The Write Connection Reviews

- Learning to mark the TWC way can be a bit of a learning curve at the start, which can take a bit of time, but it's very effective at helping students improve. Once mastered, it's quite easy to use

- The systems that the company uses are not very intuitive. Lots of spreadsheets and everything doesn't seem automated. Sometimes you don't even know that you have a kid coming in for replacement class until they show up because the attendance sheet didn't capture it. Have to ask different people just to find out if one of your students is transferring out/has decided to leave. - Management claims to be open minded and flexible. There's a lot of talk about how everyone is supportive and helpful, but they are mostly supportive and helpful to their own kind. Sometimes they act like your friends, but beware as they are secretly assessing you and will hold what you say against you. You will suddenly find yourself speaking to your supervisor about your supposed problem and not even know that you had a problem in the first place. - Curriculum is insanely structured. If you like repetitive work and doing the same thing in and out for every class every week, then this is good for you. Not much room nor time for trying out your own exercises or variations, even if you think your students will benefit from that. In fact, doing your own thing (even if you think it's good for the students) is frowned upon. Again, remember to keep quiet and be careful of who you talk to. - Be prepared to mark >75 compos a week in detail for your 10 (or more) classes because all levels do compos at the same time. When you ask for help, be prepared to hear that contractually you have to teach up to X number of students/the situation is already far better than long ago/help will come at the cost of your KPI. - Adjuncts will mark the work if they sub your class. The problem is more often than not, a full-timer will be the one subbing your class. This means that even if you are on MC or on leave, you will need to be marking. You can't even return work late because sometimes the marked work is needed for a subsequent class. Whenever I am sick, I end up marking in bed because I need the marked compos for class. If I don't mark when I'm on MC, I end up staying up long past midnight when I'm better to frantically clear the work. Back when I first started out, I used to wonder why management kept reminding people to go on leave. Later I realised that taking leave only results in more problems and inconveniences. Sometimes you don't even know who subbed your class when you were away. If an adjunct subs your class, you are expected to keep track of whether they have returned the work because your professionalism is on the line too. It's just more hassle to go on leave and you will probably need to mark the work while you're away anyway. - I don't know if this is the industry-standard, but management gets incredibly jumpy when a parent sneezes or expresses doubts about you. Suddenly you'll find yourself in long calls, meetings, or email threads about one student. The stress from this alone is probably the same as that of marking the >75 compos. - Sometimes you end up marking work from students that you don't teach. Or mark work from students of levels you don't teach. Better yet, sometimes you have to teach holiday classes for levels that you completely have no experience in. - I have colleagues who don't even bother to raise their problems anymore because they know that management won't do anything.