"It's a fucking nut-house" was the comment that stuck in my mind on day one. During the next 3 months there would be no other explanation to this testing program.
Before I'd even got here, HR had twice screwed up the visa process. On arrival we had a few days in a hotel room before being told to do one, find your own place and buy the furniture too. The worst of the worst contractor will have the decency to sort out housing.
The company's health insurance proved worthless, leaving one sick guy futilely searching for a doctor who would treat him. The company offered zero assistence but did make sure he carried on working.
A Texan mechanic employed by the Saudi air force told me it was the same in his line of work. Salaries have stayed exactly the same for ten years, prices on everything have shot up, taxes introduced and benefits are being cut wholescale.
On the academic front, language is best taught via listening and speaking, and the main reason why native speakers are employed. None of that here because this job was just an endless, mindless, instantly forgotten, multiple-choice test with distractors .... whatever that means.
These tests were painstakingly written out week after week alongside weird, bitchy meetings held to discuss which multiple-choice questions and answers to have this week: A, B, C, D, or shall we really push the boat out and give them an E? I hear Harvard does that.
Cheating was so rife it made grading pointless. In fact, made all of this pointless.
There was constant text messaging too, in and out of class, and I'd wake up at weekends to 30+ messages - Pond or pool? The audio has no sound!!!!! Where's the test? Where's my brain? The drill sargeant would finish her texts with RIGHT NOW!!!
I didn't dare open emails.
There were quizzes and pop quizzes and midterms and review tests and IQ skills tests and written tests and TOEFL tests and reading tests and final tests and other tests I've forgotten or never knew about. It's all we did. One test finishes, another starts. Barely time to teach The Social Psychology of Colours from the world's lamest textbook to a group of security guards, electricians and camel-farmers who should have been in the absolute beginners class.
A dusty storage room came to light, filled to the brim with years old test papers covering exactly the same subjects we were re-writing on a weekly basis. The notion of pulling one paper from the bottom of the pile was way beyond this 'management' team.
As entertaining as ever, the drill sargeant - demented by testing - even managed to squeeze in a review test before the final test after we had already held two tests on exactly the same subjects.
Logic wasn't high on the agenda, or anywhere near it.
Test after test after test plus meetings, arguments, cross-checking, assessing, re-rewriting, yawning, cross-checking, grading, scaffolding, printing, fucking up printing, re-doing printing, wasting stacks of paper, stapling and photocopying on knackered old machines that were always conking out.
Computer-based testing (now standard in most of the world) would negate all of the above but had completely passed this place by.
The actual day of the weekly tests brought more chaos. By this stage, teachers were screaming and bitching and fighting amd the drill sargeant was screaming and filming and snitching and, perhaps inspired by this, one student took a photo of the questions, emailed it to a clever guy outside who relayed the answers back through an ear pod. Ingenious!
A closing memory came on FINAL TEST day - the test of all tests and the motherload that had management running round like headless chickens, often prompting the director to go on holiday.
My classroom looked out across an atrium into other classrooms where more tests were being sat. Out of nowhere, a sweating white guy came flying through the door. Hair wild, face purple, shirt hanging out, making a bee-line for one particular student who he dived on and wrestled for a while before the offending phone was seized. A real-life cheat had been caught in the act and the cutting edge of the fight against Test Crime played out like a Starsky & Hutch re-run right in front of me.
After 3 months probation I couldn't handle any more of this and took the option to leave, so I was fired. Reason: I couldn't remember anything. Surely you need to be told something before it's forgotten?
... Though one thing is certain: I'll never forget this funky shit show.
Before I'd even got here, HR had twice screwed up the visa process. On arrival we had a few days in a hotel room before being told to do one, find your own place and buy the furniture too. The worst of the worst contractor will have the decency to sort out housing.
The company's health insurance proved worthless, leaving one sick guy futilely searching for a doctor who would treat him. The company offered zero assistence but did make sure he carried on working.
A Texan mechanic employed by the Saudi air force told me it was the same in his line of work. Salaries have stayed exactly the same for ten years, prices on everything have shot up, taxes introduced and benefits are being cut wholescale.
On the academic front, language is best taught via listening and speaking, and the main reason why native speakers are employed. None of that here because this job was just an endless, mindless, instantly forgotten, multiple-choice test with distractors .... whatever that means.
These tests were painstakingly written out week after week alongside weird, bitchy meetings held to discuss which multiple-choice questions and answers to have this week: A, B, C, D, or shall we really push the boat out and give them an E? I hear Harvard does that.
Cheating was so rife it made grading pointless. In fact, made all of this pointless.
There was constant text messaging too, in and out of class, and I'd wake up at weekends to 30+ messages - Pond or pool? The audio has no sound!!!!! Where's the test? Where's my brain? The drill sargeant would finish her texts with RIGHT NOW!!!
I didn't dare open emails.
There were quizzes and pop quizzes and midterms and review tests and IQ skills tests and written tests and TOEFL tests and reading tests and final tests and other tests I've forgotten or never knew about. It's all we did. One test finishes, another starts. Barely time to teach The Social Psychology of Colours from the world's lamest textbook to a group of security guards, electricians and camel-farmers who should have been in the absolute beginners class.
A dusty storage room came to light, filled to the brim with years old test papers covering exactly the same subjects we were re-writing on a weekly basis. The notion of pulling one paper from the bottom of the pile was way beyond this 'management' team.
As entertaining as ever, the drill sargeant - demented by testing - even managed to squeeze in a review test before the final test after we had already held two tests on exactly the same subjects.
Logic wasn't high on the agenda, or anywhere near it.
Test after test after test plus meetings, arguments, cross-checking, assessing, re-rewriting, yawning, cross-checking, grading, scaffolding, printing, fucking up printing, re-doing printing, wasting stacks of paper, stapling and photocopying on knackered old machines that were always conking out.
Computer-based testing (now standard in most of the world) would negate all of the above but had completely passed this place by.
The actual day of the weekly tests brought more chaos. By this stage, teachers were screaming and bitching and fighting amd the drill sargeant was screaming and filming and snitching and, perhaps inspired by this, one student took a photo of the questions, emailed it to a clever guy outside who relayed the answers back through an ear pod. Ingenious!
A closing memory came on FINAL TEST day - the test of all tests and the motherload that had management running round like headless chickens, often prompting the director to go on holiday.
My classroom looked out across an atrium into other classrooms where more tests were being sat. Out of nowhere, a sweating white guy came flying through the door. Hair wild, face purple, shirt hanging out, making a bee-line for one particular student who he dived on and wrestled for a while before the offending phone was seized. A real-life cheat had been caught in the act and the cutting edge of the fight against Test Crime played out like a Starsky & Hutch re-run right in front of me.
After 3 months probation I couldn't handle any more of this and took the option to leave, so I was fired. Reason: I couldn't remember anything. Surely you need to be told something before it's forgotten?
... Though one thing is certain: I'll never forget this funky shit show.