Salam and good day.
We meet again. this month is a bit hectic... even though it is our three months semester break... most of us Guru Bahasa (Language Teachers)... not lecturers... big difference there... anyway... Guru Bahasa have to teach semester 0... which started as soon as the term ended. so... no break for us...
On top of that... most of us are also involved in developing the Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) module, Get Into Grammar programme etc. why is it always the same bunch of people ie; language teachers that are asked to do all the work... where are the lecturers? They have 3 months of free time since they do not have to teach semester 0... so... what are they doing? why aren't they involved in all the programmes? why is it always us Language Teachers.
Is it because they are lecturers and I am a Guru Bahasa? Lecturers do not teach diploma students because their qualifications are higher than a guru bahasa? seriously? I can accept that, if all lecturers are Phd holders, but most of them are not... the have a masters degree... well ... so do I... the only difference is that they are lecturers... they have less teaching hours to give room for them to do research...
so they say... therefore... less teaching hours and more pay... whereas a guru bahasa gets more ( a lot more) teaching hours... and still they want us to do reasearch... most guru bahasa have around 14 - 20 teaching hours per semester... and we are also subject coordinators, we have to handle projects like... Reading Circle Programme, GIG Programme and a few others which I cant remember. If all these are done by Guru Bahasa... why do we need to have lecturers? They don't do anything anyway.
I dont mind the teaching load... I am a Guru Bahasa after all... we are supposed to have more teaching time than lecturers... and more teaching hours means less time to do research. which is fair... because.. I love teaching... but I do not like to do research.... and doing research for the sake of fulfilling our KPI? ... no quality?... just quantity?
Hence, now... ... there is really no difference between a Guru Bahasa and a lecturer... we are forced to do research, have publications, become subject coordinators, project leaders... whereas some lecturers are not even subject coordinators... not involved in research... still they have less teaching hours and more pay.
Like I said, I love teaching... that is why I became a language teacher. If I wanted to do research, I would have become a researcher instead. So there!
