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[newrivertrain]

Well, I'm into my second (happy) month of a new job in Japan and this forum helped me so much with all the info. on schools to avoid that I thought I'd give my review on my old school in Prague. This'll be long but maybe it'll help someone down the line.

Anyway, I'd really hate it if this school was still prospering---what with the way they treat their teachers---and, surprisingly, no one else has left any comments (it's one of the smaller schools), so here goes:

The school's the Institut jazykov�ho vzděl�v�n�, or Institute of Language Education. ---And uh... well... don't work there!

But yeah, I guess a few schools get some unwarranted bashing so I'll give it to you simple and then you can check it out for yourself if you still want to interview with them.

To put it frankly, the owners (a brother-sister duo) are two of the... o.k., I'll leave the rough stuff out for now, but just saying "greedy" would be putting mildly.

How so, you ask? Well, if you're thinking of taking a job with them, just look at the contract. They have a sliding pay scale which looks pretty straight-forward (under 10 hours, 10-15 hrs, 20+, each with their own wage), but it breaks down like this: You work full time at 20 hrs/week, you get what turns out to be the average salary in Prague. You work under, you get what turns out to be a lower hourly wage (lower for the supposedly lazy, part-time teachers). Sounds decent so far? Well, it's not an hourly position and your hours go by the month, so say one student cancels and you end up with 79 hrs instead of 80. That one hour just cost you about 2500 kc. And what happens if you go over? You're working for 100 kc/hour. ...Anyway, guess this is going on for too long, but the jist of it is this: With that set up, they do whatever they can to either get you to work well over 20 hrs/week (some were doing 30 and getting paid 1000kc for those wonderful extra 10 hrs) or to make you miss that pivotal hour that bumps you up into the next pay scale (Mind you, this all happens after you sign that contract). And boy, I haven't seen their kind of sleazy practices in a while. Vacation days either count or don't count for hours depending on if it means less pay for you (each teacher was put on a different plan according to the conditions of that month they first took time off). And heaven help you on Christmas, because December and January, there's no way you're making any money. Pretty much, anything they could do, they would.

And there's more---like when they doctored one of my time sheets and added an extra 10 hrs to a student to try and get me in trouble. Apparently, they weren't happy about how I was always hitting my numbers and guessed foulplay on my part (well, they were right. If I went over my hours, I just wouldn't count some of my cancellations. What's $3 for me when it's $40 for a student I liked). Anyway, that backfired.

O.k., this thing is too darn long. But maybe it'll help if you're thinking about working for them. In the least, it'll get them (if they're reading this) to think up some new tricks to juice their teachers.

Hope the job hunt goes well! But since there are so many schools in Prague, there's nothing wrong with being a little picky.