Chu-Lin Elementary School

[cipos]

Three former teachers, including myself, have worked at Chu-Lin. We were taking a class and found out that we had all worked there. Some interesting things that we found out are that they lie and cheat the foreigners who work there. The promise them 12-month contracts for the second year, but for the first year, they can only give them a 10-month contract. At the end of the first year, they are told that they can only give them another 10-month contract.

In addition, throughout the year, the teachers are debased in the classroom because there is no support for them. I mean that they are literally asked to ‘babysit’’. The students can ‘shoot the finger’ at the teacher and it’s merely laughed at by the other teachers. They are not given any curriculum to follow or do. The reason behind this is that at the end of the year, they need a reason not to renew their contracts for 12 months.

They also deduct from 2,000 - 5,000 dollars from their pay and sometimes refuse to give it back at the end of the contract.

The interesting part of this is that the school has a foreigner doing all the dirty work for them. He helps them lie and cheat the other foreigners so that he will get a bonus at the end of the year.

Conclusion: It’s a real dirty school and something needs to be done to warn other foreigners about this school. We also agree that this foreigner who is helping them deserves to be deported.

Anybody have any suggestions!

[GuyInTaiwan]

Where is this school located, so people will know?

[quote=“cipos”]The interesting part of this is that the school has a foreigner doing all the dirty work for them. He helps them lie and cheat the other foreigners so that he will get a bonus at the end of the year.

We also agree that this foreigner who is helping them deserves to be deported.[/quote]

People who exploit their own in a foreign land are the lowest form of life. I sympathise with you entirely. I’ve been on the receiving end of that crap a couple of times and it totally sucks to be betrayed by people who you would think might have experienced how it is to be out on a limb already in a foreign land.

[cipos]

Yung-ho

[CraigTPE]

I’m very surprised to hear that.

For 4 years, I worked at ChuLin jr/sr high. It’s owned by the same family as the elementary school, but they don’t hire their foreign teachers directly. They get them from TLI. For the most part, I thought it was the best place I’d ever worked in Taiwan. I had a fairly free reign, chose my own material, had full support of the homeroom teachers and the local English teachers and we were welcomed at all the special events the company did for the teachers.

The only reason I left was due to some changes that resulted in a feud they had with TLI. It cut my hours by about 20%, which as a matter of principle I wouldn’t accept, not after 4 years.

If I understand correctly, to work at the elementary, since they hire direct, you have to have an open work visa, right? They don’t want to bother with the paperwork to get you a visa, or so I was told.

[cipos]

That’s right for the most part. They use JFRV holders except for two of their teachers, which teach illegally.

The high school is a totally different matter than the elementary. When we got the job, we thought their was something strange when the wanted to deduct 5,000 out of our salaries each month. Our question was “if it were such a great school, why would they need to stoop to such low tactics?” The fact was that our positions were cycled each year. To paraphrase this, they simply changed teachers every year and lied to each and every one of them about their contracts. Fortunately, the good teachers that interviewed there this year simply walked out when Chu-Lin wanted a security deposit. We were tricked because a foreigner there promised us that everything was OK.

I would like to add some more interesting facts. About three months into the contract, they added an extra contract, a supplement, which we refused to sign. We basically told them it was illegal. In the end, the matter was dropped. However, they didn’t want to follow their contract and give us our vacation time. We argued with them, and they gave us a couple more days, but they also tried to play games with this.

After all of this, we thought it was just us. However, we met three additional former teachers who basically said the same thing as we did, so it looks to us that this is the way they operate.

Their operation is an old scam. The foreigner plays your friend and they act like your enemy. He says not to worry and that he can help you. Actually, he was just working for them. This is a common scam. We conducted some tests and found this was true. Fortunately, I recognized the scam early on, but the other foreigner didn’t and they really screwed him. He did everything they said. He did extra work with no pay, said yes to everything, and almost got down on his knees and washed their feet. At the end of the affair, they wouldn’t even say thank you to him. He was taken all the way. For a while, he couldn’t accept it. It looked as if he was in denial. When everything finally hit him, depression set in. Even though I tried to warn him, he couldn’t accept anything that I said. It was too much for him to believe that people could be so low. It is wrong to steal, but it is totally wrong to kick a person in the teeth when he’s down; it’s almost evil. Ok, they got their money; they should have let him go, but they didn’t. They just kept on dogging him and pounding him. He kept trying harder to please them so that he could have a month off in the summer to see his family.
Really, it’s just too much.

[CraigTPE]

@cipos

However, they didn’t want to follow their contract and give us our vacation time. We argued with them, and they gave us a couple more days, but they also tried to play games with this.

Paid vacation? We never got that at the jr/sr high school. We were paid per class hour.

[GuyInTaiwan]

@cipos

Their operation is an old scam. The foreigner plays your friend and they act like your enemy. He says not to worry and that he can help you. Actually, he was just working for them. This is a common scam.

We have this situation at our work (a junior high school). There is a guy who started working in the middle of last year. There are a couple of us who have seniority (including me) who are very well liked by the school (including me). However, the agency basically put him there as a plant. When we were doing the contract negotiations at the end of the year (our contract ends in December), the three of us who were senior to him wrote a list of things we wanted to discuss/negotiate with our agency. The agency said he was in charge of the negotiations and we should go to him (and he’d been at our work for all of five months at that point), and then he would submit our ideas to the agency. We weren’t too happy about that, and in our group meetings, he just kept telling us we couldn’t do this or we couldn’t ask for that. He’s been like that ever since. Those of us who have been here since last year know not to trust him at all. We’ve seen and overheard him relaying things that we’ve said to each other to the people from the agency when they’ve come here.

Amongst other things, this is a very big reason why I won’t renew my contract. When I started here at the beginning of 2008, I was number eight in seniority. By the end of the year, I was number two. Currently, there are only two of us who have been here more than a year. By the end of this year, including me, this school will have lost at least five teachers. We’ve already lost three this year. We lost eight last year (that’s a 100% turnover in one year).

[Friedrice]

Unfortunately I was caught by this lie. When I asked them about it yesterday they said…
–>This is the chairman’s policy. Out principle misunderstand the chairman’s meaning. If you can finish second contract and perform very good, the chairman will give you 12-month pay in the third year.
Now I have a contract and ARC with them. :fume:

[cfimages]

@cipos

The promise them 12-month contracts for the second year, but for the first year, they can only give them a 10-month contract. At the end of the first year, they are told that they can only give them another 10-month contract.

I thought, (and it’s not an area I work in so could be wrong), that 10 month contracts were standard in elementary schools. After all, there’s no school during July/Aug. They give 12 month ARC for 10 months work.

In addition, throughout the year, the teachers are debased in the classroom because there is no support for them. I mean that they are literally asked to ‘babysit’'.

Par for the course. Foreign teachers are selling/advertising points for the school. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll actually teach (as we know it in the west).

They are not given any curriculum to follow or do.

A good teacher would love that - a perfect opportunity to introduce the kids to something useful.

They also deduct from 2,000 - 5,000 dollars from their pay and sometimes refuse to give it back at the end of the contract.

For what? Tax, maybe?

The interesting part of this is that the school has a foreigner doing all the dirty work for them. He helps them lie and cheat the other foreigners so that he will get a bonus at the end of the year.

People are people. Some are honest, some dishonest. Doesn’t matter where they are from. Would it be better if it were a local Taiwanese person doing this “dirty work”?

Conclusion: It’s a real dirty school and something needs to be done to warn other foreigners about this school. We also agree that this foreigner who is helping them deserves to be deported.

Deported for what?

[GuyInTaiwan]

@cfimages

I thought, (and it’s not an area I work in so could be wrong), that 10 month contracts were standard in elementary schools. After all, there’s no school during July/Aug. They give 12 month ARC for 10 months work.

It’s a way for them to get out of paying for holidays, which is a usual benefit of being employed by a “real” school here.

Par for the course. Foreign teachers are selling/advertising points for the school. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll actually teach (as we know it in the west).

Of course, but it’s still counter-productive in attracting and retaining teachers here.

For what? Tax, maybe?

There shouldn’t (currently) be any tax for elementary school teachers. It sounds like they’re trying to pull a fast one.

People are people. Some are honest, some dishonest. Doesn’t matter where they are from. Would it be better if it were a local Taiwanese person doing this “dirty work”?

It’s always worse to be betrayed by someone who should be in a similar situation to you (or who may have once been in such a position). Collaborators are the lowest form of life.

[cfimages]

@GuyInTaiwan

[quote=“cfimages”]I thought, (and it’s not an area I work in so could be wrong), that 10 month contracts were standard in elementary schools. After all, there’s no school during July/Aug. They give 12 month ARC for 10 months work.

It’s a way for them to get out of paying for holidays, which is a usual benefit of being employed by a “real” school here.[/quote]

Fair enough. Do TW teachers get paid holidays?

[quote]Par for the course. Foreign teachers are selling/advertising points for the school. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll actually teach (as we know it in the west).

Of course, but it’s still counter-productive in attracting and retaining teachers here.[/quote]

Sure it’s counter-productive, but short of a change in parental and school attitudes, it won’t change in most cases.

[quote]For what? Tax, maybe?

There shouldn’t (currently) be any tax for elementary school teachers. It sounds like they’re trying to pull a fast one.[/quote]

AFAIK No tax for TW citizen teachers, but foreigners still have to pay.

[quote]People are people. Some are honest, some dishonest. Doesn’t matter where they are from. Would it be better if it were a local Taiwanese person doing this “dirty work”?

It’s always worse to be betrayed by someone who should be in a similar situation to you (or who may have once been in such a position). Collaborators are the lowest form of life.[/quote]

Don’t agree with this.

[Okami]

From what I know:

-10 month contracts are an abridged contract as I believe work permits are only given for one year contracts. This frees the school from paying some teachers during the much slower summer periods and can easily be taken care of with some duplicate contracts and creative accounting.

-At legal schools before the tax change, foreigners who were teachers were also tax exempt.

-Holidays are paid if you are on a monthly salary for the months you work. Not paid if you are an hourly employee, which would be an odd set up for such a school. Most Taiwanese teachers at private schools have to work the summer months.

I actually interviewed at the Chulin elementary school and would still be in Taipei working there if they had hired me. Makes me kind of happy now that I mentioned the CLA thing to them.

[CraigTPE]

It sounds like there are some unrealistic expectations here. Much of what is being described is the norm for foreign teachers.

Bottom line, we are not local teachers. We are not citizens of Taiwan. It’s a different market with different market forces.

Although we have contracts, we are typically handled as outside contractors. It doesn’t matter whether your contract is 10 or 12 months, you will likely only get paid for the hours you work. It doesn’t matter if we work for cram schools or private primary and secondary schools. It’s just the market for foreign teachers. Precious few get paid vacations. In the 4 years I’ve been here, I’ve only personally known exactly 2 people who get them. No pay for school breaks, typhoon days or national holidays. Most gigs are paid per class hour.

At ChuLin jr/sr high, until they had their feud with TLI, we used to get typhoon days and national holidays, but that went by the wayside. However we NEVER got paid school breaks or bonuses or any other benefit local teachers got.

As for taxes, I thought the tax exempt status only applied to public school teachers, not private school teachers. Am I mistaken?

As for our role at the schools, I never felt like any of my colleagues really considered me a “teacher”. I believe it’s because we didn’t go through the same teacher training and certification process they did. We are marketing tools, baby sitters, entertainers and cultural ambassadors, and if learning happens, it’s icing on the cake.

I can’t speak for ChuLin elementary, but ChuLin jr/sr high was a pretty good place to be, considering the local market for foreign teachers. Too bad TLI screwed it up.

[GuyInTaiwan]

[quote=“Okami”]From what I know:

-10 month contracts are an abridged contract as I believe work permits are only given for one year contracts. This frees the school from paying some teachers during the much slower summer periods and can easily be taken care of with some duplicate contracts and creative accounting.

-At legal schools before the tax change, foreigners who were teachers were also tax exempt.

-Holidays are paid if you are on a monthly salary for the months you work. Not paid if you are an hourly employee, which would be an odd set up for such a school. Most Taiwanese teachers at private schools have to work the summer months.

I actually interviewed at the Chulin elementary school and would still be in Taipei working there if they had hired me. Makes me kind of happy now that I mentioned the CLA thing to them. [/quote]

I work at a public junior high school. Last year, our contract was for twelve months. This year, it was only for eleven (because the government decided to cut our programme by one month to cut costs). Our ARCs covered us in January, but we did not work or get paid in January.

We used to get paid Chinese New Year. We still get two weeks of paid vacation in summer (because the rest of the time, we do summer camps).

We are not paid by the hour. We are paid a monthly salary. We are currently tax exempt.

Two of my colleagues finished today. One will go to work in an international school. Her contract goes from July to July. She gets paid for July and August, despite being on holidays.

My other colleague got a job through the Ministry of Education programme. He used to work for that programme before they cut it and then reinstated it this year. He will also get paid vacations. He will get a paid airfare also, despite having been recruited from within Taiwan. My other colleague’s work is negotiating an airfare for those recruited from within Taiwan to bring it in line with those recruited from outside Taiwan.

[CraigTPE]

Sounds pretty cherry compared to the average gig.

[GuyInTaiwan]

[quote=“CraigTPE”]It sounds like there are some unrealistic expectations here. Much of what is being described is the norm for foreign teachers.

Bottom line, we are not local teachers. We are not citizens of Taiwan. It’s a different market with different market forces.[/quote]

That’s the whole point. Taiwan will find it harder and harder to actually get anyone other than the dregs and weirdos unless it offers packages similar to those elsewhere. It’s really short term thinking. People aren’t even asking for a lot here. They’re asking for some pretty basic conditions and a bit of respect as professionals.

Although we have contracts, we are typically handled as outside contractors. It doesn’t matter whether your contract is 10 or 12 months, you will likely only get paid for the hours you work. It doesn’t matter if we work for cram schools or private primary and secondary schools. It’s just the market for foreign teachers. Precious few get paid vacations. In the 4 years I’ve been here, I’ve only personally known exactly 2 people who get them. No pay for school breaks, typhoon days or national holidays. Most gigs are paid per class hour.

Maybe those are your experiences, but my experiences outside cram schools are that people do get paid for those things. We do. If we were actually paid per class hour, they’d either have to radically increase our hourly rate or they’d lose every single teacher at our school. That’s why they pay us a salary.

At ChuLin jr/sr high, until they had their feud with TLI, we used to get typhoon days and national holidays, but that went by the wayside. However we NEVER got paid school breaks or bonuses or any other benefit local teachers got.

We get a contract completion bonus, and also a bonus for signing a new contract. We also get yearly pay increases. If you went through the MOE programme, you’d get even more, and there are different pay scales for having a BA, MA or PhD.

As for taxes, I thought the tax exempt status only applied to public school teachers, not private school teachers. Am I mistaken?

Not sure about the private school teachers. Word is that at the end of the year public school teachers (foreign or local) will pay tax anyway.

As for our role at the schools, I never felt like any of my colleagues really considered me a “teacher”. I believe it’s because we didn’t go through the same teacher training and certification process they did. We are marketing tools, baby sitters, entertainers and cultural ambassadors, and if learning happens, it’s icing on the cake.

I have experienced this also. However, I believe the feeling is mutual. What teacher training and certification process did they go through? How to hand out multi-choice exams full of mistakes? How to teach to such exams with a pedagogical approach that was abandoned in the West several decades ago? Where did these people do their teacher training? I did mine at the University of Melbourne. If you look at any study of world universities, it will rank considerably higher than any shitty university in this country, especially any place that has a so-called education degree. If one of these clowns tried to take their degree outside of Taiwan, it wouldn’t even be used to wipe up the spilt coffee the interviewer would spit out laughing when he took a look at it and where it was from. If you want to know who the real baby sitters are in this country, it’s the local English teachers, many of whom speak less English than their students. If any learning happens, that’s the icing on the cake.

[GuyInTaiwan]

@CraigTPE

Sounds pretty cherry compared to the average gig.

That’s the whole problem. My colleagues are going to pretty good deals that are definitely quite rare. My deal is better than average. Those other gigs are still not really up to par with international standards, and mine certainly isn’t. Yet, they’re still better than most gigs.

To me, it just seems like more of the same deeply entrenched mentality where you go for price, price, price all the time instead of quality/value, with this whole stupid obsession over face and having marketing tools thrown in for good measure. If you get a bunch of incompetents or weirdos, then you haven’t really saved anything. It’s such a false economy. You’d be better off putting those resources into something else all together.

[steveyss]

Please delete this article and stop the unreal rumor.
We will resort to legal measures if necessary.

From Chulin Elementary School

[Feiren]

[quote=“steveyss”]Please delete this article and stop the unreal rumor.
We will resort to legal measures if necessary.

From Chulin Elementary School[/quote]

You don’t have any legal measures that you can take. This site is hosted in the US, where we are perfectly free to discuss Chulin Elementary School and its employment practices.

If you are concerned about your school’s reputation, I suggest that you respond to the criticism here rather than threatening people.

竹林小學的外籍老師有權討論該校的工作環境.

The Chinese should make it easier to find this discussion through Google searching.

[Buttercup]

[quote=“Feiren”]

竹林小學的外籍老師有權討論該校的工作環境.

The Chinese should make it easier to find this discussion through Google searching.[/quote]

:roflmao: Shall we all cut and paste this into our blogs?