Best School for Chinese Director / Manager

I am a regular poster. I have created a new ID for privacy reasons.

My manager will be leaving my school soon. She and I get on well (no smart coments!) and she has asked me to enquire which schools (if any) she should bother her arse to apply to. I say “bother her arse” because she would quite happily give it all up tomorrow. However, she is an ex-teacher herself, and is an excellent manager (in terms of dealing with the foreign teachers, and the BS from head office {it is a chain}).

The school is an “American” style chain school consisting of kindergartens and elementary school age classes.

As a foreign teacher, I have no idea about terms and conditions for Chinese teachers, and wonder do any of you lot. My manager’s English is excellent and she knows a great deal about second language acquisition. She is also very down to earth, and understands and sympathises with concerns foreign teachers at my school have raised about curricular issues. She leaves the school on good terms, and has given generous notice, and indeed has been asked to stay on.

In my opinion it would be a terrible waste if she were to leave the industry altogether, and I have a feeling she would like to continue as a school manager in different circumstances. She has asked me for advice and I would like to be able to give her advice, but unfortunately I am in the dark in this regard.

I am aware she has contacts in the industry, but they would appear to be leading to “more of the same”.

In short, I have an excellent and successful manager, and I would like to help her find a new job. I should stress that I have been in Taiwan quite a while, am not a wide-eyed moron, and would not be going to all this trouble if this were not an exceptional manager.

Thanks in advance

Anonymouse

I would suggest staying away from chain schools…she doesn’t sound like a “Yes” person.

The name of the game these days is “An Ching Ban”. I would suggest that she find a school that specializes in this market. Extremely difficult to manage, but if you do it right then the money flows. She would also be on the cutting edge of where the ESL market is going. Look at trends in education here and then find a school that is also looking at those trends.

Let’s face it, most schools that are worth anything teach pretty much the same thing. Level 1…learn your ABCs, color, numbers, blah, blah, blah… with her talents, she might want to find a place that does something more. If she is as good as you say she is, then she would meet her potential in a smaller school (should be foreign owned) that is flexible and open to the idea of doing something different.

Parents need/want/looking for basically three things. 1.) An ESL school that shows tangible results. Like that f@@king Cambridge test (“I paid money for these English classes and I want to see a score that shows that my child is actually learning. I also want my child to attend such-and-such test because my neighbor’s child is also attending.”). 2.) Then there are immersion programs. These schools usually cater to the moneyed people or folks who enjoy pissing contests with their family and friends. I personally am all for immersion programs, BUT not at the cost of neglecting the child’s mother tongue. Many immersion programs teach math. Fine, that’s great, but how many foreign teachers know how to teach math the way the public schools do? Example: how would you write the question; 7 boxes of apples with each box having 5 apples? 7x5 or 5x7? So many times I have had a child come into my school who spoke beautiful English but was totally unprepared for first grade in the public schools.

I would suggest that your friend find a school thats runs things a third way. And yes, there is a third way, but I don’t want to take the fun out of finding out! :sunglasses:

Anyways, really didn’t answer your question as to what specific school your friend should look at, but perhaps this thread will help her for what kind of school to look for. Best of luck in her job hunting.