Job Discussion Forums

[natty1810]

I've been offered a teaching position at Shane English in Dongying.

Has anyone out there had experience with this school?
What are your opinions of the city.

Is there an expat community I can hook up with?

The job offer is the best of the ones I have so far. Any comments would be great.

Thanks.

[Lorean]

I worked for their Beijing branch.

Everyone hated them. Teachers, parents, and contracted schools.

We started with 14 teachers. Four teachers pulled a runner within the first two months, another two resigned their contracts to find better jobs. On top of that, the DOS resigned after only having worked their one semester!

Basically, they lie to everyone. Teachers, parents, and schools. They are also very bad at it. For example, once when they had to shuffle schedules around, they told one of my class' parents that I had gone back to Canada. As it turns out, my old class was put in with a different teacher across the hall from where I was teaching my new class at the same time! Their parents were not too impressed.

Here's another example. Because one teacher gets pissed drunk every Saturday night, he often 'cancels' his Sunday classes by simple not showing up. Well, I had to pick up his slack a few times, but there's one problem: we both have class at the same time.

Shane logic works like this: he has a class of 14 students, I have a class of 5 students. So call up my students (lie) and tell them I'm sick, and instead make me teach his class... and tell me (lie) that my students all call in sick!

I was there for only 5 months. During that time, one class of parents got together unanimously decided to discontinue paying for classes, Beijing Normal University terminated their contract, Shangdi elementary school decided to withhold their payment until the end of the semester to ensure that the contract was fulfilled.

Oh yeah, I also spent about 15 hours in Beijing traffic every week, driving to the extremities of Beijing. My favorite was Monday, Wednesdays and Thursdays where I spent 2 hours in traffic each day to teach 1.5-2 hours of classes courses.

[The Great Wall of Whiner]

I know people who worked there.

The last DOS that I remember was a kid in his early 20's. He got the position mostly because he picked up the Chinese language rather quickly and did all sorts of things that made the boss happy.

I seem to recall a lot of real young people working there (like 18-20 year olds) so I don't know if they are actually looking for experience, or simply a white face that is young enough to be molded into whatever fashion they wish.

I also know that the salary and benefits were lower than the EF in Dongying.

Good luck.