Buxiban "full time"?

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

Can someone please clear this up for me? What constitutes “full time work” at a buxiban, really? I have heard usually officially full time is on average 18-25 hours. But this is not enough for most people and not enough to save – so people work at multiple buxibans or find extra work or tutor? Is this typical?

I would like to save at least a little bit for graduate school but I am actually happy and excited to know full time is only 18-25 hours a week. That is ideal for me as I’d like to have lots of time to do other things (volunteer, etc.)

Thanks again in advance. I really appreciate all the really helpful people on this forum! It is helping me so, so much! :slight_smile:

2

Full-time would be the minimum required to sponsor you for an ARC, so that is 14 hours. The exact number of hours you get will depend on your school and it will most likely fluctuate throughout the year. So, full-time really is whatever you boss decides it to be at any given moment.

3

[quote=“Jialin”]Can someone please clear this up for me? What constitutes “full time work” at a buxiban, really? I have heard usually officially full time is on average 18-25 hours. But this is not enough for most people and not enough to save – so people work at multiple buxibans or find extra work or tutor? Is this typical?

I would like to save at least a little bit for graduate school but I am actually happy and excited to know full time is only 18-25 hours a week. That is ideal for me as I’d like to have lots of time to do other things (volunteer, etc.)

Thanks again in advance. I really appreciate all the really helpful people on this forum! It is helping me so, so much! :slight_smile:[/quote]

I think you’re best off to think of it in terms of how you are paid. If it’s hourly, you aren’t full time. If you get paid for typhoon days and CNY, you are.

Examples of full time contracts I’ve had are:

27 contact hours, 3 admin. 60K. This is shit, btw!! And I had to wear a feckin business noose.

Morning/Afternoon kindy + 1 evening buxi (basically 8-6, M-F) 2 weeks paid vacation at CNY and 3 hots and a cheapish cot 14 steps from my classroom. 65K. Still shit.

10-5 at a desk and in the field, but also as needed on weekends and evenings which meant tons of O/T which I took in paid days off. 75K+ bonuses. Not bad.

25 contact hours (negotiated out the 5 office hours they originally wanted, got it scheduled to all happen in 3 and a half days in a row and took home 75K.

Getting an ARC full time criteria is a different horse. I think the minimum hours to be considered F/T is 14 per week with a salary of no less than 49K. These figures may have changed since I left the industry. I know lots of dudes that make in inxs of 100K working multiple jobs and/or steady privates. One famous flobster is rumoured to be amassing 46 contact hours a week these days. I don’t know how he finds time to put out his top shelf blog. Busiest guy in Taiwan maybe.

Everything is negotiable, so negotiate. And if you aren’t prepared to walk away from the table, you’re done.

4

Lots of people manage to save on the usual buxiban salary. Lots of others spend it all, especially if they drink.
And volunteering is not legal, last I heard. You need permission from the gov’t, just like with a paid job. If you’re caught, you can be deported. I’m guessing not-very-noticeable volunteering would be OK, just be careful.

5

By Western standards, you’d be right. In Taiwan, however, for English teaching work, “they” consider 14+ teaching hours/week “full time”.

6

By Western standards, you’d be right. In Taiwan, however, for English teaching work, “they” consider 14+ teaching hours/week “full time”.[/quote]
I really don’t know if that’s the case. The 14 hours is the minimum hours needed to successfully apply for an ARC. Fewer hours and no ARC.

I think foreigners use the term Full Time when it comes to getting the ARC for lack of a better term. :ponder:

7

Some will consider full time to be 14 hrs/wk like jd mentions. I consider 20+ to be full time personally. It should be noted that if someone was teaching 40 hrs/wk (considered full time in the west) they would likely be burnt out. I’m currently working 28 hrs/wk and that is enough. You need to remember that pretty much every job will have off the clock required tasks to be done. A certain amount of prep and grading comes with the territory. My current job has a very good system in place and I only put in an extra 45 min to 1.5 hrs/day.

People that say you need more than 18-25 hrs/wk to make ends meet have made spending a priority. You’re not going to be rich coming to Taiwan but you can live very comfortably on 18-25 hrs/wk of pay and save a little.

8

Thank you everyone for the info! Very helpful.

9

True

I do business English in people’s offices. For each hour of contact time, you can add at least an hour or two travel time round-trip. Then there’s prep and reporting time.

10

[quote=“Toe Save”]

27 contact hours, 3 admin. 60K. This is shit, btw!! [/quote]

It is all relative, mon frere.

Yeah, £10.60 per hour and a very healthy PPP. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=tw&v=67

Wanna swap a tank of petrol with me? :smiley:

11

[quote=“superking”][quote=“Toe Save”]

27 contact hours, 3 admin. 60K. This is shit, btw!! [/quote]

It is all relative, mon frere.

Yeah, £10.60 per hour and a very healthy PPP. http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?c=tw&v=67

[/quote]

That can’t be right, can it? $35,700 puts them above the UK. That’s over a million NTD a year, or 80k+ a month. Wow! And they’re always complaining me about how little they earn. I’ll have to use the PPP next time they come a whingin’ :slight_smile:

12

It also puts them over Japan. Comparisons using the ppp have their disadvantages too - they are not making NT80,000 a month; it just feels like it because things in Taiwan are relatively cheap, compared to Western countries and Japan.

13

I save here and hardly lift a finger. When rent and utilities are under NT10,000 monthly and living expenses average NT250 on the weekdays and NT1000 on the weekends, it’s not hard to see how easy it is to save.

But ESL instruction is a dead-end job, and it isn’t particularly motivating, even if you’re a language lubber like I am.

14

[quote=“ehophi”]

But ESL instruction is a dead-end job, and it isn’t particularly motivating, even if you’re a language lubber like I am.[/quote]
I think that when you are doing it your own way, it’s more than satisfying, financially and professionally. The kids we taught in afternoon ESL classes years ago are now in Jr/Sr high School and a very large majority of them are passing all their “big English Tests.” :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

I can’t say it enough to good teachers: open your own school. (If you’re not married and on a JVRC, get a Taiwanese teacher and partner up). Keep it small. Have a ball. :bouncy:

15

Which is what the PPP is. The goods in your basket are relatively cheaper than the goods in my basket. You earn less but you spend much less. You being the Taiwanese. You the ex-pat school teachers probably have the best PPP in the world. :astonished:

Sure you can look at Guinea being above Germany and say that the system is skewed, but that’s a rare example. People in Taiwan do live quite well, and have a healthy standard of living. Maybe they aren’t jetting around the world, but they aren’t dying through poverty and starvation. Pensioners in the UK regularly drop dead because they can’t afford to heat their homes.

16

[quote=“jdsmith”][quote=“ehophi”]
But ESL instruction is a dead-end job, and it isn’t particularly motivating, even if you’re a language lubber like I am.[/quote]
I think that when you are doing it your own way, it’s more than satisfying, financially and professionally. The kids we taught in afternoon ESL classes years ago are now in Jr/Sr high School and a very large majority of them are passing all their “big English Tests.” :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

I can’t say it enough to good teachers: open your own school. (If you’re not married and on a JVRC, get a Taiwanese teacher and partner up). Keep it small. Have a ball. :bouncy:[/quote]

I teach my own way and choose most of the materials that my place uses, but don’t think it’s very stimulating or interesting work. I have a cycle of assignments, grading, and so forth that measure and reward progress straightforwardly, and the rest of the work is pretty brainless. I spend more time teaching kids to be self-directed. They learn the language through their own effort. I spend most of my downtime tinkering on a computer program that would render my own job and the entire private language instruction industry obsolete, save for a babysitting service, so reflecting on the need for my presence in a classroom is demotivating in itself.

I don’t know whether I’m a good teacher. Parents and other adults like me because I don’t act like a jerk-off clown, but students don’t like me at first because I don’t act like a jerk-off clown. They all think that I work hard because I use a lot of technology to assist the students (though I just give them scraps of more substantive work that I do in my free time), but students don’t care much about that. The students only like me when I give them prizes or don’t give them work, and I don’t really take much interest in the children in any longitudinal or personal sense (as in, I don’t wonder what happens to students after they leave, and I don’t want them to see me as their pal). I tell the students that my goal is for them to be sufficiently fluent in the language so that they can move on with their lives and never have to see me or another English teacher again.

The only thing that I really can’t control is the class placement. Kids of different skills are ordered by age, not by ability, and that’s a bit aggravating, since I design all tests and assignments by the difficulty of the course’s materials.