There's an ongoing squabble in my class about the right/wrongness of either American or British pronunciation, which all 3 of the instructors (2 British, 1 American) actively participate in. It's the dumbest thing ever. True that if you teach your students the "International" (British) Phonetic Alphabet when your accent is actually not standard British, the gap between what they read in the dictionary pronunciation and what they hear from you could be confusing. But come on, name 1 single language in which accents or even dialects don't vary by region. Your students will speak a native language(s) which they know other people speak differently. Surely you can tell them that they can imitate either your accent or the one in the dictionary and be perfectly correct, and be done with it. We had the "teach your own accent" conversation on the first day, and I was really hoping that would be the end of it. It's to the credit of the Australian, Canadian, South African, and Polish people on the course that they haven't felt the need to jump in.

The International Phonetic Alphabet is not perfect, duh. If you don't like it, don't use it in your classes. I hate people.