problems with the textbooks
You may have come across a language school in which you are given only a class to teach without any text book at all. That may sound bad, but I think you can still manage a text book that you know for the class. In my own experience, I have several classes with really strange text books that you can hardly ever think of.
Firstly, I have a KET prep program of 5 levels, and all I (and the students) get as text books are the complete Cambridge KET tests. With TOEIC and TOEFL, I have seen text books to develop the test takers' skills before taking the complete tests, and that still proves difficult for them. In this very case, the student begin their lessons with the test, and end the course with a test of that kind also.
Secondly, I have a general English test book for a Speaking class, and vice versa. You may not believe it, but I do in fact have American Headway for a Communication class, and I must say 60 percent of the text in the books cannot be used for the student to practice speaking, and to make it worse, the book has a very special focus on grammar - four units pressing on the simple tense. Furthermore, the General English class that I am teaching is using New Interchange text book. You can imagine how fun it is to use a book full of dialogues to teach four skills for students of Elementary levels.
I have reported the issue to the school manager, and I have also pressed that topic in the teaching meeting. The funny thing is I am the only teacher who teach those programs; the other two teachers in the meeting only teach kiddie classes. One thing I have to mention is the school manager is actually the main teacher in the school - who so-called can teach the programs that I am doing. In the meeting, my ideas were rejected, and the commandant from the manager is "there is no inappropriate text books; there is only teachers who do not know how to use a specific text book for a class". I do mean no offense, but seriously it is still a question whether the manager learnt more English, taught more students, and managed more teachers than I do. With all due respect, I gave up the debate, knowing that I am leaving this school very soon, for it sooner or later will damage my reputation as a teacher. That is because the students and their parents only know that the class aren't going nowhere, and they never know that the core text books are causing all the problems.
