Job Discussion Forums

[Egas]

Geez this country is strange sometimes! I've been hunting around for a job for a few weeks, and sometimes it's hard to make any sense of who these schools are or what they want. For example:

The other day I got phone call that went something like this:

Young Chinese guy: Hello I am Robert Somebody's colleague. Do you want the teaching job?
Egas: (puzzled: who the Hell is this Robert guy?) Yes, I am looking for a job.
YCG: So and so school need new teacher. Are you want this work?
E: Where is the school?
YCG: I'm sorry, I am not sure.
E. Well, what age group are the students?
YCG: Sorry, I don't know.
Silence for a while
YCG: If you want job I will tell school and they will give you job. Do you want the job?
E. (becoming frustrated) How can I say if I want the job when I know nothing about the school or where it is? You will need to tell me more.
YCG: Ah...OK. I will tell the school. They will call you if they want. Bye.

I never heard from him or the school again! Honestly some Chinese are like Children. They know nothing about their position, have no discernable skills and don't have the ability to think situations through logically.

Case two: Here in Beijing I sent my CV away to a certain school at the same time as a firend of mine. He is a shy 60 year old Canadian guy with no teaching qualifications or experience. I'm a 37 year old teacher with 13 years of teaching experience, incl. head teacher and DOS experience, with full teaching qualifications, an honors degree and a half-finished PhD in education (studying part time). Who do you think got the job? Well it wasn't me! Try and figure that one out! And after a few days on the job it looks like they are going to fire my friend because he doesn't know what the hell he is doing. They just threw him in the classroom with no training or instructions, just a couple of books. Now the students are complaining. What the hell do they expect?

Now I hear a rumor that the reason I didn't get the job was that I do not look old enough! They want guys who look like professors - old with glasses! I look too much like a jock, apparently, being tall and athletic looking!

So for those thinking of coming to China to teach ESL, just keep in mind that teaching is really not what you are doing half the time. You are just filling an image requirement!

[MonkeyKing]

Frustrating, isnt it?
However, a lot of Western universities now send EFL teachers to their 'partner' Chinese academic institutions (it's big business nowadays, student trafficking!), and when hiring is done abroad by the foreign university, they tend be a bit more logical about it...maybe you could look into some of those programmes, I've found they tend to be advertised in home papers and job sites rather than sites like this, though. On the other hand, depending on whether the programme is hands on or hands off, you may find yourself pretty much abandoned once you are in place anyway...

[NumberOneSon]

[Roger]

It's best to be legal and to hold down a job with a regular school, i.e. a public institution. SOme are tolerant of your freelancing activities (though it is strictly illegal).
What very commonly happens is that training centres enrol students for a new class WITHOUT first hiring a teacher. If they find enough students, a mad scramble begins to find the nice round-eyed person to be placed in front of the class.
It goes without saying that they don't have any clues as to what's important on the education side of you; you don't fit into their planning, and you don't know what is being expected from you.
If they are lucky to find someone in time for the new class, they may terminate him as soon as they hear bad comments about him; then they will replace him with another round-eyed person.
I have been in classes that had seen three expat teachers in just 5 weeks!

And, of course, many of them want you to commit yourself, but you will most likely be ignored on the day when you thought a new class begins - and the students have not been recruited.