Forest/Frobel American School in Cidu near Keelung

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

I might have worked for the most corrupt school in Taiwan.

They fired me with no warning and nothing they said was true or made any sense. They said that I beat a child and had to leave immediately. When I started asking questions they sidestepped them and used high pressure tactics to try and get me to sign a resignation paper.

I’d try to call and ask them for my pay (I worked Nov 1 through Nov 22 and they refuse to pay me), and for taxes (I worked April first through Nov 22 but I think they’re going to lie to evade taxes, they always paid me in cash), they broke a huge window and said that I did it, they called the cops on me for it, then when I told them that I wanted a lie detector test, they dropped the charges, and then they called the cops again saying that I threatened them. But then said that I was a good foreigner who was just lonely. The only language they speak is threats, psychological warfare and fear.

I’ve been working to raise money to get a lawyer to sue them, but am wondering if foreigners have any rights here in Taiwan.

I’ve also been wondering if I should call every parent in the school (there’s around 50 kids) and tell the truth (I have all the #s).

Any suggestions?

2

Did you have an ARC with them? Sounds like it if they made you sign a piece of paper. Then the Labor Bureau should be able to help you. Ring 2564-3157. After you’ve looked after yourself and everything is finished, make sure you tell “Forumosa” who the school was.

This belongs in one of the legal fora, and you should try to edit the word to say lawyer, because otherwise noone will know what this thread is about.

3

I did have my ARC through them, but I never signed the resignation paper.
The school was “Forest American School” or “Frobel American School” in Cidu, District of Keelung.
Do you know the locations of the best black lists?
I need to put this school in all of 'em. They threatened one friend and was extremely rude to another friend (who is now going to black list them as well).
I’ll try that # thanks.

4

For blacklists go to www.buxiban.com

5

Forest/Frobel American School in Cidu, quite possibly the worst school in Taiwan

Hey I just got an idea, a poll for the worst school in Taiwan.

Hi everyone,

I have a social responsibility to warn people about Forest/Frobel American School in Cidu, Chi-Du, (Chee-Doo), between Keelung and Taipei. I worked for them about 2 years ago, but my conscience has been bugging me lately to do more because I posted warnings about them in englishschoolwatch.org but I checked a few weeks back and somebody tore one of my warnings to shreds (maybe because it was a warning about Taiwan in general, my friends and I had had some more bad experiences after that, I don’t know), and I need to leave my contact information for anyone who was abused or is being abused by this horrendously bad school. I also need to add a complaint that was not accepted by various English teaching websights (websights that get paid for advertising schools open positions don’t want negative information about those schools in the same websight, it’d be less likely that the school could recruit and therefore less likely that the school would advertise through them).

Anyway, I have to know that I’m doing all I can to protect future victims from this school, and I do mean victims, I’m not some weak, whiny baby, I can prove everything I’m saying.

I also feel I need to add some monetary specifics to the facts of what happened to me at this school.

Here’s the first statement I wrote a long time ago.

[b]"This school fired me with zero warning. They said that I beat a child which was a lie. I called the child’s parent and he knew nothing about it. They kept Novembers pay from me (1st through the 21st) they lied on my taxes (keeping another 20,000? from me, I have proof of this). They said that I broke a very large window (when I’d bet money that they did it). They called the police on me who showed up with full assault rifles.

On the lighter side, they lied from the beginning about working conditions, workload, they insulted me in front of the students, made fun of me, threatened me continually with firing me, insulted my teaching style complained endlessly about how bad my lesson plans were (though they couldn’t explain or give examples of good lesson plans of course).

The teacher before me quit after 4 months, the teacher before him was fired, and they fired me after 8 months. I asked why they’ve never had a teacher last and the principal wouldn’t answer, she just insulted me.

It´d be extremely difficult to find a worse school. You can ask me or the teacher who started working after me."[/b]

Trust me, this was one of the worst experiences of my life and I’m not some drama queen negative person either. It was psychological warfare from the beginning. Totally twilight zone kinda krap. I could go on for hours about specific details but I’m trying (believe it or not) to be succinct.

Here’s part of the letter that wasn’t accepted through various “Come teach in Taiwan!!! Don’t Worry!!! No problems!!!” kinda websights.

Money

It took me 7 months of fighting with Judy to get my pay for November, which equaled 28,246 NT.

Judy (one of the two principals) fired me November 22nd and told me that I beat a child, which is an absolute lie. They told me I had to leave immediately (around 8 o’clock at night) and I told them I needed a few days to figure out where to go, I was living in a mansion which the school owned. A little later, Judy knocked on my door asking me why I broke a huge window (I did not break it) and they called the police on me. I packed my bags and had to get into a taxi around 2 o’clock in the morning going to somewhere in Keelung with no keys and no idea what to do. They gave me 5,000 NT and told me they’d pay me the rest later on. They later refused to pay me, lying and even threatening my friend who was translating and acting as an intermediary for me.

I have proof of this.

It took me over 10 months to get my tax refund which was over 50,000NT

The fighting I had to do for my taxes was so long, drawn out, messed up, and complicated that I’ve forgotten most of it. I do know that she didn’t file my taxes and I had to demand that she do so, she finally did, after making several mistakes and having to redo the tax filing several times, even paying a fine for filing way too late. She claimed that I made 293,000 NT when it was over 370,000. The taxes amounted to over 50,000 NT, I finally got my check in December of 2005 for the work completed before December 2004.

I have proof of this.

Judy flat out refused to pay me and threatened me with calling the foreign affairs police. She also said she’d get me deported and that I’d have a criminal record.

I recorded the phone calls and have proof of this.

Abuse of Teachers

I tried to quit one time, but Grampa, the father of “Uncle” who’s married to Judy asked me to stay.

I tried to quit one time, because Forest is the absolute worst school I’ve ever heard or read about and Grampa asked me to stay, saying that Andrew would be leaving soon and Judy would come to work there. I agreed to stay, and the first school day that Judy got back she fired me for false reasons.

From the very beginning, Judy and Andrew harassed me, threatened me, and insulted me, saying that I was overpaid and that if I didn’t show serious improvement, they’d cut my pay or change the contract. I tried to find out how I could improve and I realized it would have been impossible to please them. They just wanted to pay me less.

Partial Record of Abuse

Forest fired a foreign teacher. Then a Canadian started working there and he decided to quit after 4 months and stayed till I got there. They fired me after 8 months, then they fired the next teacher after a month, hired him back, then fired him again several months later. In the previous teacher’s time, they went through about 6 Chinese teachers, and in the time frame of the teacher after me they went through several as well.

This letter is to inform you of some of the serious abuses that I suffered and saw at Forest American School. Any Questions please respond, or even write me an email.
lv18881@yahoo.com

Quote:
“All that evil needs to be strong is that good people do nothing to stop it.”
I don’t know the author.

6

So, you’re saying they’re hiring? :laughing:

7

Can you get some other teachers to post about their experiences, LV?

8

How does a buxiban change teachers every few months and keep their students?

Jeez, this sound like a nightmare. LV, you should defenitely contact a lawyer.

Good luck.

9

I believe that you are referring to this thread englishschoolwatch.org/webbo … ic_id=1449 and if so that person who questioned you was me.

I think that there is much more to your story than you are letting on and I think that this is a shame as basically it is dishonest to give people the wrong impression.

As most people here know I am involved with a site that contains school reviews and I am as keen as anyone to get the word out about good schools that do a good job and bad schools that don’t, but I am skeptical that your complaint is one that should be taken seriously.

You have posted here under two different names for some reason, but I would be most interested in hearing from some of the other teachers that you referred to. Perhaps they can corroborate your story.

I would be interested to know which sites you are referring to here. Daves eslcafe is a likely one as they are known for removing negative stuff about the schools that advertise there. Tealit is probably another likely one. Any others?

What you say can of course be true but the site that I am involved with has actually promoted this fact by only letting good schools pay for membership with our site. So this is not an issue for every site.

Your complaint raises a number of questions for me (and these were the questions that I asked in that other thread that you refer to). It’s clear that you did not enjoy your time working at that school but I am not so sure that this makes that school a bad school per se. Perhaps a bad fit for you, but not for everyone. What I can’t work out is whether the school was a bad fit for you, or whether you were a bad fit for the school! They did fire you afterall which suggests that you weren’t their most valuable asset.

Anyway, as I say I would be interested in hearing from the many other teachers that have apparently been fired from that school.

10

Chi-du, Forrest American Preschool, Uncle, Grampa. No wonder this sounded familiar.

Unless there’s another school exactly like this, my wife worked here as a teacher for several months in 2002. After she quit, “uncle” phoned her and accused her of absconding with her teacher’s uniform (which was incredibly ugly) and a singing-and-dancing-animal type VHS tape, despite the fact that one of the other teachers there witnessed her handing over those items to uncle before she left. Later that year, good-cop “grampa” called asking her to come back to work, which she naturally refused. Go figure.

She never met Judy, uncle’s wife, as Judy was living in Canada at the time, but knew of her.

There was a Canadian teacher there at the time who was in the process of quitting. He didn’t like it and told us about getting nickel and dimed by uncle on phone bills and such. They held back some pay from him, but I don’t know if they were entitled to or not.

11

I’ve been busy but I got around to finding a letter from the teacher who worked at Forest/Frobel American School in Cidu, Chidu, Keelung County after I did. His name’s Phillip Moss.

Again, my name’s Levi and I’m working to help bring a reality check to anyone and everyone who’s been abused or who is being abused by this “school.”

If you’re been hurt, or are being hurt by them, write me an email, LV18881@yahoo.com like I said before, they owed me approximately 83,000NT, and I fought for around 8 months? to finally get the money back. If you’re working there, take the name list with the parents phone numbers on it, photocopy it, and threaten to call every parent and tell them the truth. They will not be able to stand the truth.

This is the letter the teacher after me wrote about his experience with these horrible people. His experience was much better than mine.

Dear Parents,

        On July 29th of this year, I was fired from my job at Forest School without warning. My contract was supposed to last for one year, ending on December 31st. At the beginning of July, however, Judy wrote me a letter to say that she wanted to cancel my contract at the end of August. Because of our incredibly poor relationship, I agreed to this proposal: I was, therefore, supposed to work until the end of August. I am writing this letter to explain why I did not work through the end of August, and what my experience was at this school.

In my time in Taiwan , I have worked at four schools long-term: from eight months, at the least, to twenty-eight months, at the most. I also worked short-term at another four schools. Some of these schools were kindergartens, some were buxibans; some of them were franchise schools, some were independent; some were run by the owners themselves, some were run by professional managers; some were run by men and some were run by women. Of all these schools, working at Forest School was the worst experience by far. I have never been lied to so much. I have never been mistreated so badly. This was the worst job of my life.

        During the eight months I worked at Forest , there was never a month without a major argument between Judy and me; and there was usually an argument every couple of weeks. These were incredibly hostile arguments—sometimes in front of students—in which Judy would say anything she could to threaten me and frighten me. What were these arguments about? And why did I stay?

        These argument were almost always about one thing: Judy was not satisfied with my effort at work, or my contribution to the school’s growth. But this is very broad complaint, covering anything and everything she didn’t like about how things were going. And most of the time, her complaints began—not with something I had done or failed to do; but, on the contrary—with her own feelings of depression and disappointment about her business.

What I must emphasize is this: whatever my faults were, whatever she didn’t like about me or my performance, I was an extremely regular and reliable employee. I always performed my duties; I always turned in student evaluations; I always taught the kids a batch of vocabulary. In everything, I followed the contract. After the third month, my work performance did not vary at all. So, there should not have been any fights: Judy knew exactly what I was going to do. And there were a number of occasions, in fact, when she told me that she was happy with my teaching, and that she thought I was a good teacher. Whenever she complimented me this way, I said, ‘I’m glad that you are satisfied—I just want us to have a stable working routine.’ In other words (which I did not say out-loud): ‘I don’t want your compliments; what I want is not to be criticized and threatened later on, when your mood changes.’ But, this stable, working relationship never developed. My effort was consistent, honest, and faithful to the contract. But Judy’s mood and attitude would swing wildly up and down. And when she was down, she would begin, once again, to badger me, criticize me, and threaten me.

I should pause for a moment to explain why I stayed in this incredibly unpleasant working atmosphere:

  1. First of all, I signed a contract; and, in all my time in Taiwan , with all the schools I worked for, I have never broken a contract. Now, in this case, conditions were so bad, at times, that I considered quitting. (Though, if I had decided to quit, I would have given reasonable notice, so that the school could have found a replacement.)

  2. Part of the reason that I never actually decided to quit was that, these arguments that Judy would start were periodic: she would become incredibly unpleasant for a time, and then she would become quiet and peaceful (and sometimes complimentary) for a time. During the periods of quiet, I felt fine at work, and I did not want to go through the trouble of finding a new job—and getting a new working visa. (As I’m sure you will understand, foreigners must go through a process to get a working visa, which takes time and costs money, even if there are no problems.) Add to these difficulties, that if I had quit the job, I would have immediately lost my housing (which was at the school), too. This would have put me in a very stressful situation: homeless; unemployed; and legally compelled to leave the country—because my visa would have been cancelled.

  3. But why should I have to have quit my job if I did not want to? –The only reason I ever wanted to quit was because Judy made my life so miserable with her complaints and criticisms, and her gloomy moods; and made me feel insecure with her threats. But I always did my job; so, why should I have to have suffered her moods and tantrums and outrages? –There is no reason why I should. So, when she would complain that I wasn’t doing what she wanted (‘more! more!’), I simply defended myself. I knew my duties—which were listed in the contract—and I performed them consistently. And, in lots of ways, I did more than my stated duties: for Judy had no curriculum, and I had to plan the content of the lessons myself. If Judy was not satisfied, after everything, that was not my fault. I told her this, I stood up for myself, and did it with a clear conscience. And, at the end of every fight, everything went back to how it was. I planned my lessons, I taught my classes, I wrote my evaluations; and that was that. –I am a tough person. The relationship with Judy was incredibly unpleasant, and it affected me more than I knew; but I am not going to collapse or quit just because someone gets upset with me. I knew my job, and I stood up for myself. And so, the arguments came to nothing.

There are things much worse than bad-tempered arguments, however. Cheating and dishonesty, for instance, are worse. And Judy was thoroughly dishonest and crooked in her dealings with me.

A) Dishonesty. ~ i) She went back on her word all the time. Nothing she agreed to, nothing she said, nothing she gave her word on, was faithfully honored. She would change her mind about anything that occurred to her, whether or not she had made an agreement. ii) She would hold back anything she had to give, or threaten anything she had the power to do to me, in order to get me to do what she wanted. If she thought she could make me do something by using threats, or keeping something back from me, she would try. If she thought she could get out of some obligation to me—by stretching her words, or by lies, or simple refusal—she would try.

Judy’s two aims were to get me to do as much work as possible, and to pay me as little as possible. Honesty never came into it.

B) Furthermore, she broke the two main concessions in the contract, in which I was to benefit. These concessions were that: 1) she agreed to let me run an adult class at the school, during the evening; 2) she agreed to pay half my income tax.

  1. After working at the school for a couple of months, I told Judy I was going to start an adult class—which, to say it again, she had agreed to, in the written contract. First, she told me to wait: she was going to Canada , but I could do it when she returned. When she got back from her trip, I restated my intention. At first, she tried to break the contract, outright. She told me that I could do it by myself, outside school grounds. Or, I could give her half the money I made. When I pointed out what it said in the contract, Judy argued that, “of course,” I must pay rent for the use of the classroom. That’s not what it said in the contract. This was just a way of cheating me out of what she had agreed to; but I had no way to get around her, so I paid this “rent” during the time that I held these classes at the school.

  2. The whole time I worked at Forest , Judy held back 10% of my pay, for tax purposes. But she did not pay the tax. I asked her to pay the tax if she was going to withhold “tax-money” from my pay. She told me that she would pay the tax after six months. She gave various, conflicting reasons for this delay. She would usually say that it was troublesome to have to pay each month. (When I found out that she only had to go to the bank to pay the taxes, I could not believe it!) After a while, I was convinced she would never pay her half of the taxes—which, to say it again, she had agreed to, in the written contract. And, since she wasn’t paying my taxes, I asked her for my money back. She refused to give me this money, which she had withheld from my pay. I told her to stop withholding money, if she wasn’t going to pay the taxes for six months. She continued to withhold the money each month, and ignored my protests. So, you can understand why we sometimes had a bad relationship!

         Finally, when the six months had passed, I told her I wanted her to show me, on paper, how much I owed in taxes, and how much she had withheld from me. And then I wanted her to pay the taxes and to give me a receipt. She refused to do any of this. When I tried to make a photocopy of my pay-sheet—which was nothing but a record of my salary, listing the tax withholdings, with my signature attached—and told her I was going to go to the Tax Department, she went berserk. She lunged at me and tried to reclaim the pay-sheet. Then, she grabbed me by the scruff of the shirt and tried to grab the pay-sheet out of my hand. This was a physical assault, and I could do nothing to defend myself. This may seem unbelievable, but it is true. And, in fact, there were student at the school, at the time: Judy’s son Jeffrey, P1 Willie, and K3 Irene were outside on the driveway, with all the windows open. In the end, I dropped the pay-sheet and left school, horrified.

The next time I spoke to Judy, Grandpa sat with us. Judy told me straight-out that, if things had gone better, she would have paid my taxes; but since she felt that I hadn’t done a good job, she wasn’t going to pay her half. She was ready to ignore her obligations, just because she was unhappy. –That is cheating. When I communicated to Grandpa what Judy had told me, he waved Judy off, and told me the school would pay half the taxes, as agreed. In the end, that’s what happened, but only because Grandpa would not allow Judy to go against what was written in the contract.

12

I just found another letter from the same teacher Phillip. Whew, I feel better now.

LEVI,

Here’s my complaint. If for any reason it seems better that I post it, just send me the site-addresses and I’ll do it. Talk to you soon.

The people who run this school— Forest American School / Frobel School in Chi-Tu—are a bad lot. Of the half-dozen schools I have worked at in Taiwan , this was the worst experience I have ever had. And the woman who manages the day-to-day operations is the worst boss I have ever had in any job anywhere. The stress that I suffered as this woman’s employee is not easy to describe. She is extremely devious. She goes through mood swings that deserve a case study (hostility, then brooding gloominess, then whimpering depression, then contrition, then chipper friendliness!). And she is abusive. In the last month I worked there, she actually assaulted me physically when I tried to photocopy my pay-sheet, which was the only record of the money she had withheld from my salary (but had not paid to the government) for taxes. And yet, outrageous as that was, it did not touch the stress of the experience as a whole. She broke her word constantly. No settlement was respected. She disregarded our contract where it concerned the limits of my work-obligations (which were specifically listed), and she failed to meet the obligations it imposed on her. The only limit she recognized was my tolerance for stress—for which she had an uncanny sense. She would push aggressively, driving me to do this or that extra thing (always more!); and then, she would stop, apologizing for the way she had been acting; then, she would tell me the story of her financial difficulties; etc! I never once received my pay in a timely fashion without some bit of drama, gloominess, aggravation, or outright extortion. –I could write a book on this stuff, but I want nothing more than to forget about it! Want fair treatment? Want decency? Stay away from this place!

13

Wow :noway: That sounds like a really terrible place. Have worked myself at a few awkward places here in Taiwan, but nowhere was remotely as bad as that place. You’re absolutely right about warning other teachers, forreigners as well as Taiwanese, to seek employment at that school. No matter what other posters might say.

Had a similar boss in Germany. Moodswings and the whole she’bang. Warned people about working at that particular place as well.

Sounds to me that this woman needs professional help. Terrible to deal with. Hope you have better luck in what you’re doing now. :slight_smile:

Henrik