Here's a web site about someone complaining about how he was fired in China. He seems to blame the school and students for everything (though admittedly I have not read all 93 chapters). However, it seems to me that he himself made several mistakes and that the blame is partly his. Remember that this is an American man teaching Chinese college students.
For example he called his female students in their dorms after 10:00 PM. I don't think calling students at home is all that common. He had dinner with one of his students several times. I can see going out with an entire class, but going out with one student is asking for trouble. When students complained about his teaching, he seemed to become rather hostile, first assuming it had something to do with the school using poor evaluations as an excuse to pay him less money, and then demanding to know how he could improve. I would say his job is to improve but his students job is not to show him how to teach.
It also seems that he spent far more time with his female students than with his male students, taking them to dinner (where they -not him- started talking about inappropriate subjects), asking them to take him to the hospital where they saw his chest (he had a chest rash), etc. If I were the boss, I would've confronted him too.
In response, he seemed to deny everything. When told that students were complaining, he said he didn't believe it. When asked why he only invited girls out, he answered that this was untrue (though he now admits that he invited boys only rarely). When students suggested they needed more background knowledge to understand the readings (many about American culture), he said they were wrong.
I'm not saying that his university handled this well, but I would have fired him too. Look at the respect he had for his students:
The mantra was being intoned again: why why why, a girl wanted to know, did I invite girls and not boys?What gave a silly young girl like her the right to question me about my personal choices? I asked her. "You're forgetting the respect due your teachers."
Posted by James Trotta at April 23, 2004 6:23 AM
A follow up after Uriel responded on the TESL-JB list, I sent this e-mail:
Uriel writes of my comment that going out with students is probably against the rules: "I find this to be a terribly bleak and circumscribed view of what is proper, but I imagine this forum wouldn't want to see a debate on this point. Anyway, there is no such rule, and at all four universities I went out
one-on-one with many students."
I can say is that my university in Korea has a rule about not going out with students; a professor was recently let go for such an infraction. In an American university, specifically Hofstra University, these rules exist and are enforced. As an undergrad a friend of mine started seeing a part time professor (who wasn't teaching any of my friend's classes). Rumors started and the professor was let go.
Uriel then writes: "...it's not obvious what my "unrealistic expectations" were." I maintain that dating your students in American universities, Korean universities, and apparently Chinese universities and expecting institutions to look the other way is highly unrealistic.
One last quote, this one from the complete online story: "The mantra was being intoned again: why why why, a girl wanted to know, did I invite girls and not boys?
"What gave a silly young girl like her the right to question me about my personal choices? I asked her. 'You're forgetting the respect due your teachers.'"
It seems to me that we must remember the respect due our students before we can expect to be respected as professional educators.
Posted by: James Trotta at April 24, 2004 7:55 AMESL blog is one of many Blogs for learning English & teaching English. Translation services information.