Job Discussion Forums

[buravirgil]

[expatteacher1]

That salary isn't that good for Wuhan anymore.

[buravirgil]

[Alien abductee]

[parnett]

13.5 rmb/month+free health insurance+nice free apartment 5 minutes walk from school+paid holidays including summer+free utilities+10,000 bonus at end of contract+roundtrip airfare+travel allowance+free Internet, cable TV, repairs in apartment+free meals at school etc.
The above was for a teacher with 16 hours/week teaching with no office hours.
Where exactly in Wuhan can I find a better job, expat? Please don't say Maple Leaf as I had several friends who taught there last semester, and couldn't wait for it to end so they could escape from their contracts.

[LarssonCrew]

Is it 13,000 or 13,500?

16 hours with no office hours but before it was 'they like you to hang around the office for a few hours everday'

Plus the whole marketing thing 'go to the high school and show what we can do!'

[Alien abductee]

[buravirgil]

IF I'm not mistaken, the school's website quotes a range of 15 to 20k. 20k being closer to the terms of a similar "international" high school in the much smaller city of Linchuan, Jiangxi, only 3+ hours away by train. I have yet to receive an answer from Parnett as to the school's development, but what LarssonCrew notes

Plus the whole marketing thing 'go to the high school and show what we can do!'

confirms my suspicions that it is not what the school can claim (to attract parents), but what it can propose-- acceptance abroad. I'm also wondering by what terms Parnett is acting as a recruiter.

The curriculum, as Parnett stated, emphasizes a US achievement test (termed Scholastic Aptitude Test) and the TOEFL. That's the same deal in Linchuan and the students cram hard, but FTs carry similar contact hours to a university position. I was astonished to learn the school's curricular focus supercedes preparation for the Gaokao and, for that reason, I see the promotional logic of terming the school 'international'.

I PM'd Parnett as requested, but received no reply. Nor has he replied to the question of what track-record the school can claim. The school of which I'm somewhat familiar is still in development-- they have yet to graduate a senior class. The organizing principle seems, to me, to propose a population of motivated, elite students can forego previous paths to admissions abroad.

Professionally, my response is the agenda takes "teaching to the test" to new levels. Yet, as objectives go, there isn't a lot in place in China, nor many other developing economies, other than affording large lecture classes to expose as many students as possible to authentic examples of English to leave it to the motivation of individual students to excel. And that model is often poorly served by textbooks to anchor activity. Thus anchoring a curriculum to both achievement and proficiency measures is likely viable to many education managers.

God bless 'em

[expatteacher1]

[parnett]

You sent me one message, Bura, and I promptly replied. Nowhere in your message were there any questions on curriculum and/ or track records. I suggest you look at your original mail.
I rarely start a new thread here at Dave's for a couple of reasons:
- The most simple thread will be parsed, analysed and then completely taken out of text. In my initial thread, I wrote that there were jobs available at my school. That's it. If you want the contact info, I will be back at school on Wednesday and will gladly give you the Head of the Department's email address so you can contact her about curriculum, track records, marketing etc. I am not a recruiter, nor will I be compensated for finding new teachers.
- Each time I post a new thread, after about three replies, someone will make a completely unrelated remark resulting in all further responses being completely off-topic.
If you are interested in the job, then p.m. me. If you are not, then please add your two cents to someone else's thread.

[buravirgil]

[parnett]

I see nothing wrong with putting your message here to solve the problem. Did you send me two mails because I fail to see any of your questions here?

I am writing in response to your post to ask a couple of questions and provide a few details about myself.

Is this the new international school?
http://www.teachenglishinchina.com/index.aspx?id=1206

I currently teach business English majors (five different subjects) at the East China Institute of Technology in Fuzhou City, Jiangxi Province.
http://www.ecit.edu.cn/english/about.htm

I am an American male, 47 years of age, with a BA in English (concentration in technical writing) and hold a TEFL certificate. I have designed coursework for both the IELTS and TOEFL, as well as integrated Bloom's taxonomy and the Common European Framework with coursework and curricular measures.

But I accepted a yearly contract mid-year, this past March. Its renewal is due after the coming Chinese New Year. I've never broken a contract and write to express an interest on the off-chance that, six months from now, a position might come available.

Thanks in advance for your consideration,

Bura Virgil Lawson

After I received your mail, I responded immediately stating the school would not hire anyone without the proper release papers. I'm sorry you didn't receive it.
This is a community forum as you mentioned. I apologize for my surliness. As for your questions, we have not graduated a senior class as of yet. Next year will be our first. They don't take the GaoKao. Like most Chinese schools, we are suffering from a lack of qualified teachers in the high school. There's a lot of pressure put on us by the administration and parents to help the students improve their TOEFL scores. Most teachers want no part of this situation.

[buravirgil]

[parnett]

A major problem is satisfying the parents who have absolutely no idea about TOEFL or SAT preparation. Some students last year left school in March to take special SAT classes. then flew to Singapore for the exam and did miserably. Others have taken special TOEFL classes and improved their scores somewhat. I believe the highest score at our school was 81. Of course, many parents believe that score, along with a plagiarized admissions essay and their money will get their child into Cornell, Stanford etc.
Several students have left our school for the Canadian International School, Maple Leaf. They feel the IELTS exam is easier, Canada is a bit safer and obtaining residency visas for themselves (and probably their families as well) would be less difficult.
To give you an idea as to how clueless the students and their parents are- last March I received a call from a student at midnight wanting to know what it would take for him to get into West Point!

[buravirgil]