8. Leaky Week reveals: the “exchange” program an indecent proposal and the impeached President

Do you remember your first bike ride without those side wheels, the first kiss, the first boy/girl friend? Well, I certainly do remember my first consulting job!

It happened back in the late 80’s, a few years after the start-up of BRIDGE. We were called by a large organization from the automobile industry to present our services. Curiously, the meeting was set up with the CEO himself, a very influential and high-profile executive at the time. Brazil had recently exited the military regime and the first elected President was opening our market to the world. The automobile industry was among the first ones to be directly affected, especially after the President’s public statement that “our cars are carriages”.  

Contrary to my expectations, which I had based on the CEO’s public appearances on TV and statements at the Senate’s commission to investigate the industry, I met a very calm, charismatic and witty person. As objective as expected, he wasted no time and went straight to the point. He explained that every year, subsidiaries around the world would select their best managers to spend up to two years at the headquarters to further develop their skills and experience, quite an opportunity (all expenses paid plus a benefits package and family included). Candidates, in addition to being assessed regarding their professional expertise, had necessarily to speak English.

The CEO said that, of all countries around the globe, Brazil was, by far, the one with more managers sent abroad. He wanted us to audit the exchange program language assessment criteria because, out of the 24 execs sent to the headquarters at the beginning of that year, 20 were sent back on the first month because they did not speak English. It was not the first time this had happened, but the large amount of English illiterate execs, and all expenses involved in the repatriation, had exceed their patience. The headquarters of the organization had made a formal complaint that went from HR all the way to the top of the Brazilian subsidiary, the CEO himself. He also requested a full audit of the company’s corporate language sponsoring development program.

My first task was to coordinate a team of consultants to re-assess the language proficiency of the 80 new potential candidates for the exchange program as 36 had passed the English test, the highest number ever. And so we did. Of the 80 candidates, and according to our criteria, only 3 had the required proficiency for the exchange program. Of course, the CEO doubted our results and, in addition to these 3, he randomly chose 7 others and personally interviewed all of them. To his surprise, our results were confirmed.

As to the corporate languages program itself, we soon found out it was a “party”. There were no eligibility criteria for sponsoring employees and all they had to do was to present an invoice to be reimbursed at 100%. In addition, there was no limit as to expenses meaning they could present, for example, an invoice worth U$ 5,000 every single month of the year. Cool right? Make an educated guess: how many language schools do you think were registered as suppliers? Almost 300! This was more than the number of all language schools in the State of São Paulo at the time, let alone a small industrial town. Among the problems we found:

1. A very high percentage of employees spent more money on language acquisition on a monthly basis than what they earned;

2. About 90% of head count had language courses (the benchmark is 10%, at the most);

3. Relatives of employees had set up language schools in the region, issuing invoices directly to the organization, and after getting paid they’d split the money among the “students”. Not a single lesson was given/taken.

Being a believer of human development and a hands-on person, the CEO took to himself the responsibility for the language programs and I reported directly to him. In three years we reduced the number of suppliers to normal standards and “existing” language schools and assessed the candidates for the exchange program, which all did well in terms of English and, instead of complaints, the subsidiary began to receive compliments.

Unfortunately, the day came when the CEO retired. A few months later, we assessed 126 candidates for the exchange program. As usual, only a small % passed the tests and I was called to a meeting with the HR and Finances VPs. They presented a series of spreadsheets, calculations, statistics and reports that proved that the number of candidates that had passed our test was five times bigger than our original report. I must admit, they had put on quite a lot of work. All I had to do was sign it. In exchange, they offered a “bonus” and a % of all expenses with language programs should we allow the almost 300 “ghost” schools back.

PS 1. All of the above happened more than 20 years ago. In July, 2010, I had a meeting with an organization that sponsored 600 employees and only had 2 suppliers. In November, 2010, I had a meeting with another organization with 350 employees in the language program and a little over 200 suppliers. I am not affirming anything, further analysis is required, but usually the number of suppliers “might” be an indicator that something smells fishy.

PS 2. Ironically, the first elected President after the military regime was also the first President ever to be impeached because he used public money to buy a car, among other things.

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

7. Leaky Week reveals: sleep learning? You gotta be kidding me!!

After having our first consumer alert article published by a major Brazilian newspaper exposing the not so transparent business practices by language schools, a huge success by the way, we were invited by other vehicles to publish articles on a quarterly basis. After a couple of articles, all of them very critical of malpractices, but very important to consumers, I get a call from the chief editor of the newspaper. He exposed a very simple problem: either they quit publishing our articles or certain language schools would stop advertising on their vehicles. Money talks and BS walks, pardon my English, and we were kindly asked to stop publishing consumer alert articles. Striiike 1.

In addition, the impersonations continued, to the point we had at least two fake calls or meetings a day from competitors disguised as students. It got to be so annoying that I started sending our so sought price list to all our competitors on a monthly basis so they would stop wasting our time.  Striiiike 2!

Question: how do I get even? LOL  Sure, we had a genuine concern for the consumer, but it was also matter of honor to get even, but without the help of the media, the other question was how. Advertising!! If we could not reach consumers through the media, why not send them a direct message? Our first direct marketing action was a “folder” the size of a poster LOL with all the alerts previously published and new ones. We had quite a ROI! At each new direct marketing we gathered more and more students. Our “masterpiece” was considered one of the most bold direct mail in the industry, and the most tasteless LOL. You either loved it or hated it. It was a death notice. On the outside of the envelope there were two black stripes. Inside, we regrettably informed the death of someone’s professional career because he did not speak English (and for having made the wrong language school choice). Of course our advertising agency encouraged us not to go through with it, but war had been declared LOL. The agency did quite an excellent job, including finding a name for the exec that did not exist, so there would be no misunderstandings. And to make it absolutely clear it was not a real person’s death we were announcing, the words “death of professional career” was highlighted. The piece was sent to 50,000 major HR execs in Sao Paulo.

So?? you might ask. Well, we had a 10% return in phone calls, an amazing number. About 70% were to congratulate us on such a daring piece of advertising. However, the remaining 30% were the most upset and name calling calls anyone could ever get, and there were about  1,500 of the kind LOL. Mission accomplished!

But, things were about to get even funnier. A new state of the art methodology called Sleep Learning hit the Brazilian market and literally turned it upside down. WOW, it is possible to learn a language while sleeping!! How cool is that??

In a very short time the new miracle methodology had caused major damages and some casualties among those schools that focused on group lessons, and that’s when the surprise came. An emissary from them contacted me and asked to publish an article on a major vehicle exposing the methodology, with full support from them. What a turn in events!! LOL My enemies seeking my help LOL.

The concept of sleep learning was quite interesting and well substantiated. Studies had shown that when the brain, during sleep, enters the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) phase, a person is predisposed to listening and learning. So, students who bought the package received a tape recorder that was programmed to play at specific times during the night with English-speaking content. The first problem is each person has a different sleeping pattern and it is impossible to predict when he or she will enter the REM phase. The second and more serious problem was that when the tape recorder started playing, sleep was interrupted, and many people would not reach the REM phase which is critical to our system because that’s precisely when the body rests. No REM, no rest, and the consequences can be severe.

We did publish the article, but had no scientific data to support the facts. However, soon the students themselves started to complain and doctors and scientists from all over were called to give their expert opinion.

I’ve heard of and lost sleep myself on account of all sorts of problems, but learning English would not exactly be my first choice. I wonder how many thousands of people lost hundreds of thousands of hours of sleep trying to learn English. If you are reading this and were one of the victims, sorry, no offense meant.  If you did learn something, please share!

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

6. Leaky Week reveals: unfair play and impersonations

So, I have my own language school, now what? I was young, full of hopes and dreams, idealistic and willing to make a difference, or, if you want, naïve.

While in BRIDGE’s set up process, my partners and I did some hard brainstorming as to what was wrong with the language teaching industry and how we could come up with innovative products and services. I didn’t know then that I was about to pick a never-ending fight.

For example, group or private lessons? It was not enough to simply choose one, we had to come up with productivity indicators that showed which one was more efficient, and so we did. We had the belief then that being an active producer in one’s own and a foreign language was essential, so private lessons was, therefore, the most productive way to learn a language, provided we could put an end to the “shrink trap”. Investment in teachers’ development took care of that. But, the problem was, private lessons or small groups (max 3 people) was precisely the opposite of what the market was doing, that is, we were rowing against the flow.

(Reason: purely financial. Schools hid the fact that group lessons were more expensive and time-consuming for the students. You see, by only comparing prices, and leaving “time” out of the equation, students paid less on a monthly basis, but needed many more  lessons to have the same productivity and practice time of a private lesson or small group  and, therefore, the course was longer, much longer. If you compared what students paid at the end, taking into account these equations, group lessons cost way more than private lessons. This is GOOD when you are the one getting paid for a longer period, and even better when the ones paying don’t have a clue of what is going on.)

Teacher’s rotation every class or not? As teachers, we felt that the daily rotation did not work. We did not have enough time to get to know the students, to develop an educational program with a beginning, middle and end, and be responsible for the results. A simple analogy is to imagine your son or daughter having a different teacher everyday he or she goes to school. Getting to know one’s students is a critical part of the learning process and we chose to allow our teachers a semester with their students.

(Reason: schools said that teachers’ rotation exposed students to different pronunciations. Well, that’s the biggest BS I have ever heard and I still get that excuse nowadays. Once more, the reason was greediness. In the teacher’s rotation system, teachers open up a period for the school, morning for example, but only get paid for lessons given. So, if a teacher opened a whole morning, or 5 hours, and only gave 2 lessons (two hours), he or she only got paid for the those 2. Convenient for the school, bad business for teachers, especially when it comes to motivation.)

What about methodology? Our own or choose from the market? Well, the market offered at that time methodologies that are quite different from the ones available today. They were childish, the cultural content was light years away from the Brazilian culture and, bottom line, boring. Some schools had begun to develop their own material, but tied them to the tuition (overpriced) and sometimes to long-term contracts (unfair and biased).  Solution: to develop our own methodology, but offer it for free and no strings attached.

And the list of “wrongs” only grew bigger by the day. There was no interest to inform the traditionally uneducated Brazilian student because schools were making a lot of money.  So, why not pick a fight? And what better way than exposing the scam in the media? Our first consumer alert article was published by the most influential newspaper in the country in 1989, full-page in the business section, exposing the scam and informing consumers. The only detail we failed to miss was: retaliation…

First round: we got sued for allegedly copying a former employee’s methodology. The letter, from a well-known law firm, had like 100 names of lawyers on the heading , on ALL pages, quite impressive LOL. Sadly for them, it so happens we were, and still are to the date, the only language school in Brazil to have a methodology registered by the Patent and Trademark Office and published at the National Library. We counter sued and won. Now the fact: the Brazilian PTO could never have registered a methodology simply because it is against the law. They had made a mistake, which will prevail for life LOL (don’t worry guys, we don’t use it anymore).

Second round: impersonation. Fake prospects would call and set up meetings to find out how our methodology worked, the prices we charged, our teachers rotation system and so on. This was and still is a common practice. However, it is simple to find out they are our competitors impersonating students because of the technicality of the questions. Students don’t usually ask for detailed info. I once had a meeting with a couple, recognized them as our competitors, but said nothing during the meeting. The following day I sent them a thank you card, to their school LOL.

More rounds to come…

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

5. Leaky Week reveals: even a monkey couldn’t go wrong, but it did…

After two months at the beach, it was time to return to Sao Paulo and find a job. What had started as a pastime and extra cash became a serious career. My father was the CEO of a multi-billion dollar multinational company. I had a career waiting for me but 1) after considering what I had gone through travelling from country to country for years, which might be fun while doing it, but you eventually pay the price when you settle down because you have no roots and 2) wanting to make it on my own, but not being able to due to “contingencies”, I decided that teaching was what I wanted to do.

Not that I didn’t try a careeer at dad’s industry. During college (business by the way, not languages), I applied for a couple of jobs and all the selection processes went very well until they eventually found out who my father was, and then all doors closed. You see, I had to either accept a job at my father’s company or ask him to help me find one in the industry, as a favor from one CEO to another. In my last attempt, I was interviewed several times by different people in one company until I reached the CEO. The meeting went extremely well. That day, I told my father about the interview and asked him not to interfere. However, he was proud that I had gotten that far without his help and, by coincidence, was having lunch with the CEO of that company the following day. At a certain point during lunch he asked his friend if he was hiring a new assistant with such and such profile. He said yes and, surprised, inquired back how did he know. He said I was his son. Well… I am still waiting for their reply… That did it. I don’t think I have ever been forgiven for taking the path I took, but… c’est la vie!

Instead, I was hired as assistant director at a relatively new language school in Sao Paulo. They had it all: a fantastic location one block away from Sao Paulo’s financial heart in a breath taking house, one of the very few left in the region. The house was amazingly well preserved. It had a parking lot for some 20 cars, something rare in the region. Classroom fixtures were of excellent quality and, above all, a methodology linked to state of the art technology (at the time). I mean, they had it all, a dream school, and even a monkey couldn’t go wrong with so many assets. But it did.

The director was near sighted, had poor language skills and was very conservative in a market that requires being bold. However, benefit of the doubt given to her because it is very easy to criticize her performance 20 years later, the real problem was the owner. The headquarter of the school was in the US and he’d only show up in Brazil every couple of months to collect money. He failed to grasp the Brazilian life style, culture and thought that he’d make millions because of the state of the art technology (it was!) that acted as complement of the methodology. But, if you are not willing to invest in sales, marketing and advertising, it doesn’t matter what assets you have because it will not reach the target public. And he was not willing to invest at all. He truly believed that the assets would speak for themselves.

The school was doing well, but way below its potential. And my leadership style was clearly the opposite of the director’s and we had more fights than actually managed the business. After a few months things started to get worse (business wise) and she bailed. I was left alone running a school with no profit margin that would allow me a fair fight with our competitors. Teachers’ morale was next to zero. In my last meeting I told the owner that either he invested in the school or let it die. He chose to replace me by a relative.

By then, I had already shown my discontent, I mean, it was obvious. And teachers also noticed the ship was sinking and started to leave. One day, during a lesson to the CFO of a multinational company, he said “what are you still doing here? Pack your bags and leave!” I said “where to?” and he replied “open up your own school”. I said we needed students! And he said he could sign a contract giving me some 50 students or so a year to start with.

Desperate situations require desperate measures LOL. BRIDGE was born in July, 1986. With a very small investment we rented a well located house in a good district.

PS. Weeks before I left we did get our 15 minutes of fame. The school had an exchange program and one teenager student was in the US for six months. He had been placed with a Korean family which, among other things, used to eat monkey meat. The boy reported this to his father, a famous journalist, and damage was done for good.

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

4. Leaky Week reveals: why aren’t you gay?

Back in the 80’s there seemed to be a consensus that all male language teachers were gay. I had become so focused in my teaching career, and was somewhat naïve in this subject, that I did not realize the consensus was somewhat true, or at least a coincidence at the schools I worked at.

I had never had a gay friend or colleague, have never even seen someone who was gay, and I was so interested in girls that I did not give a damn to other people’s sexual preferences. Whereas it was obvious for all others, I simply did not see it, did not pay attention to it and, even if I had, who cares? As long as they are good teachers and discrete, and this is mandatory for all teachers independent of their sexual preferences, welcome aboard.

My “first contact of the gay kind” happened by total chance. The receptionist asked me to take the calls because she needed to go home and the other girl was late. My first call was from a male asking to speak to John, a colleague teacher. “John is teaching right now, may I take a message?” “Yes, tell him Andre called”. I thought it might be a student so I asked “sure, what’s your last name Andre?” and he replied “oh, don’t bother, just tell John it’s his boyfriend calling!”

I hung up and as I wrote the message on a notepad the word “boyfriend” struck me as lightning! LOL I must have thought “oh!! that figures!!” LOL And since that day I started looking more closely to details and realized that most male teachers were, in fact gay. When I mentioned this to another colleague he said “what are you, blind? Why do you think all the women hit on us two all the time?”

My first reaction was anger. Not because my colleagues were gay, but because, as a teacher, I had failed to notice the obvious, and if I could not recognize a gay person, how would I notice other important signs in the classroom? Sight and hearing problems, for example, are quite common among students, but since most will hide it from you, you must pay attention to the signs, most of which very subtle. However, that same day, something happened to show me how I was not the only one who could fail to see the obvious. Fortunately, this was at the beginning of my career, so I could work on it.

We worked on a daily rotation. Teachers were assigned to students on the day before the lessons depending on who was available. Making the schedule was very hard as you had to match all changes to fit in all the students. The schedule was the responsibility of the head teacher, who had been absent the day before, and I had to do it.

About an hour after I took the message for John, I saw this new student coming out of the classroom with the German teacher?! I knew he was supposed to be learning English, so something had gone wrong! I approached him and asked how the lesson had been, if he had liked it. He said he had loved it, but that he never thought how hard English could be and how it sounded a lot like German LOL

After two years I had become a very experienced teacher. I was also being prepared to take over as manager of the school. And the day of my promotion did come.

I was called by the manager, he said he was retiring. He thanked me for all my efforts, congratulated on my success and accomplishments, and then, the cold shower:  “I’m terribly sorry to say you’ll not become manager. “Do you now Marcel?” he asked. “Yes, the rookie teacher who was hired last month.” “Well, Marcel is the President’s boyfriend, and he is taking over…” I resigned that same day, it was time for a well deserved vacation.

PS. During all my life as partner of a language school, our teachers have been selected based solely on their language skills, educational background and qualification, regardless of sexual preferences, which has never stopped a teacher from being hired.

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

3. Leaky Week reveals: sex, drugs rock ‘n’ roll and English lessons

In more than 20 years of teaching I have never seen a student or teacher doing drugs during lessons. But, more often than I’d like, I saw several coming to class with red eyes, pale skin, the smell of alcohol from meters away and, occasionally, all together. Teaching students under such influence(s) can vary from funny to dangerous. Very often students would start laughing for no reason, minutes in a row. Sometimes they’d just leave the lesson to grab something to eat on the nearest coffee shop and there were at least two cases where students physically attacked their teachers. If they were not so high-profile, the cases would have ended at the police station, but no one wants that kind of publicity.

It is very common to have students  make non related classroom requests/complaints all the time. Let’s see: “he is too short, I want a taller one”, “she is blonde, I want a brunette”, “I don’t like his voice”, “she’s ugly, don’t you have a better looking one?”, “he’s too old or too young”, “I want one with big breasts and blue eyes”, “I can’t have lessons with a female teacher, my wife will kill me!” and the list (still to date) goes on and on. Every time I got an unusual request I used to ask “but is he or she a good teacher?” and most would agree so, but it made no difference, they still wanted their teachers replaced.

In all these years in the business of teaching languages, and contrary to the benchmark, we never offered “test drive” lessons, except in very special conditions. As a matter of fact the “test drive” concept was introduced in the market by language schools well before it became a practice in the automotive industry. Schools (not all, of course) figured there was a golden opportunity with the unusual students’ requests, so why wait? Here’s the trick: by knowing the potential student is male, schools would choose their best looking female teacher for the demo class. And this worked for both genders and/or sexual preferences LOL. Once they contracted the course, the school would come up with a lame excuse and change teachers. Bottom line: you don’t know if a car will be good by just riding it around the block. “Appearances can be misleading” would certainly apply here, but you already figured that out, haven’t you? If you want a test drive lesson, make sure it will happen with your definite teacher.

Do affairs happen between teachers and students? Certainly! And who’s to blame for that? I don’t know! Certainly not me, but sometimes things get out of control. We had in our staff this very beautiful female teacher. Since she taught at nights, her husband would pass by the school to pick her up. In little time we became friends and would eventually go out for a drink or pizza. Within a few months their behavior changed. He’d call the school several times a day to check on her, and she’d hide from him as much as possible. One night I took a call from him. He asked for the phone number of the company where his wife was supposed to be teaching, some kind of emergency. I replied she was not scheduled to any in company lessons that night. He insisted, said she had told him she’d be at one of our clients when she had left home that afternoon. After telling him several times she was not scheduled that night I lost my patience and told him, jokingly, that maybe she was having an affair. Big mouth here was right…

I don’t agree with the phrase that “the customer is always right”, because they are not, but it’s hard to say “no” when you know that what they pay you is what makes your ends meet. However, there are limits, of course, not only professional, but also moral and ethical and, eventually, you learn to say no to clients when they cross the line, even at the cost of losing money. You don’t build a good reputation by bending the rules, that’s for sure.

Teaching couples, for example, can be very stressing because eventually they’ll have some sort of discussion in the classroom and, if you don’t watch out, you’ll be dragged into the fight at the smallest sign, whether you want to or not. At one of the schools I worked as a coordinator, I used to assign couples to the teachers I “loved” the most LOL. In one occasion the teacher reported that the fight got so tough that she had to leave the room, and as she exited she heard the sound of a slap on the face. Don’t ask, I forgot what happened afterwards LOL.

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

2. Leaky Week reveals: “Nazy” Mary, kiss kiss and get the hell out of my chair!

There’s a very thin line in being a teacher when it comes to discipline. You don’t want to be a dictator in the classroom, but you also don’t want to let students take over your class, even if we are talking about adults. There are certain commands during lessons, such as “repeat” or “rephrase” that are exactly that, commands. It’s not supposed to be “would you please kindly repeat” or “repeat you dumbass and give me ten” in a typical army tone voice. You have to find the balance and, never, ever, cross the line.

I soon discovered that cultural backgrounds had a major influence on interactions (don’t they ever?). It’s not a very good idea to assign a female teacher to a traditional oriental male student as they will not accept commands from a woman. On the other hand, don’t ever assign a male teacher to a traditional female oriental student, because she will be too ashamed to even look at you, let alone talk back.

One colleague teacher, let us call her Mary, was notorious for her extreme discipline in classroom,  so extreme that teachers and students nicknamed her “Nazi Mary”.  She would shout at students and make them leave the classroom if they “misbehaved”, and we are talking about high-profile executives and adults who were paying for private lessons LOL.

The highlight of her teaching career happened when she crossed the line. She was very strict with pronunciation and would not hesitate in making a student repeat a word as many times as needed before he or she got it right. And, by using the command “repeat” at full lungs, you’d know “Nazi Mary” was teaching. Well, she got to teach the CEO of a Japanese multinational company (Portuguese lessons) and the confrontation was unavoidable. Being a very senior person and coming from a very traditional oriental background, the exec did not take commands from female teachers. But, “Nazi Mary” had a way of imposing herself and, to be honest, she was somewhat scary. At each “repeat” command she’d hit the table with a wooden ruler, each time louder and harder. The poor CEO, as with most oriental, had problems pronouncing “r”, which in English is a soft sound, but very harsh in Portuguese. He would change the “r” by “l” and therefore carro (car) would become calo (callous or corn) or, at best, caro (expensive). And that day we could all hear the “repeat”  and the ruler against the table, thirty, forty, fifty times, until it happened… absolute silence. She was so annoyed she actually had hit him with the ruler! And he got so upset, stood up and started chasing her! She ran away from the classroom and found refuge in the director’s office. “Nazi Mary” got fired and opened her own school where she could shout at her own students.

Years later, and already managing my own school, I closed our first major deal with a very traditional consulting and auditing firm. We had like 10 teachers just for them. Of course they were qualified language wise, and properly trained for lessons, but there are things we only learn from experience. After a month of lessons I requested a meeting with our client to check on our services. While waiting at the reception hall, I saw this young man coming in, very poorly dressed and clearly “too happy”, and presented himself to the receptionist as one of our teachers (he did not know me personally and that I was the owner of the school). I was already shocked by his poor choice of clothes and state of mind, but the surprise was yet to come. When the two very elegant VPs came to the reception to meet their new teacher, instead of a formal presentation (a hand shake), he kissed and hugged them and spoke like they were buddies! I could see the horror in the women’s faces. A week later we implemented a dress and behavior code in our teacher training and development programs.

I, myself, also crossed the line once, real bad. I was called to a meeting with the CEO of a multinational company. I was feeling really awful, with a cold and feverish, and the medication I took before the meeting made me really drowsy. When I got there, the CEO’s secretary led me to his room and said I could sit “there” and pointed at the CEO’s chair. I failed to realize the obvious, that she had meant one of the two chairs “in front of” his desk, and not his chair! When the CEO came into his room and saw me sitting on his chair, he asked “comfortable?” and I replied “yes, it’s a very nice chair” to which he counter replied:  “when you work hard enough to make it to CEO, maybe you can have one of these, but for the time being, get your ass out of my chair”.

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

1. Leaky Weeks reveals: the US Marine Corps mantra and the massive breast implants

Well folks, here it is, finally!!, the first story from Leaky Weeks. And since it is such a special occasion, we have a treat for you: this first episode can be viewed in both video and print!! If you like it, subscribe to our blog and recommend/share to/with your friends. If you don’t like it, still sign up and recommend to your enemies LOL.

Remeber, this is just the beginning. It gets worse, much worse LOL!!

PS: Our avatar, Sarah Palin (LOL), is female, while the writer is male. That explains the “breasts” part.

Transcript:

Prior to starting up my own language school in 1988 I had had teaching experience in four different institutions. Having lived in several foreign countries and exposed to different languages, I was able to teach English, French and Spanish. I also spoke Turkish and Italian, but had no formal knowledge of these languages to be able to teach them.

My first job as a teacher was at a small local franchise, three branches. The methodology at the time was based on a book called English 900, something like 900 key phrases that students had to memorize. Funny, because even today I find students who remember entire sequences of phrases from the book, but do NOT speak English LOL. Because the phrases were used in a preset content, and there was no actual interaction or learning, but rather memorizing, the methodology did not work. If you changed a single word in a question or the content, students would not know what to reply, pretty much like parrots.

My second experience was at a larger Brazilian franchise. They had just opened a branch in a dead-end street, not exactly a good idea, and were having difficulties to make it profitable. After a month there, the coordinator simply gave up and I took over. Needless to say, without experience, training or even minimum support from the franchisers, after improvising for six months I gave up as well.

My third job was at an international franchise in a branch at a very high-end district. This school in particular specialized in private classes and had its own methodology which, surprisingly enough, did really work! But, it required a large amount of adaptation, not because of the methodology itself, but because of the students.

First discovery: each student different. What works in one lesson with one student
will not necessarily work in another. You have to find what “turns on” each individual’s learning mechanism, and that can be quite tricky.

Second discovery: private English lessons are very similar to shrink sessions. Students will tell you their most inner secrets, and trust me, some of them are really heavy stuff LOL.

Third discovery: if you fall into the “shrink” trap and don’t focus on the teaching, very little learning is actually happening. And, very frequently, students, because they do not have the vocabulary to express themselves, will use their mother tongue. After a few months they’ll blame you for not learning anything, but that’s another story.

Because of its privileged location, this particular branch attracted a huge number of celebrities, high-profile people and executives. My first challenge was the drunken racist banker. It was hard enough to ignore the racist comments, but how the heck do you teach someone who is drunk? This took me a couple of weeks to figure out: get drunk (or at least “happy”) yourself! I am serious, it works! And it does wonders for the frustration of not being able to teach LOL.

Another interesting student was a famous theater actor. The problem was he spoke too loud. The whole school would know when he had lessons and, for some reason, no teacher was able to reach him, so he asked for a new one every week. My first lesson was a disaster, I hardly said a word and he did all the loud talking. Knowing that he’d ask to replace me, as he had done with all other previous teachers, I had to find a solution. I was lost and the answer hit me during my second lesson: to every shout from the student, I shouted back and louder. It worked! I had found a way to gain his respect, and therefore, made him listen and triggered his learning mechanism.

As individuals, we are all different, and sometimes ashamed of our flaws or limitations. As a teacher you learn that the hard way, trying, for example, to teach colors to a color blind student. After several lessons I finally realized the student had some kind of difficulty. He would have saved me, and himself, many hours of lessons had he said he was color blind, but I guess it is human nature for most people to simply try to hide their problems.

More difficult to hide is a massive breast implant. In obvious discomfort and a back ache because of the implants, a famous actress was unable to learn. She kept moving on the chair trying to find a more comfortable position to ease her pain. If I had breasts, and if they were just half as big as hers, I probably would have found the solution in a shorter time instead of two very frustrating months.  During lessons, whenever I saw that she was in discomfort, I leaned on the table and rested my chest on it, get the hint? Well, after a couple of lessons she looked at me very surprised and said “I got it, thank you!” The, she grabbed her breasts and just laid them on the table LOL. Like the unofficial mantra of the US Marine Corps: improvise, adapt and overcome.

Copyright © 2011 Bird Gestão Estratégica de Idiomas / Paulo P. Sanchez. All rights reserved.

Leaky Weeks coming on Feb. 10

A short preview:

Because of its privileged location, this particular branch attracted a huge number of celebrities, high profile people and executives. My first challenge was the drunken racist banker. It was hard enough to ignore the racist comments, but how the heck do you teach someone who is drunk? This took me a couple of weeks to figure out: get drunk (or at least “happy”) yourself! I am serious, it works! And it does wonders for the frustration of not being able to teach LOL.

It is official now: Leaky Weeks is coming on Feb. 10 to “edutain”: not only inform and educate readers to avoid the “obscure” practices in reference to languages acquisition, but also entertain through a hilarious and sometimes acid behind the curtain look at language schools, corporate language sponsors, students and teachers. Log on to our page on Facebook and press “like” or subscribe to Leaky Weeks. You will not want to lose this!!

Leaky Weeks official release Feb. 10, 2010

It is official now: Leaky Weeks is coming on Feb. 10 to “edutain”: not only inform and educate readers to avoid the “obscure” practices in reference to languages acquisition, but also entertain through a hilarious and sometimes acid behind the curtain look at language schools, corporate language sponsors, students and teachers. Log on to our page on Facebook and press “like” or subscribe to Leaky Weeks. You will not want to lose this!!

A short preview:

Because of its privileged location, this particular branch attracted a huge number of celebrities, high profile people and executives. My first challenge was the drunken racist banker. It was hard enough to ignore the racist comments, but how the heck do you teach someone who is drunk? This took me a couple of weeks to figure out: get drunk (or at least “happy”) yourself! I am serious, it works! And it does wonders for the frustration of not being able to teach LOL.