Cyprus-Forum.com

[Eric Betend]

During the academic year 2012-2013, I taught French at Girne American University (GAU) Prep School, in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. That was my first full-time teaching with primary students (Reception to year 5). I loved it and learnt a lot from it. It was evident the children enjoyed the French course and learned well. No matter how much students achieve at GAU, they can be congratulated from doing so, as GAU provides a very mediocre, very poorly-stimulating education.
The main reason for that is that, from top management to teachers, providing students with a good education is not a priority. The top management really considers the “GAU family of schools” – the nursery school, the Prep School (English-speaking primary school section), the Elementary school (the Turkish-speaking primary school section), the Middle and High schools - as a profit-making institution. Managers are not educators. They just want parents to be happy and provide them with day-care-centers for their children and yield to all their desires, even if these parents’ desires have nothing to do with education.
Few teachers are qualified to teach at GAU. Most of the teachers have a degree in one academic field, but the vast majority of them did not get any training as teachers. Most of them did not study pedagogy or children psychology/development for example. Students (especially in the upper grades) are “kings” and “queens”, they are those who run the school. Teachers do not know how to handle them or they are afraid of doing so as the management does not support them.The non-academic staff is not concerned at all about education. Basic rules of hygiene and security are not respected, and no attention is given to children who are considered merely as a source of money.
Although schools are lucrative businesses, there is no money for teaching material and managers are extremely reluctant to invest in educational resources : there is no teaching material available for teachers, from board markers to, obviously, computers, smartboards or any meaningful educational project. The Prep school library is total chaos and has no librarian. My ownFrench classroom had not enough tables and chairs for all my students.Inaddition, there are no proper curricula, no induction programs for teachers, internal training session are rare and their quality is very poor as the management itself is not qualified for their jobs.
A handful of teachers are well-qualified and despaired to see the teaching strategies and teaching of their colleagues. It would seem that the most important priority at GAU is to yield to parents’ desires, to management’s desires, and not to ask any kind of unsettling questions about the school.The “GAU family of schools” has outdated ways of teaching and working. Needless to say that the ICT level of teachers and therefore students is extremely poor.
There are no incentives for teachers : salaries are very low. Teachers’ salaries range from 700 euros to 1500 euros a month. Most of them get below 1000 euros, and a handful more than 1000 euros, while the cost of living in the TRNC is only slightly less than an average French city.
The housing allowance is 150 euros a month for all teachers, while renting a flat or a house costs 250 sterling pounds at the very minimum.
Salaries are paid late and are exclusive to one bank that has been chosen for teachers by the school. Pay slips are non-existent and money is known to be taken from the teachers’ accounts for extravagant reasons.Contracts have no value and are breached frequently. The Human Resources (HR) department lures teachers with promises, but once teachers start working at GAU, they soon realize the reality is not what they had been told.
The “Human” Resources department is anything but human. The staff working in this department has no consideration for teachers except for their “friends” or relatives. Incidentally, mostlocal/native teachers and staff are recruited, not according to their skills, but to their relations to the school management. The HR department, their utter disorganization, their lies and despise for people is notorious amongst teachers and the cause of much stress and many sleepless nights.
Holidays are barely existent and distributed in a discriminatory way. Racism is highly felt by teachers coming from Africa or Asia in particular, and single women are ostracized. There is no equality of treatment of any kind and “divide to rule” is the norm to treat people. New teachers feel consistently insecure as they can be sacked any time if they do not play the GAU game.
Playing the GAU game means for example that teachers must give all students good grades and comments, no matter what their actual results are. Grades and comments are changed to satisfy parents, even if it means that a manager will bypass a teacher to write the grades himself/herself. Students and parents are consequently cheated. Parents should know that paying fees to get their children at GAU is tantamount to buying their sons and daughters good grades, even if these grades do not reflect at all their levels.
Paradoxically, while the GAU “family of schools” motto is “The right to be safe, to be respected and to learn”, teachers and students are not safe and respected at all. Those who do not adapt to the shabby GAU institution suffer from high stress, insecurity, instability, loneliness, absence of recognition and contempt.
Logically, students in turn work in an unsafe, unprofessional environment. Their desire to study is not respected and, as most of the time they do not realize how little they learn at GAU, only the luckiest students learn the most important thing that has to be learnt quickly at GAU : to leave and find a better, a proper school.

[CBBB]

You got sacked?

[DrCyprus]

Dear Mr Eric Betend,

I hope you realise that there is no country in the world officially recognised as 'The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus.

Had you been a teacher of English I'd have directed you to TEFL Blacklist, the ESLwatch and ESLcafe to make this information available to a broader audience. All the same, I'm not aware if there are similar websites for teachers of French.

All in all, next time, you could look into the place you choose to teach in and its history. The contract you signed wasn't worth the paper it was written on because it was supported by a pseudo-entity noone recognises.

cheers and better luck next time.

bloody carpetbagger

[Get Real!]

You must be a pretty unethical character yourself or you wouldn’t have opted for a career in an illegally occupied territory as condemned by the UN:

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/United_Na ... lution_541

[Eric Betend]

Yes I got sacked. My post is the "introduction" (serving as an "executive summary") of a 40 page-long document I have written to tell in details about my GAU experience.

Just before this introduction, I wrote the following page (actually the first page of my report : "Why am I writing about GAU ?"). That will tell you exactly to understand why I got sacked. Further in my long document, I wrote another chapter about assessment at GAU. If you are interested I could post it as well :

Why am I writing about GAU ?

I am taking some time to write about GAU because my experience there has been very frustrating and I needed to express it. I felt trapped and I do not want any other staff to come and work at GAU without knowing what kind of experience he or she is very likely to live.
Of course, some people can bear with such an unprofessional environment, probably because they do not really care about what their jobs, or because they have no other option. What I am going to write for GAU does not involve all staff, academic or not. I want to stress the fact that some teachers working at GAU are ready to work as professionals and do their best in an extremely difficult, stressing environment. They are a minority and do not stay long unless they have no other option.
I am writing these pages about GAU also to let parents know in what kind of environment their children really are. If some probably know the reality of the GAU schools, some are clearly unaware of what kind of institution it is.
Parents who care for the education of their children should keep their kids away from GAU Prep school, more than that in fact, from the nursery school to the university. GAU is not a school, nor a university, it just pretends to be a school and a university.
I am a qualified French teacher, who graduated in French and English. I also have a post-graduate degree in linguistics. After roughly ten years experience of teaching, I spent one year teaching at GAU. I got sacked from GAU on June 5th, 2013 : the management wanted me to change my grades and comments, but I refused. They sacked me in order to write grades and comments in my name.
That means the grades and comments all Prep School students got for their second semester in French are fake. But parents do not know. Parents are cheated.
Is this reason not just enough to downgrade/debase GAU as an academic institution?
If you are still skeptical, here are my other arguments.

Then comes the posted "introduction" and the rest of my document with the following table of contents :
Why am I writing about GAU ?
Executive summary (Introduction)
“GAU family of schools”
GAU students
Basic teaching material
Classrooms
Contracts
The GAU human resources department
Unqualified teachers
Non-academic staff
The canteen staff
Management
A closer look at the Prep school
Salary and bank
Communication
ICT
Resources and library
Toilets and bins at GAU
Values
Assessment
What I know about the university
Language at GAU Prep school
Holidays
A few words about Northern Cyprus
Conclusion

[Eric Betend]

@ Get Real :
The whole story of mankind is about invading somebody's else land. Time, and efforts from those who want to work for a peaceful future, eventually legitimate a country.
I do not know from which country you are, but the UK and France are no exception to that state of fact : Kingdoms and lands have been taken to other kings to make the UK and France one day. But the story is not over...
If you had read more about Cyprus before writing, you would not only know that the TRNC is for sure officially recognised by Turkey only but also that the only future possible for that region of the world is Turkish-cypriots and Greek-cypriots (and all other people living there) to try to work for peace. The dividing border is here for a long time whether you like it or not.
You occasionally find politicians who have a different opinion but that is just a demagogic posture.

Read more about the situation in the island in the 1960s and the 1970s, and you will find that the situation was and still is more complex than "the good and poor Greeks and the evil Turkish".

Educating people is about working for peace.

[GreekIslandGirl]

As a "teacher" your priority should be working in a legally recognized school otherwise you too support the potential abuse of children.

[Demonax]

@Eric Betend

What an idiotic and stupidly patronising last comment. Telling Get Real to ‘read more about Cyprus' is like telling Einstein to go read a physics book.

You should brace yourself for the (well-deserved) shitstorm that is coming your way.

[Maximus]

I would not put this "work experience" down on my CV if I was you. Your next employer might look at it with a raised eyebrow.

Also, consider leaving the north of Cyprus. The place is embargoed and there are plenty of credible schools in legal jurisdictions you can teach at.

It was the wrong decision to go to the "TRNC" from the get go.

[Eric Betend]

@Demonax
"Stupid", "idotic", "shit": what a sophisticated comment !