Job Discussion Forums

happypanda · Joined: 27 Dec 2007 Posts: 2

Hello Everyone. Dajia Hao!

I have just returned home after a rather miserable experience in China. Now, don't get me wrong. I love China, especially Shanghai, but the school treated me very poorly. Dirty, lousy apartment! Mishandled pay! Poor working conditions! All this despite promises to the contrary. And this was a school run by people from Canada, so they should have known better.

Actually, I have had several jobs in China and my experiences were all good. And I would like to return. So I guess the question is this: how does one avoid walking into such a trap again?

I have thought about going private. What about some place like Wall Street English? I have heard the work in not exciting but the school is steady and reliable. Right now that sounds good to me.

vikuk · Joined: 23 May 2007 Posts: 1842

Several jobs in China, China experience - why the need to write this post????
Am I smelling spam?????

happypanda · Joined: 27 Dec 2007 Posts: 2

What the...?

This is definitely not a spam post.

I am honestly and legitimately asking for advice.

Anda · Joined: 16 Jan 2003 Posts: 2199 Location: Jiangsu Province

You have to take the good with the bad cause that is what happens in this game and I have been in it since 1990. You can get into a good place and then management might change and things go bad. You ask advice on somewhere and someone says go for it not knowing that management has changed. So is life.

clark.w.griswald · Joined: 06 Dec 2004 Posts: 2056

I don't think that there is any iron-clad way of ensuring that you have a good working experience in China. Of course research can help you avoid some obvious problem employers but cannot guarantee a problem free stay. No matter how good the school is you are almost guaranteed to face some problems. It is how you look at those problems and how you choose to deal with these problems that will dictate how much you enjoy your overall experience.

It is not about turning the other cheek and letting people walk all over you. But it is also not about jumping to conclusions that your employer is out to get you.

For example, you might be shortchanged on your pay one month. Some teachers would start stating that their school is dishonest, can't be trusted, and is out to get them. Fair enough, but I can't see how that kind of attitude is conducive to enjoying your time here. It seems to me that the better course of action would be to try to work out whether the problem was intentional or accidental and either way to pay close attention to that in the future.

Be reasonable in your expectations and don't allow the problems to get to you.

arioch36 · Joined: 21 Jan 2003 Posts: 3589

I have noticed that many schools tend to operate on 3-4 year cycles.

Something like this;
The school has bad teachers, lots of complaints. So they make an effort to pay more money, make the accomdations nicer, do more for the foreign teacher when they arrive, etc.
Then they start getting better teachers. By the second year the school starts telling themselves, "hey we are a good school, everyone wants to work here. We don't need to do anything extra to make good teachers want to work here."

Then the 3rd or 4th year, quibbling on every little thing. less support for the FT, and so on (and so on, that Chinese, ya know)
And then the good teachers leave,and they are back to where they were with bad teachers.

So some one says ... yeah, I worked their two years ago, it was pretty good... practically meaningless. Luck of the draw. Confused