Job Discussion Forums

[KWhitehead]

i worked at SDFTVC last year. it's in qingdao, which is a nice city, and the students were great. however, if you are preparing to work there, there are some things you should consider.

1. there are two campuses. you will live at the old campus near the centre of qingdao. however, most if not all of your classes will be at the new campus. you'll have to catch the 7:10am bus and (if you have a full day there), will get back at 4:30pm. there's a 2hr 20min lunch in the middle, which can be very trying since the new campus is quite far out of town and there's really very, very little to do there.

2. the quality of the students at the new campus is good. however, the quality of the students at the old campus is miserable. the ones at the old campus are kids who couldn't get into high school, but whose parents are paying for them to get schooled. they are (on the whole) rude and a real chore to teach. i saw chinese teachers crying because of the discipline. several FTs were threatened with bodily harm by a few of the students. i was not one of them, thankfully.

3. the school provides a book, but the book was written by the school's chinese teachers of english. i was given one day to revise it before it was published. of course, that was nowhere near enough, and they did not make all the revisions i requested. it's still quite full of chinglish. if you want to teach your own material, that is not acceptable, as the school sold the books to the students at about 18.50RMB a pop.

4. the apartments are acceptable, but in the winter when the students leave, the school will turn off the heating.

5. i wasn't paid for some of the work i did. not a huge deal, but just something you should know.

6. they may fire you at the drop of a dime. FTs are graded by their students, and if you have a series of bad reviews, they will fire you when you come to pick up your pay. they'll give you an extra thou or so, but you're given one week to vacate the apartment. the ones i knew who were fired were not approached by the admin prior to their dismissal to tell them about the bad reviews, so they did not have the chance to change their teaching styles.

7. the school has an agreement with a college in the USA -- two students from the american college come to SDFTVC for a semester and teach. they don't get paid as much as regular FTs, but they are allowed a lot more leeway. they can choose to follow teaching regulations or not. even if they get bad reviews or do not attend class regularly, (or, in the case of the students there when i was there, even if they get into fistfights with students, or have affairs with students) they will not be dismissed. i felt very bad for the Chinese students who were trying to learn.

8. people will enter your apartment when you are not in. in one case, someone stole two pairs of jeans from an FT's apt.

9. if you stay out after midnight, you will get a severe tongue-lashing from the guards. i did this twice. (it was the World Cup)

10. there is no medical coverage.

11. the WaiShi is a very, very lazy man. he will come up with any excuse not to help you. my boyfriend was the first FT to ask to transfer money to his UK account. the Waishi took him to the bank once to show him the way, then said they could do it together once my bf had prepared all the transfer info. the next week, he changed his mind, saying it was "policy" to only help with the bank once. if you ask for photocopies, give him about 2-3 days. another FT called the Waishi and said that he might have had a stroke. the Waishi did nothing to help. i often saw him watching TV in the guards' rooms.

12. there are about 6 FTs and 100 chinese teachers. during my tenure there, for the first semester and a half, only two chinese teachers would talk to any of the FTs. the last half-semester, more warmed up to me, but i found this to be very alienating. from what i heard, previous FTs at the school had been jerks, so now the chinese teachers don't trust any FTs. if you lose your passport or need any kind of assistance, as one FT did, they won't lend you assistance.

13. if you take a sick day, they will ask you to provide a doctor's note, even though the school doesn't provide insurance. if you don't provide a note, they will dock pay.

these things are really just frustrations, not major problems, but if they bother you, i wouldn't recommend going. if i hadn't been there with my partner, i think it would have been a lot harder on me.

[KWhitehead]

informative *bump* because they might be recruiting now.