Job Discussion Forums

[feathers]

My husband and I want to apply to Wall Street in Jakarta. A friend who worked at Wall Street in Korea (successfully) suggested I post questions at Daves before we apply, because apparently Wall Street�s around the world are franchises and she said that one franchise can be quite different from another. If you can shed any feedback, I would appreciate it. I realize that my questions are quite detailed, but I do appreciate any feedback people can give. I also realize that none of us are managers � just teachers helping each other. I also wish I�d posted these questions for my present job in China because I�m sure someone would have posted back and saved me a lot of time. Anyway, my questions are:
1. Did the Wall Street centre actually abide by the contract hours that they advertised?
2. How many hours do you actually work at Wall Street, Jakarta? How many hours were outside of the contact hours?
3. Did you have two days off in a row? If these days were not Saturday/Sunday, was this an inconvenience or was it still workable for you?
4. Were you paid on time? How often does Wall Street pay � once a month? Once every two weeks?
5. How long were the holidays, and were there any stipulations that I should be aware of?
6. How much preparation time did you have to do outside of the contact hours? (we are not afraid of preparation time. We�ve both taught for many years � it is part of teaching. It is just that we would like to estimate how much prep is needed at this school since we are also taking distance education in our spare time. So an estimate is helpful).
7. What was the management like? Did the management have a background in education? Did you have a foreigner as a supervisor? Were the Indonesian managers reasonable to work with?
8. Have you found that most staff members were satisfied with the working conditions, or was there any dissatisfaction or turnaround?
9. Were the apartments satisfactory, in your opinion? In your opinion, would Wall Street be willing to help us get an apartment that was adequate for a married teaching couple? (for instance, my present apartment in China is very nice but it is a studio, and not quite large enough for a couple but my employer would have helped us to get a larger one if we�d asked. So, we would be looking for some supportive help from Wall Street.)
10. Were there adequate teaching resources at the Wall Street that you worked at?
11. Was the general treatment of teachers fair in terms of how the management treated female/male employees, and were there any issues of favoritism � just from what you�ve noticed.
12. How well do the Indonesian teachers mingle with the foreign staff members? Is there a good level of camaraderie?
13. Wall Street advertises providing Indonesian lessons. Were the lessons good? Do you think that these would be helpful to most foreigners?
14. How much support did the school give to new teachers? Did they provide a good induction to the work environment and to living in Jakarta, or did they just dump the new teachers into everything and basically just say, �sink or swim�it�s your problem.�
15. Are there many resources for foreign teachers nearby, such as language help, a social network of other teachers, or places to do things outside of work?
16. Do you have any other good advice that you can give us?

Thanks for any helpful feedback!

[TheOmar]

Hello, I used to work at WSI Jakarta, so maybe I can quickly help you out. Please PM me if you have more questions as I'm just about to sleep so these answers will be short.


1. Did the Wall Street centre actually abide by the contract hours that they advertised?
-Yes they do. In fact, Wall St. is one of the only companies I know of that is very honest in accordance to their contract.

2. How many hours do you actually work at Wall Street, Jakarta? How many hours were outside of the contact hours?
Weekdays - Start time varies between 12pm - 2pm and end time is always 8 or 9pm..i forgot which.
Weekends - ALWAYS 10am - 6pm.
No hours outside of contact hours and no prep hours as everything is done for you.

3. Did you have two days off in a row? If these days were not Saturday/Sunday, was this an inconvenience or was it still workable for you?
All my coworkers had 2 days off in a row, but I opted for split days so I wouldn't work 5 days in a row. I had 3 working days, 1 day off, then 2 working days, 1 day off, repeat.
You tend to get used to not having both Sat. and Sun off since none of your coworkers have both those days off.

4. Were you paid on time? How often does Wall Street pay � once a month? Once every two weeks?
Once a month and always on time.

5. How long were the holidays, and were there any stipulations that I should be aware of?
Indonesia has A LOT of holidays and Wall St pretty much follows the holiday schedule minus a few days. For example, if other businesses have a whole week off, WSI may have 5 days off.
During Ramadan, there is a mandatory 3 days off that you "have" to take, it's subtracted from your days off. However, if you don't want to be forced to take this holiday, you can organize files and stuff and take off whenever you want later on.

6. How much preparation time did you have to do outside of the contact hours? (we are not afraid of preparation time. We�ve both taught for many years � it is part of teaching. It is just that we would like to estimate how much prep is needed at this school since we are also taking distance education in our spare time. So an estimate is helpful).
Close to zero actually. Everything is done for you. For the first month or two you'll need prep time to get used to the system. After that, it's a breeze. The only prep time is for what they call Social Clubs where it's all your creativity and lesson plan. But about 80% of the time there is no prep time.

7. What was the management like? Did the management have a background in education? Did you have a foreigner as a supervisor? Were the Indonesian managers reasonable to work with?
You will report to a fellow native-English speaker manager. Then, there are local managers whom you will associate with but you won't report directly to them.
The majority of the staff are locals. The only foreigners will be the 7 or 8 other teachers and your manager. The staff at my center were WONDERFUL!

8. Have you found that most staff members were satisfied with the working conditions, or was there any dissatisfaction or turnaround?
We were all satisfied. We had one instance of an elderly woman who had no idea what she was getting herself into in terms of teaching overseas and reading the contract so she left. But everyone else was satisfied.

9. Were the apartments satisfactory, in your opinion? In your opinion, would Wall Street be willing to help us get an apartment that was adequate for a married teaching couple? (for instance, my present apartment in China is very nice but it is a studio, and not quite large enough for a couple but my employer would have helped us to get a larger one if we�d asked. So, we would be looking for some supportive help from Wall Street.)
The staff is REALLY helpful to find an apartment. They go out of their way to make sure you find a nice place.

10. Were there adequate teaching resources at the Wall Street that you worked at?
Yes, plenty.

11. Was the general treatment of teachers fair in terms of how the management treated female/male employees, and were there any issues of favoritism � just from what you�ve noticed.
Equal treatment. Except I always had this thing that as a guy I feel our dress codes are more enforced than women's dress codes.

12. How well do the Indonesian teachers mingle with the foreign staff members? Is there a good level of camaraderie?
Every center is different. Jakarta has I think 6 or 7 centers now. They all have different "cultures" within the center. In my center. everyone pretty much got along with each other. It was the best working environment I've had in a job.

13. Wall Street advertises providing Indonesian lessons. Were the lessons good? Do you think that these would be helpful to most foreigners?
This was after my time and they had just started it up while I was there. I heard it's good. The lessons teach you the basics.

14. How much support did the school give to new teachers? Did they provide a good induction to the work environment and to living in Jakarta, or did they just dump the new teachers into everything and basically just say, �sink or swim�it�s your problem.�
They really help you out when you first get there. Both the locals and the veteran teachers will help you. But of course, it depends on the personnel at the centers.

15. Are there many resources for foreign teachers nearby, such as language help, a social network of other teachers, or places to do things outside of work?
I would say the best bet for this is just to ask the local staff and veteran teachers for things to do in your area.

16. Do you have any other good advice that you can give us?
It's a great job with honest people. The only thing is I didn't feel like a real teacher because you don't get to have your own class. It's very mechanical and business oriented. I felt I wasn't making the impact on students lives that I want to make as a teacher. That's why I left after 1.5 years. But other people have stayed and plan on staying for awhile. Try it out for a year and see how you feel about it.

Thanks for any helpful feedback![/quote]

[plumpy nut]

Wall Street has a good reputation. People I have talked to liked them. These guys were working in Thailand.

The students at Wall Street many times are there because they really wanted to learn English, although sometimes they were there because a company would send them there. Another thing, the Wall Street in Thailand did fail and hold back students. The students had to perform and learn. I also heard they tended to pay teachers considerably more.

At Wall Street it is largely self learning with the employees helping the students to learn and helping assess the students.

[likwid_777]

"Requirements:
* Bachelors degree or higher specifically majoring in English, Linguistics, Education with an English-subject focus, Comparative Literature, or an MA TESOL (Non-negotiable government requirement)
* TEFL certified (CELTA/Trinity preferred)
* Native language English speaker with passport from the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand (Non-negotiable government requirement)
* Be able to obtain a health certificate stating you are healthy in body/mind and free of HIV/AIDS (Non-negotiable government requirement)
* Age between 25-55 years old (Non-negotiable government requirement)

*>>>>>>>>> 5 years removed from BA degree, with some ESL teaching experience (Non-negotiable government requirement) <<<<<<<<

* Passionate about both teaching and life; friendly and outgoing
* Professionally dressed and well-groomed"

5 years removed from BA? Ouch, Indonesia is really strict. Seems even stricter than when I last looked 6 months ago or so. Shame, I'd really love to go and do a stint in the Asian neighbour country to the north (I'm in Aus); unfortunately that's just going to scuttle any hopes of teaching there in the near future.

Sorry if this post makes no sense, I'm falling asleep onto the keyboard.

[bradleycooper]

5 years removed from BA? Ouch, Indonesia is really strict. Seems even stricter than when I last looked 6 months ago or so. Shame, I'd really love to go and do a stint in the Asian neighbour country to the north (I'm in Aus); unfortunately that's just going to scuttle any hopes of teaching there in the near future.

A few weeks ago the Department of Manpower was boasting in the Jakarta Post how it had cut the number of foreigners on work visas from 75,000 to 47,000 and they said they weren't finished yet. New regulations would force the number even lower. Indonesia is going through a xenophobic period and "bule" (Caucasians) are being shown the door in increasing numbers.

Now this number of 47,000 is not entirely accurate. It's the official number and the country is still crawling with illegal workers, including teachers without work visas. For example, at the end of 2012 TBI Kuningan had 2 legal teachers with KITASes and 6 illegal ones on business consultancy visas (completely illegal). And there has been talk of a completely illegal staffroom at Rumah Bahasa Kelapa Gading. Many of the less scrupulous schools merely employ illegals now. But you would need to be pretty desperate to be / stay in Indonesia to be considering these kinds of options clearly.

[likwid_777]

So, Bradleycooper, if you don't mind saying, how you and your fellow (strictly legal) teaching buddies over there meet these requirements? Such as, what is your degree, what experience etc etc. Sorry to appear invasive, it just seems that Indonesia is enigmatic compared with the well trafficked China forums, for example. It's good that they are cleaning up the "dirty expats", not only for Indonesians, but for the long term image of expats in Indonesia. Just in my case, I will finished my degree when I'm 30. At this rate, I could only legally teach there when I'm 35 or 36 plus. Ouch. Do you feel that the government is simply trying to muscle out foreign English teachers altogether? It seems that, after hearing Bradelycooper's report on the illegal teachers in Indonesia, these new regulations are being about as effective as prohibition in America. Canadian whiskey, anyone? Can any of you veterans of Indonesia share your hoop-jumping abilities, those which enabled you to get a (legal) job there? Working in Indonesia is becoming like the girl who hated George in Seinfeld. The more she hated him, the more he couldn't resist her... Haha.

PS-I should probably also mention that I am going to be in possession of a high teaching school degree, with majors of English and History (done and dusted in about a year's time). And for the purposes of avoiding to derail this thread too much, I am perhaps interested in working at Wall Street, due to their good reputation. That is why I was looking at their ad in the first place. I'm guessing that OP, Feathers, did not end up working there due to her inactivity on this thread.

[bradleycooper]