Western English School in Taiwan is a growing chain of English language schools. While this name is not real, the following information is about a real school. The school’s name is changed to protect confidentiality of the teacher who provided the information.
For the 2003-2004 school year the Western English Corporation will consist of only three schools in Taiwan and a summer school in Vancouver, Canada. But their corporate goal is to create a large franchise of schools that teach English as a foreign language. They are attempting to become the McDonalds of English language schools.
To achieve that ambitious goal, the Western English Corporation is using American textbooks, native speakers of English as teachers, and American teaching methods. In marketing their English language program to the prospective parents of students, the corporation stresses that their immersion teaching methods are modern and carefully designed to quickly gain a diversity of American English skills.
As part of that program teachers need to be evaluated according to various American criteria. In theory, after the school principal considers a teacher’s performance in these qualities, salary increases and promotions are determined for the following academic year.
A senior teacher (who is now in a management) position does an evaluation twice a year. This senior teacher observes the each teacher’s classroom performance several times during the evaluation period. The teacher’s performance evaluation uses fair/good/excellent for the following criteria:
Basic Work Habits:
1. No sick days and no tardiness for meetings or class. Achieving this goal results in a monthly sixty-dollar bonus payment. Fair/good/excellent
2. Positive attitude, ...