Job Discussion Forums

[esbam2002]

I wouldn't say my classes at IPS were that bad, though I was yelled at for trying to use supplemental material to help the students improve their grammar. I had written an e-mail to the teacher manager at the Cao Thang campus, Ms. Doan, about the students low grammar abilities. The response I got was that was the job of the Vietnamese teacher, we will forget that for months it was my job to teach everything to follow the idea that we are nothing more than scapegoats to blame when something fails, and that I could though try to fit it in with my normal classes and prepping students for their flyers test. The only time I had available was when I was doing the test prep, so I did the prep while my TA went over the grammar activities I had made copies of for the students, all of which was done at my expense, all 100 copies. After the second day of it my TA told me that Ms Doan ordered her to stop doing the grammar exercises, as Ms Doan �Didn�t see the logic in it.� I was though logically blamed for the low weekly test scores caused by poor grammar abilities. The whole place is micro managed to the lowest degree by people who listen to nothing told to them by the foreign teachers actually in the classrooms, but who think they know everything sitting in their offices pushing pencils.

God help you if they have a personal problem with you, as again they will make things up to in some lame way justify what they are doing. I lost track how many people look at me dumb founded asking how they could fire me for not having a work permit, when all my documents were legalized and finished, and all they had to do was sign and stamp the application form. I am sure it had to do thought that I was using actual Vietnamese labor laws and had a lawyer getting me an IPS work permit, outside of IPS, and if this happened they would have no control over the work permit once finished. That�s the level of problems you put up with though, and, as stated, they want to control everything, even your work permit if you are blessed enough to get one from the school with their name on it. As for pay I never knew anyone there that was making over 380,000 VND per hour, even though they claim 500,000 for a teacher with an IPS work permit. Admittedly though out of like 8 native speaking foreign teachers there only one got a �prized� IPS work permit, though on this topic I refer people to my first post above on this topic, on 27 May 2011.

Short story is the school is corrupt, even the lawyer I had working on my work permit said they, specifically Ms Doan, act like they are mafia in their behavior. One meeting with them and my lawyer really stopped doing anything for me against the school....this should tell people something about IPS/AHS and the owners. The level of problems, threats, intimidation, small petty things they think up to harass you, unprofessionalism, and racist discrimination from the managers all the way up to the owners against foreign teachers really doesn�t make the schools worth working at. All my friends here that worked for them told me the same things before I started. I saw what they were talking about. IPS/AHS doesn�t care about you as a teacher, you are just a marketing tool and a scapegoat to blame for their own incompetence, and they don�t care about the students�.only the money they get from both.

[Beautiful Loser]

[Beautiful Loser]

[esbam2002]

In all fairness, since I feel that it has to be fair despite how the school behaves, I left IPS last May and I have to disagree with how you stated that the classes were run. I had grade 3 and 4 math, and grade 5 English classes in the morning and afternoons. My classes had about 20 students each, not any different from a classroom size in the US. I was given the books and materials needed to teach the classes that I had, unlike VA Schools, in Dist 11, who makes you buy the books you need from them, and you can�t get any money back on a return at the end of the school year. Never did I have to stand in the front of the class and write a few simple sentences and just have the students repeat. Obviously there is some of that for pronunciation, but that was all. Maybe about 50-60% of my 30 minute class time was used in talking to my students and joking around, but they were speaking English so I accepted it.

As for discipline I had only one class that was a problem, that the school didn�t care about and every teacher, even the Vietnamese, complained about them, but even they were not much of a problem. I could solve most issues there by having the students stand, at times the whole 30 minutes, or write punishment lines x25, x50, or x100 as my teachers did to me in the US. I was though never drowned out by the students, but I was active in the discipline. I have to say though that all my classes, for the most part, my students were great, communicative, curious, and were the best part of the hell on earth school, as one of my TAs put it before she was harassed out of the school. I still have e-mail and yahoo contact with some of them, have been told by several of them, and my second TA that they miss me there, and was told one even cried when she found out I wasn�t going to teach their class anymore.

As for teaching issues, this was a huge problem and I disagreed often with what I was ORDERED under threat of my job to do there. Example is the flyers speaking test prep that I was told to do. It really wasn�t a speaking preparation, but rather a reading and memorization practice. I addressed to the teacher manager several time that the students were having problems with this mainly in the area of grammar and structure when speaking, to which I was ignored but blamed for the lack of grammar abilities. I advised Ms Doan that the students were not speaking, but rather reading off the paper only, and was told �I don�t care I only want to know how many students did you finish� showing no concern at all for the students English abilities. I advised her as well that some students that were going to take the flyers test had no English abilities at all, her response was having my TA tell them what to say before seeing me, as well as my other low speaking students. My suggestion of one week practicing, and the next week spent reviewing grammar, and how to say things was rejected every time. The time I made the blasphemous suggestion that my students actually study at home, you would think I peed in Ms Doan�s rice soup. They as well insisted in the idiotic idea of memorized teaching. Just keep repeating topics over and over until the students have it memorized, though maybe not understand, even after I proved, after a challenge by Ms Doan, that study and learning is faster and more efficient. It seemed to me at IPS the more you cared about the students and tried to help them, the more the management and owner hated you, and seemed to be in a personal conflict with you like you were a threat to them.

This is one thing that I hated most about the school is their complete lack of care for the students. Unprofessionalism and racist discrimination against you as a foreign teacher is bad enough, but they have no care about anything but the money. They don�t care about the quality of education, and they don�t care about what they do that hurts the students. Again the IPS/AHS mafia doesn�t care about foreign teachers, or even the Vietnamese staff, and they don�t care about the students, just the money they get from them.

[Beautiful Loser]

Actually, I never considered the fact that there are no counselors (that I know of) at their schools. One could argue that there should be, but the lack thereof is par for the course.

http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/Social-Isssues/212239/Violence-suicides-prompt-call-for-social-workers-in-schools.html

It seems like they'd have them after such a tragic incident, but it is AHS/GAIE (The Group of Asian International Education) that we're talking about here. The only regret they probably have is the tuition that was lost.

[Beautiful Loser]

[justanuglypinoyteacher]

i applied for work there too. one look at my face and i was led out...lol. First qualification to become one of their teachers (very necessary) is that you have to look like foreign. i had the bad luck of looking like Vietnamese. it doesn't matter if you have no degree in teaching. I have a masters degree that they didn't even care to check.

[esbam2002]

I had a friend get the same treatment. She lived, grew up, and speaks prefect British English, and has years of experience teaching kids. IPS showed her the door without many words though because her family ancestry is Chinese. This attitude is common in schools here though, and can't be put only on IPS/AHS, that they want white round eyed native speakers, since this is what the students want, and the schools want their money. I would only question IPS/AHS in this based on all the Filipinos and Indians they have working there, that they get cheap, and do everything that that they are told out of fear of loosing their job at the school. When I left Cao Thang half the foreign teaching staff at the primary school was Filipino, and the parents were complaining about this a lot, as I was told.

[justanuglypinoyteacher]

they'd complain if you are Filipino, but they'd think they'd get better English from a Jamaican...lol.

one experience i had that i couldn't forget in Vietnam was being made to take a test for grade 2 students. (i was thinking perhaps they wanted me to check the grammar of their test) i was in a room filled with Vietnamese teachers who spoke perfectly good English. it was a very boring test. i finished first and was led to a separate room and was told to wait there for my interview. i sat in front of an Irish guy who was filling out an application form - same thing i did 2 weeks before getting the notice to take an exam. He was interviewed first. tsk.

i don't hate Vietnam. I don't hate any country or any particular group of people. i am just a teacher and everything for me is a learning experience.