Easy going experience - Front Desk Staff American Language Institute Employee Review

Quality program where the immediate supervisor listens to and works with the teachers in a professional way to create and maintain a solid learning environment for the students.

Program has been recently reorganized and the new emphasis is on profitability. We will see long term whether that has a negative effective on a traditionally strong program.

The pay is a lot better than at many private language school. It is for this reason and this reason only that i would recommend this school. Also they are flexible in the number of hours you want to work (depending on the student enrollment). Staff is very professional.

This is a for-profit organization. They take their student review seriously. If the students don't give you good rating, they don't invite you back. If a student has a complaint about you, they will side with the student, and you will be put on probation or let go. The director divides their time between marketing and teacher supervising, with the focus on the bottom line, which is student retention. Like many other ESL programs in San Diego, most teachers work on a semester to semester basis with no company benefits. Only about 10% of teachers have a "contract" guaranteeing them a full-time position with benefits (the term is misleading because in actuality, everyone else is a contractor and those with "contracts" are more-or-less the permanent employees). ESL teachers often have to work several jobs in different schools to make ends meet. Moreover, there is little professional development opportunity for teachers despite their having a program for training ESL teachers.