Job Discussion Forums

[Roger]

I am writing this piece because in reply to a PM from someone in Shanghai, I told them to trust one guy, Kevin XU, who regularly plucks names from published CV's and offers them jobs in Foshan.
Kevin Xu is not a bad guy per se, but he is only an agent. It takes a little detective work to find out he is a staff at South China University (Huanan University). No doubt he is a teacher there, or possibly an ex-FAO. Read arioch36's piece on Anhui University...
I happen to know Foshan, and now, I know it even better, courtesy of Kevin Xu and the outfit that employed me for a while. The name of that joint is YAOBANG Training Centre. Don't be fooled - this is not a regular business. It is nothing but an office that loans expats to public schools. In other words: they have no work for you. They gather jobs which always are extacurricular English practicing jobs in primary schools.
There are two pitfalls here:
- Your work is extremely variable. Yaobang's clients enter into no
contracts, so there seldom is a continuous teaching at the same
school. Sometimes, you have twentyb periods a week, sometimes fewer.
- Since this business is not in a legal position to hire you on a work visa
you take upon yourself an enormous risk. It is greater than in an illegit
training centre because you are seen by many more clients, and you
spend a lot more time walking to and from client schools.
- Pay is negotiable, but if you work as a part-timer, be prepared for
being short-changed. Lessons can be cancelled while you are waiting
in their office to be ferried to a school. You lose the whole day!

Let me add that drilling oral English with teenagers is quite a challenge
for some, especially if you are a little inexperienced. I liked their kids, and this was reciprocal; however, in my six weeks there, two other expats came and left in a hurry. The first one was a guy that left after 5 days, disappointed by the housing arrangements for him. The second was an Aussie girl with Asia teaching experience. She lasted but 3 days, then she had a nervous breakdown because she couldn't handle those noisy and slightly naughty minors.
But even I had my unfair share of trouble with the soc-alled "headmaster" of that school: although he never was present in my classes, he admonished me to use the most moronic textbooks to drill English with those kids who were bored stiff from drill-reading pseudo-English texts with their Chinese English "teachers". I did other things with them, and they loved those things; the headmaster himself couldn't speak a single word of English - but he believed he could tell me how to teach English...

The training centre also reserves the right to require you to spend several hours a day in their office. It's almost like an 8-to-17 hours job.

Anyway, I want to undo the error of recommending Kevin Xu and Yaobang to those who PM'ed me a while back. I forgot your names.