Job Discussion Forums

[sharonariel]

Dear Ms. Elahw:

I've gotten your contact information from a person who happened to be on duty at the office. She's also given me an email address to which to copy the letter(s) that I send you.

I'm a teacher at the International School in Changzhou, and I teach Chemistry (I'm a MS Chemist) and Pure Mathematics 1, 2, and 3 (Chemistry degrees in the United States require additional mathematics modules, and those modules are taught in the Math Department).

The situation is regarding the Assistant Principal of the school, Xilef Il.

I should mention some things from the outset:

When I tried to get lots of information from Felix, he was not willing to provide it to me. It happened that I had to first visit the State Bureau of Foreign Experts (in Changzhou) in order to make some headway and then I had to visit a People's Advocate (found in a law office of some sort) to find out what company I was working for.

1. I asked Xilef for a copy of the stamped contract (since I reasoned that the SBFEA would not accept a copy from my email). He would not provide it.
2. I asked him for a copy of the standard Chinese contract (written by the SBFEA), and he would not provide that.
3. I asked him who was the head principal of the school (because I thought that the principal would have to mediate in this dispute since I cannot trust the Assistant Principal-- he is not an honest man, and I have had many occasions to witness examples to support this statement. ).

Other relevant details:

1. The first contract I signed with the school was for the second semester of the last term. There was another Chemistry teacher at the time, and I was to work with him and give the school a chance to observe my teaching and see if I was a match for the school. It seemed that there were no problems, and we signed another contract on May 18, 2010.

2. There is no foreign academic manager at this school, and we were told in a meeting that the school would not appoint one (the reason given was that the candidate--Tenaj Nyleve Nosigras-- was too old and needed to be protected from the rigors of such a job, but I can guess that they didn't have the budget for such a salary). They decided to split the position between two foreigners who already work in the office, but neither of them officially filled that position. (The assistant principal also mentioned that the municipal government had given the school a 1.6 million RMB advance to pay staff salaries.)

3. I have never missed one single day of work. I have been late to a few classes (by a few minutes), but nothing more serious than that.

On December 15, Xilef called me into his office and told me that he needed to address 3 points:

1. I did not offer the students moral education;
2. A few times I have been late for class (the teachers here only leave the office for the classrooms as the bell has rang);
3. I did not follow the syllabus of the course. (This is not true. I looked up the syllabus on the cie.org.uk website and copied one to my home computer. The syllabus is the book and the book is the syllabus. Xilef Il has since restricted my access to the website by canceling my account). He also said that he was giving me 45 days of notice of canceling my contract. (This is not correct according to the appendix of the contract, of which I later got a copy-- from another teacher.) He told me that I could have one day off to think about it, but would not allow me to have a copy of the contract or appendix-- nor the State Bureau of Foreign Experts contract that I had signed.

On December 17th, I came back to the school after a day off, and he had the security guard meet me at the gate and told me that I could sign a letter agreeing to his terms or he would cancel the contract on that same day. I signed the letter "terms accepted subject to internal consistency" (so as to be clear that "I only accept terms that fall within the guidelines of the contract-- he had not provided me with the contract at that point). He told me that that was not good enough, and I had to sign the letter in another way. The letter also had 10 points on which the contract was violated, even though the meeting only covered 3 points (so, I guess over the course of 24 hours, he had found 7 more points that he had not discussed with me). I had no way to verify what I was signing nor any choice but to sign something that may have been false. (Remember that at this point, I didn't know the information to contact the Beijing office.)

So, I signed the letter (without crossing out the first statement) and he allowed me onto school grounds. I later asked a member of the office staff for the contact information of the headquarters (because Xilef had told me that he was the boss of the school, the "老大") and that staff member went and told the Vice Principal of what I had asked. About 30 minutes later, he gave me a phone call and told me "You know that you are under severe investigation" and hung up.

So, I placed a call to the State Bureau of Foreign Experts, and they told me to come to the office that afternoon. (I sent Xilef a SMS telling him to keep his phone on in case the SBFEA needed to call him) I went, and they informed me that the section chief (局长) was in Guangzhou and would only be able to adjudicate the business one week later when he came back. At that moment, Xilef called me on the phone and asked me "Are you playing games? I am waiting for you in the office! The contract is terminated from this day, and I'm sending a letter to the SBFEA letting them know about your behavior!" It was at that point that I let him know that I was already in their office, and he hung up without another word. (It was after that that I was told that contracts that are written in English whose wording is not approved by the SBFEA in China are not recognized. I also may have heard-- if my Chinese is correct-- that schools cannot nullify any of the terms of the SBFEA's standard contract.)

The next Monday, I came to school, expecting to be turned away at the gate. But, nothing was said by the security guards. The principal would not answer any of my emails or text messages or make eye contact with me to let me know what was the situation.

Later, I went to see the principal of the school, and he told me that he was interested to mediate, but I have not seen him at the school since then nor has he contacted me on the number that I left for him. (I spoke to him in Chinese and told him that I would go away to prepare my words in Chinese to make sure that everything was clear.)
On Thursday, December 23, I was called by the SBFEA and told that they wanted to see me on Tuesday, 3pm of the following week (December 28th).

So, what am I asking you by telling all this?

1. Which contract is actually to be followed? The SBFEA contract or the English contract given by Changzhou International School?

2. In the event that the school has budget problems (nearly every computer/ door in this school is broken) and they wanted to find a Chemistry teacher for a lower price then I could have come to an honorable settlement if they just told me the truth. (My base salary is 10,000 RMB per month, plus 2,500 in overtime as a replacement for a science teacher that left one month into her contract, plus 1,500 as the apartment rental fee. A total of 14,000RMB. Apparently they have been trying to find science/subject teachers for 7,000, and that makes me twice as expensive as what they are willing to pay.)

3. In the event that the SBFEA contract is to be followed, I'd like to know who has the ability to actually negotiate on behalf of the school and who is honest (and so that precludes Xilef Il). There is a contract fine somewhere, if memory serves me correctly that has to be paid by the party that breaks the contract.

4. If there was a performance problem, then I can't imagine why the contract was ever renewed from the last semester. It is very convenient that the principal wanted to end the contract just as the semester finished.

5. I have not been able to look in the Cambridge website, but I have an idea that the principal is not to rewrite the teachers comments about the students. (My comments were fairly brief. They usually just include the student's rank in the class. Since the exams this time were made up off of problems that were taken directly from the book and that we had solved in class several times, I also included that statement.) Later, the unofficial foreign manager (this is ) told me that the policy was that we should write one positive comment and one negative comment. (I was not able to find this on the Cambridge Website, and since I have no access to the website anymore I have had to send them an email asking for clarification.) Is it really the policy of Cambridge to write one good comment and one bad? And, my reports were written in standard, respectful English. Can the Assistant Principal direct such changes (he sent me an email saying that if the students only heard bad things, they might "turn into bad people"-- and I can try to find this if you need it) and interfere in the evaluation process in that way?.

What ostensibly precipitated this situation was that I told the assistant principal that I would not give any weight to anything that was said by a teacher who was not qualified to teach Advanced Mathematics or Chemistry (Tenaj Nyleve Nosigras, the self described "matriarch of the school").

6. I'm also doing this so that there is some documentation as to the steps that have happened/ are happening in this process.

I'll have this letter translated into Chinese to send to the person to whom I was instructed to copy this email.

Thanks for your help in clarifying/ resolving these issues.