Job Discussion Forums

cfocpamba · Joined: 18 Sep 2010 Posts: 22

I was teacher at the Mianyang Foreign Languages School in Sichuan Province of the People's Republic of China. After 30 days, I was discharged. I received no salary, travel reimbursement, or severance pay.

Do you support not paying discharged foreign teachers at British Columbia Ministry of Education certified schools?

Please use countries not violating human rights in your future activities.

Zimmer · Joined: 26 Oct 2011 Posts: 229

Why were you fired?

muffintop · Joined: 07 Jan 2013 Posts: 803

Look at his previous posts.

buffalobill12323 · Joined: 18 Sep 2013 Posts: 115 Location: China

Zimmer · Joined: 26 Oct 2011 Posts: 229

bluetortilla · Joined: 18 Apr 2006 Posts: 815 Location: Henan

I know of no instance of slavery of any foreign teacher in the PRC or anywhere else in the world. It seems to me that in general we're a privileged lot (though probably not rich!) Slavery comes in three layers roughly: ownership, coercion, or confinement of a human being (white slavery), indentured (debt slavery e.g. boarding is more expensive than wage amassing in loans, sharecropping land), and dependent slavery (bare subsistence living enforced through either geographic or employer immobility).

If you did teach you deserve payment. You were embezzled, not enslaved. We all know what we are getting into here and we are free to leave anytime (I don't think anyone's gone to jail for attempting to leave China without paying the breach of contract fine- they do lose airfare).

From your other posts it seems you have a hard time accepting that while every organization has problems, there is probably little we can do about it- at least not in the way you're going about it. In China I have found I best achieve understanding and consensus when I smile and try to suggest things that benefit everyone, not just me, and not just what I think is right. In general, all the good things I've gotten here were just given to me- I don't ask for much. I don't think demanding or refusing works at all here.

One last thing. If a student's assessment is not one you agree with and you are not in charge of the assessing, then in hierarchy it not your decision. You can tell that student how you feel about her abilities. It won't change the assessment, but it will bolster her confidence. These are the kind of things we do as teachers. Our areas of responsibility are defined, but the little things count.