Would you willingly sign a contract that may say that you have to work an extra day per week during the peak summer season and/or teach a few extra hours a week FOR NO MORE PAY?!

Speaking with the benefit of hindsight, I would say that it is utterly ludicrous for private language schools to insist that their teachers be made to do more for no more pay just because it happens to be the peak season when more students come to study. Yet there are plenty of expatriates who have signed a full-time contract which says in effect that they must do more work for no more plenty during the very time when one would think that teachers should receive more money for more teaching.

After all, summer is the peak time when private language schools generate more than enough revenue to satisfy even the greediest of investors and yet the successes of summer schools are based mostly on the sweat, frustration, fatigue and tears of full-timers who have signed contracts which condemn them to work more for no more money (to a certain extent).

I had signed two 12-month contracts for a private school, a franchisee, in which signers were expected to work up to one more day per week (six instead of five) and teach up to five more real hours per week for NO more money. Having been through the rigors of two summer schools, I used to hear bitter mutterings from my fellow teachers, who described the situation as sheer slavery. What, they asked themselves, possessed them to do something they never would have dreamed of doing in a million years back home? Yes, they realized that they had signed the contracts, and signing implies that they have read and understood the conditions, and that they therefore had to abide by those conditions.

Of course, these people, undoubtedly hungry to start or continue their TEFL career, had been recruited during the off-peak season, a time of relatively low teaching loads. Perhaps they thought that there was nothing to make a fuss about. An extra five hours of teaching a week for no more pay? OK, so long as its just for a few weeks Maybe that was something that they didnt fully understand at the time yet, by the time they realized that they had to deal with more classes full of kids who dont understand and dont want to be there and dont want to learn and who want just to talk and talk, it was far too late.

I can be thankful that I have, since February this year, gone over to the public sector, which means that I now have the benefit of a full summers vacation where, if I teach at a summer school, be it in the public or the private sector (and I have done both already this summer), I get PAID for EVERY lesson I do, and I mean EVERY. In one summer school lasting seven days, I earned the equivalent of a MONTHS salary based on what I receive from my public school.

THIS is what we expatriates should be doing when we come to teach English in foreign countries. To me, the private schools, which want people to sign up as full-time teachers to do more work in the summer for no more money, are guilty of exploitation. I should know, because fellow colleagues used to tell me that they felt no better off than slaves. Yet, as I said, the conditions were laid out in the contracts the summer work conditions came as no surprise to them, and so it was basically their own lookout, and they had therefore little choice but to swallow their annoyance.

This is one way of learning about the realities of teaching abroad for private language schools. Thank heaven I am no longer in this mock-slavery position now if I want to do more, I get PAID provided, of course, that the opportunities to do more work exist during your well-earned vacation (shop around!). So, fellow expatriates, if you feel a little disgruntled this summer because of this more-work-and-no-more-pay situation, take heart: your contract will eventually expire and you can seek other opportunities where you may not have to be in that situation again. I did, and Im more than a little grateful for it.