacher - International Teacher First Leap Employee Review

2.0
Feb 5, 2019
Recommend
CEO approval
Business outlook

Pros

- Good pay - Easy job. Lessons are planned for you, down to a script of what needs to be said in the lessons - Work with different, interesting people from around the world - Chinese colleagues are, for the most part, lovely and helpful too - Perfect job if you are an actor/actress. You're on show all the time; a foreign face; if you love acting - great - No real responsibilities

Cons

- Foreign teachers are just for show. As long as you have a foreign face, you'll help bring money into the company, and that's all they want. Your opinion/ideas don't matter. - Lessons, curriculum, training developed by people who HAVE NO QUALIFICATIONS IN EDUCATION. Most of my trainers/academic staff were unprofessional, unqualified and didn't actually know what they were talking about with regards to teaching and education. Very few pedagogical resources/ideas actually used and implemented. - Teaching style is "the first leap way" or no way (not necessarily what is best for those students/what is best according to educational research and theories) - Script for the lessons means you're very rarely having to use your brain. Becomes a bit tedious, boring, un-stimulating. - Training sessions take up a lot of your free time and are a waste of time. Every single training session/meeting I had could have been summarized in one email. - Lots of time sitting around in the office doing nothing. - High turnover rate. Kids won't miss you as they're used to getting new teachers all the time. - At the end of the day, you don't matter.

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First Leap Response
7y
Thank you for taking the time to leave a review. One of the great things about working here is getting to meet people from so many different backgrounds, we’re happy to hear that you had that experience with us. With regards to the teaching style, we train our teachers so that they are free to teach creatively as long as the lesson requirements are adhered to. The lessons are created by a team with a mix of teaching and educational experience. New teachers often find it easier to follow the script very closely until they feel comfortable with the materials, then with more experience they tend to use their own methods to deliver the lessons. The turnover rate for international teachers is higher than in other industries, that’s the nature of the overseas English teaching industry. In terms of training sessions, we strive to help teachers as much as we can, and we always evaluate how the training sessions can be tweaked, so we will take that feedback into consideration. Every teacher who works for us does matter, we do our best to make teachers feel that, and to make sure they know that they are here to help make a difference in children’s lives. Thanks again for your time at First Leap and we wish you continued success!

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