I’ve been all over Tealit, this place, teachermania.com, the China Post, and the Taipei Times. I’ve been searching for a morning-only gig for some time now, and haven’t had much luck. Can anyone recommend another place that’s good to look for jobs in Taipei?
In my experience, there’s a very narrow window of time for finding morning kindy jobs in Taipei, in August and early September. After that, the pickins are slim and the competition hot. To anyone new to Taiwan, my only piece of advice is, don’t follow my bad example.
I have a radical new approach for you to try. Why not just walk into the first little kindy you see and tell them you’ll work for them for 50,000 NT a month, mornings only and paid in cash weekly.
Then play a game, sing a song, ape a monkey with the kids, get them laughing and clinging to you.
Morning jobs are harder to come by than they used to. Also a lot that were 3 hours a morning are now only 2 or 2.5. They’ve figured that they don’t want to pay the teachers for the time when the kids are eating breakfats or getting ready for class, and getting ready for lunch. The jobs are scarcer, becasue of 2 things (I think). Firstly a lot of bilingual kindergartens who would have hired a teacher for half a day only are now whole-day English. Secondly there’s an imbalance. You’ve got a lot of people working in the afternoons only because there’s buxibans/anqinbans who have classes in the afternoon, but not much call for specifically morning work. Given the number of people looking for morning jobs there’s not much reason to pay them highly, so even if you were doing 3 hours a day, you’d be very lucky to be getting 40000.
Sorry, no great advice for you. Toesave’s suggestion might work, but not if you ask for 50000. Also I’d suggest ringing up some of the jobs advertised as fulltime, but tell them you can only work in the mornings. You might get some bites.
BuLai …if 65 a month for morning/afternoon with one afternoon off is easily acheivable without much effort…why wouldn’t you be able to negotiate 50K after a killer demo…of course they will have to see value in the prospect, but if you are dedicated and interesting looking (the teacher is there when the parents drop off and see their kids screaming twds ya, school manger’s see that cat a-pawin’ if ya know what I mean?),
but, and it’s a big but…bigger than my butt, THE KIDS MUST LOVE YOU!
You will of course have to use every ounce of negotiating skill you’ve learned while here, there is no reason my idea wouldn’t work.
I’ll stay off topic for a moment. Actually guys, I agree some places will pay 50. Some info that relates to salary is the school tuition fees. They don’t just differ from School to School, but also from County to County, I was offered $650 by a chain Kindy in Taipei County and $740 by the exact same chain in Taipei city. If you’re looking for better money, although consider places outside the metropolis, keep in mind that the better money is probably going to be in town.
Like Toe Save said, negotiations are pretty important. I found, even at the Elementary School that I recently left, that a JFRV + Youth + Experience = $.
But back to answer the origional question, timing is important and they’re hard to find still. I looked around in July and August and only found 3 places looking for teachers - and only one of them was offering 3 hours a day initially, although I managed to negotiate an increase of a 2.5 hour gig to a 3 hour one before looking elsewhere.
Ah, but you forgot to check Taiwanfun.com, Taiwan Teaching, GOGO Taiwan, and Taiwan Post Box. Try this page for these and other links. (You will need to scroll down to the bottom of the page.)
Considering that usually the most hours you’d get for teachign morning kindy would be 60 hours a month, then 50000 is about 830 an hour, which is definitely high for kindy teaching - at least for block hours. Consider also that morning jobs are more in demand than others then noone’s going to have to fork out 830 an hour for a good teacher. you say 'they will have ot see the value in the prospect. Thing is, they won’t. No owner of a school is going to want to pay 830 an hour for a top of the line teacher when they could just pay 650 for a very good one.
Not saying it’s impossible of course, but you’d be looking for a long time and you’d be really lucky.
Bri, don’t forget that on top of that basic $650 for even an inexperienced teacher, you’ll most likely get a $3500 turning up on time bonus. That basically adds another $60 an hour to your salary - that makes $710 an hour. Do a good demo, and stay a while and 50K is definately reachable.
[quote]Bri, don’t forget that on top of that basic $650 for even an inexperienced teacher, you’ll most likely get a $3500 turning up on time bonus. That basically adds another $60 an hour to your salary - that makes $710 an hour. Do a good demo, and stay a while and 50K is definately reachable.
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Most morning-only jobs pay hourly, not salary, so no bonuses no sick pay, no holiday/typhoon pay.
Not that I’m saying it’s impossible or that I don’t like hourly pay morning jobs though. You’d just ahve to be bloody good and bloody lucky to find such a gig.
…if 65 a month for morning/afternoon with one afternoon off is easily acheivable without much effort…why wouldn’t you be able to negotiate 50K after a killer demo…of course they will have to see value in the prospect, but if you are dedicated and interesting looking (the teacher is there when the parents drop off and see their kids screaming twds ya, school manger’s see that cat a-pawin’ if ya know what I mean?),