My Very Own Blacklist

I am putting together  a list of companies and schools NEVER to work for in China. This is based on my own experience with the organizations, as well as a handful of people I trust who have had verifiably awful run-ins with their place of employment. I won't put it up on the Net, but I will have it as a handy-dandy reference tool.

If you are considering taking a job in China as "an English Teacher" and you are NOT going to be working for a proper school --ie, International School of Beijing, Western Academy, BISS---send me your contact info and I will relate to you what I know about your future place of employment, or if possible, put you in touch with people who have worked there or are working there now.  You can take my word for it or leave it, it's up to you. If you are a properly certified teacher going to work for a proper school--the aforementioned--then no worries, as they are legitimate enterprises who know how to recruit, hire, and settle in new staff (and do it beautifully.)

But if you're going to some place you read about on Craig's List, or something of that ilk, let me give you an example of a tragedy that could have been avoided (had someone paid any attention whatsoever): an acquaintance had my contact info but did NOT contact me, came to China to "teach English" and found herself stuck in a distant city without working papers, under contract for the most punitive schedule I have ever seen, and being "home-stayed" with a family that expected her to sleep on the sofa while they stayed up all night playing cards, smoking,  and talking on the phone. She was expected to give English lessons on demand to anyone who walked into their house--for free, as partial payment for her share of the rent, and to pose for pictures on demand with anyone who asked for it--smiling and doing that horrid two-finger v thing the locals find so damned adorable.  She was told repeatedly she'd get paid after a month--one month came and went--no money. After two months, she finally got ahold of a mutual friend in China via email (she borrowed a student's phone) and said friend scooped in and extracted her like a watermelon seed. The family she was staying with demanded 6,000 RMB in "rent" for two months of living on a sofa (rent in that city is closer to 800 RMB for a two-bedroom apartment) and tried to hold the girl's suitcase and belongings. The police were called, at which point the school backed off because it turns out they had never processed any of the girl's paperwork, she was not legally entitled to work, and the paperwork allowing her to stay in that apartment had never been filed with the local police station. Who's in trouble now with the coppers, the girl or the school? I leave it to you to guess.

I have tremendous respect for the laws regarding employment, residence, and taxes, and legitimate employers will jump through the requisite hoops to hire legally. Schools and "consultancies" which are out to make a quick buck will not, and you, the foreigner, are at the mercy of the law if any issues are not resolved legally and cleanly. Because education is a venture with very high returns, extremely unscrupulous people, often foreign people with Chinese wives, or overseas Chinese, enter the business with no knowledge of business or education or language acquisition, and they make a fortune exploiting their clients and teachers. Trust me--I worked for a place for 300 bucks A MONTH and later found out they were billing my clients over 200 USD per hour--of which I received about four bucks. The "free" accommodation was in incredibly bad shape, they never gave me a telephone, or furniture for that matter, and I slept on a mattresson the floor. I am embarrassed to tell you how long it took to extricate myself from that mess. If only I had known...but I didn't and I let myself get thrown to the local wolves.

If you are coming here to teach, for goodness sake, do some research, contact people, network! Just because your first job offer doesn't pan out does NOT mean you shouldn't come out here--it just means you have spared yourself some unpleasantness and that leaves you open to the possibility of working somewhere decent and having an interesting time of it. There are a lot of smaller schools and agencies which will work you hard but treat you fairly, and it is very possible to walk into one of these situations and walk out at the end of a year having had a good time. Knowledge is power: use the internet to make your life easier. Remember--it's there for you to read AND share.  

English Teachers Wanted, Dumb A%$es Need Not Apply

I am, like most of my friends, a professional English teacher. I teach English as a Second Language in the US and Canada, and English as a Foreign Language in other countries, including China. For this I have basic teaching certification, an ESL endorsement, and not one but two Master's degrees in the field. I've worked in many countries in many different situations: universities, cram schools, private tutoring centers, high schools, grade schools, and so on.

However, this is a field filled with imposters, and in China, there are virtually no standards laid down by the government as to who can teach. An 18-year-old recent high school graduate was offered THE SAME JOB I HAVE at the SAME HOURLY SALARY. (Technically, he SHOULD be a college graduate, but someone pulled some strings.) He's perhaps six months older than one or two of the students. He showed up for work yesterday and I thought he was an exchange student at the school--we have a few of those. Our Program Director spoke highly of him: they hired him because he can speak some "very good Chinese" and can therefore "explain what is meaning" to students. I sat in shock. I know the kid they hired. His Chinese is limited to negotiating for cheap beer and smokes, and he can't tell you in English, let alone Chinese, what a verb is. ("I don't know, it's like, grammar, or something?" he responded when my tart-tongue boss asked.)

Who else applied? A fifty-year-old person I know who has two Master's degrees, teaching certification,  a CELTA certificate from Cambridge University, and FLUENT CHINESE. Needless to say, this person isn't as "cute" as the blonde surfer dude, although a point in her favor is that she doesn't have acne. At a Quiz Night a few weeks ago--when I met Surfer Dude--he told me he was planning on taking some "high-paying" teaching job for a month or two to get enough money to "do" South-East Asia because it had, like, culture, and the grass was really cheap. (Hey, there's a winner for you!) Now, I could tell my boss that, or I could just wait for the fall-out... 

Several of my friends who teach are facing a similar problem: a LOT of people quit during the long holiday and schools are scrambling to replace them with any white body they can find, qualified or no. My friend Suzie Q, who will kill me if she reads this, found out last night that they lost half their department. As she said to me on the phone--between sobs and fits of anger--- "If they expect me to whip a decent curriculum OUT OF MY ASS with NO PLANNING TIME and without so much as a full set of textbooks, they are frickin' DREAMING!" And yet--Surfer Boy walked into his classrooms that day completely unprepared, told the students to look up words in a dictionary and write the meaning in Chinese, and his students obeyed, enchanted. Afterwards, they snapped pictures of him with their cell phones. Curriculum? Just play games. Scope and sequence? Just play games. Vocabulary? That's what dictionaries are for, right? He's there for the photo op.

 There's a lesson here: good schools with good management can retain their staff throughout the contract period, no matter how unhappy the staff might be. If a teacher decamps without warning, it's a sign that something seriously wrong is going on. If you are stepping into a position that has been suddenly vacated, don't tap dance through the minefield. Stroll. Quietly. Collect your pay. Don't make eye contact. Get out while you still have a soul. Then send me an email and tell me why and how you quit. Did you make it through the contract period?

UPDATE: Hooray, hooray, Chinese public schools in  major cities now require teachers to have degrees and many require teaching certification! I had a degree in English but no teacher training when I started out and I was AWFUL. Thank God I was only teaching adults conversational English--no damage done to kids.  Teacher training helps the teacher to do the job.  Would you want to go see a doctor who had never gone to medical school? Would you send your kid to one? Bless China for upping the standards.