ESL Lesson Plan

If you have nothing better to do, then you may as well help the students.

Initially, that's what you do anyway, when you first start teaching, preparing notes and checking your facts, well into the early hours. You're young and full of enthusiasm and you have bags of energy and life's great and you're enjoying every minute of it.

However, it's a different story, if you are finding that it's hard work and you want to RELAX, after work. You have to think of yourself first and do just that, otherwise your health will surely suffer. You have to convince yourself that you just can't help every worthwhile case who happens to cross your path.
If you've taken on more than you can cope with just back off a little and you will feel all the better for it.

You are only a sucker if you don't want to do it.

You are both a 'mug' and a good teacher.
I have edited academic papers (on metallurgy, would you believe?) and theses and I agree they are hard going - both on technical and low English standard bases.
One wants to help and encourage but we also need our own time and space.
Maybe the International Office at your school could let it be known that ESL teachers are prepared to do this work but students/staff should know it is being done as personal favour or collegial co operation and the goodwill should not be abused.

Good teachers encourage their students. However, I think there is a limit. You say that these professors have to publish to keep their jobs. Were they publishing in English before, or is this something new? I have done proof reading and editing for many years, and it is a time consuming job. If these students are not advanced, I can imagine how much time you are spending editing and rewriting.

I think you have to set limits. Offer to edit one page letters, but anything beyond one page should carry a fee. It doesn't have to be much. Personally, I think they are taking advantage of you. There are many, many companies out there that charge "big bucks" for this service. I'm sure as professors, who have to publish, they are well aware of this.

Good luck!

I know that if you are being paid full-time salary equal to 40 hours per week then you a being fully compensted but if you are being paid by the hour from your school and receive less than 35 hours that you are not being compensated full-time. Every hour you put in out of class should be measured into your hourly rate. If you are being paid USD $5 per/hour for 20 hours and you do 30 hours of editing and grading then you are really making USD $2.50 per/hour. If you value yourself worth $2.50 per/hour then you are right where you belong. If on the other hand, you feel you are worth USD $5 per/hour then I believe you should pass along those cost to the student if you are doing outside tutoring. Editing really is hard work and I love doing it for my family and friends for free. Students can be your family & friends but they are also the clients of the school.

The school where you edit professional papers for publication will be rewarded by having a good reputation for turning out professors who can write in English but what is your reward for the extra work you do? Will the school compensate you more some day or is your pay going to remain the same? I would hand out a flyer to your students listing the prices you charge for outside professional editing services. If your school would strictly forbid this then you could make an anouncement in class that you love editing profesional papers but if your students want you to edit anything but homework then you must charge a fee.
It only seems fair to me.

Teamster for Life,

Rudenski

I agree. If a student wants me to quickly look over something that takes me ten minutes to read, fine. But, you are being paid to be a teacher, not an editor. You shouldn't be doing work for free.

I would not edit a student's outside-class papers, except if I were paid for it. Even then, you have to be careful. I once ended up almost completely rewriting someone's master thesis. The English was so abominable, I felt I had no choice, and of course, the student was under an enormous time-crush. Still, there should be limits to how much editing you do. In the end...whose paper is it???

If you initiated the papers being written in English, then I think it is your responsibility to follow it through. This doesn't mean that you have to correct everything in every paper but you could point out some common errors for the professors to re-work and correct themselves.

My general feeling is that if they are professors and are required to publish for their jobs and choose to publish in English, then, they are professionals and should be prepared to pay a professional to edit for them if they need someone to do that.

Please post me some jobs direcly to my e-mail box,esp. if there are any in London this month onwards

Surupa Shastry

Hi Michele,

In our network we dont really give tests. Instead we are constantly evaluating our students. Every quarter we then enter new evaluation grades into the database. The student reveives a report electronically with graphical displays of their evaluations. This seems to keep students motivated and teacher marking time down. Of course this is with adult students.

I would want to assist the students by editing their work if I had the time. I would really try hard to find the time.
However, if they are professionals, is it not reasonable to ask for a fee for this? Translators are paid and if the level of writing is poor, you would be doing translation work, right?

Michelle, how about putting aside one lesson for this kind of editing alone? They can be working on their papers while you go around helping them out, and that's their chance to ask you for help.
Take it from someone who also cares "too much for their own good."

I agree with the comments so far. The point I would like to emphasize is the ownership of the paper. If their papers are at such a low level that editing is a processes that takes days and weeks instead of hours, then you are, in effect, a major contributor to the paper and its ability to be published. If the professor publishes a paper in which you suggested the majority of sentences or sentence structures or words and then only the professor receives recognition for the paper, is that a form of plagiarism? In a way I think it is. There is a fine line between guiding students to improve their own work and improving their work for them. The latter does not help them in the long run and is detrimental to your own ability as a teacher because you assume all of the responsibility for their learning. The students need to be accountable for their learning so that they have ownership of what they produce.

Of course we need to "go the extra mile" especially if we're serious about it, and not just teaching to finance our backpacking trip around the world...

But, I would agree with Rob when he mentions that there are many companies that charge "big bucks" for the sort of thing that you're doing in your free time.

If you started a writing component to your classes, and are now editing peoples theses, then this is a valuable service that you and your school are providing. Maybe you can approach your DOS and give them a proposal about your getting extra compensation for this....

Good Luck!

1. Notify your supervisor of the extent of work needed and insure you are paid for your efforts. Being an ESL teacher is a profession and you should be paid for the work carried out in terms of equity and employment. If there are not policy guidelines in place with respect to contractual obligations - they should be written and followed for the benefit of all the teachers.
2. Insure that you do not "burn" your self out with workload. You best know your limits. Your students will not. Set the proper parameters at the beginning of a term.
3. Point your students requiring additional help and writing assistance to the sources to help -eg. there are very good web-based learning sites which they themselves can work through to improve writing skills.

Hi all teachers: You are a teacher because either you have chosen to be or because you just want the adventure of teaching in another country. However, if you are both......think of life as being short and as a teacher you can bless your students. Sometimes you get weary and Michelle, I believe is 'weary perhaps of well doing' but the benefit of a good teacher going beyond and above the so called duty of teaching returns a million rewards. Dr. Norman Bethune said he had never been so refreshed and rewarded by helping the Chinese...we taught in China since 1993 and returned during the SARS epidemic. We had open house, English study in our home, English study outside the home, journals to mark (our own child and duties) but we never complained, we went to judge English contest, we presented plays, singing clubs.....we did everything we could do to help the students realising our time was short in the country we were visiting and short on earth.

Teachers are a special bunch and a true teacher ...is sacrificial because she/he loves their students and their students love them.

What goes around comes around and you can never, never know in the future how your extra time correcting a paper will benefit a person's life in years to come.
V. Shave, B.A.
Canada

Hi,
I found all comments interesting. Some good points made. Recently, my assistant principle asked that I correct three school newspapers for which he was the editor and translater. I was glad too as I am the only foreigner around this small country town. However, I was not so glad once I had begun...the mistakes were many, many, too many to say the least; I was embarrassed to return the papers to him, and felt too that I might have hurt his feelings. I was not pedantic with the corrections. Anyway, just yesterday he told me he wished to go over again another lengthy article for publication in a well circulated newspaper; now I really feel terrible, he feels his essay skills are great. Should the editor of the newspaper refuse his article, I fear he will think I did not do him justice on the presented work. Good grief! Oh, all comments offered reasonable advice, especially I liked Vanessa's and Todd's.