Last September Goducate sent 4 of its English teachers to Danang, Vietnam, to strengthen the faculty of our Vietnamese partners, iCan Language Center.
The Vietnamese government is keen to make Vietnam an English-speaking nation by 2020 and has set aside large sums of money to achieve this goal. The biggest bottle-neck in achieving this goal is the lack of teachers of English. The Vietnamese authorities were focusing on recruiting English teachers from western countries. However, many western teachers find the working conditions and salaries in Vietnam to be sub-par. So when I met with the authorities to suggest to them the possibility of sending Goducate-trained Filipino teachers, I was met with much skepticism. Eventually I offered to send a small team of our Filipino English
teachers for a trial period.
Since then our team of 4 Filipinas have been impressing the Vietnamese with their command of the English language, their lively teaching style, and more importantly their love and care for their students. Top-end hotels that were reluctant to accept our teachers to help their staff learn English were “converted” almost immediately after seeing our teachers in action. The personnel manager of one such hotel said, “I didn’t realize that Filipinos can be such good English teachers. Please don’t send us any more Western teachers!”
Recently, one of our teachers, Merianne, was awarded a “Top Employee” award in a 5-star hotel at which room rates start at USD $500/night. I spoke to the personnel manager and she said, “Merianne is excellent. We all love her”. I sat in at one of Merianne’s classes and watched her lively and engaging teaching session and felt so proud of her.
On another occasion I was having coffee with some of our teachers at a road-side cafe near iCan Language Center when a student joined us. I watched this Vietnamese student sharing her “deepest secrets” with our teacher and realized that our teachers had built very close teacher-student relationships. Our teacher was no more just a teacher but a close friend and advisor.
We anticipate more requests for Goducate teachers in Vietnam in the near future. Goducate hopes to help Vietnamese help themselves by teaching them English.
