Loretta: That would have made me absolutely furious. That’s just deliberately screwing you around. Maybe they thought it was open to negotiation, though it sounds pretty clear to me that the negotiation was within a range that they knew before the meeting.
I know this is a hate thread and everyone’s venting, but my unemployed 
is when and where have teachers not been screwed by admin.?? It’s a business, and professionalism, well let’s be honest here, shall we??? It goes both ways…how many English teachers on this Island (forumosans are the best lot 
) are pros?? That, and anybody who has taught in their own country will know that their experience there was just as bad, if not more.
Hmm, I enjoyed a happy professional relationship with one school in Taiwan for about seven years. I don’t recall once having a situation where they screwed me around. Ditto for the university I’ve been at for the last couple of years, and my high schools.
My ‘employment contracts’ these days consist of me answering a phone call or email asking me to teach at a given time and place, and if I’m free then I reply “how much?”
If the rate is acceptable, then they tell me how many students and what they want me to teach. Then I go and teach it. It works just fine, and everyone is happy. I also exercise the right (very very rarely) to advise a student that they may be in the wrong class and ask them to move. So I don’t have to put up with bad attitudes. The simple fact of having that ‘right’ (which, I took rather than was given) means that I’m much more relaxed about dealing with students’ foibles.
So I get paid to spend my time with people I quite like, teaching them things I want them to learn, and being reasonably well-rewarded for it. You meet dicks when looking for extra work, but overall I have a very good situation.
Of course, I don’t teach little kids. It’s a different ball game, for the most part. The screwing around is usually from chains or from start-ups - especially people that are basically agents.
As an aside, I’ve had a few dealings this year with fairly large and supposedly professional organisations in the USA. It’s been quite horrifying to see how badly they handle things sometimes. Really, I don’t think Taiwan is especially worse.
Reminds me of the time a school called me, after getting my name from some unidentified third party. They invited me to an interview, and before agreeing I asked them about the salary.
OK, so it needs to be decided after meeting, but you can make it clear that you’re expecting to be paid within a certain range. I did this, and asked them if they still wanted to see me.
So, after spending several hours travelling, interviewing, demo-ing, we excitedly sat down to discuss money.
They then informed me that nobody in their organisation earned as much as my absolute minimum. At the time that was 700 or 800 per hour, I can’t remember precisely.
What’s the fucking point? I mean, why waste everyone’s time when they have already told you that they won’t accept your pay scale?
Taiwanese people don’t fucking listen, that’s half the problem.[/quote]
This is true, I commiserate with many of the situations here as I had the same thing happen when I was involved in the industry. Everything you get in Taiwan you have to fight for it tooth and nail. Never leave anything ambiguous as they will take advantage. Always check all financial transactions. It’s tiring but it’s the only way. Honestly speaking, Taiwan is not a good place to be a worker of almost any sort excepting government employees.
I have worked in both trading business and English teaching industry here and trading business, while slightly better and more reliable about interviews, contracts etc, still views workers as a cost-down commodity in many cases. You’d get docked for 3 minutes lateness although working 1-2 hrs overtimes everyday, no sick pay, docked on bonus, lowballed on bonus compared to Taiwanese, expected to come in one weekend mornings for training…the list goes on (anyway they could take advantage about your not knowing the way it is done here they would do it…the two most famous cases being the higher salary but no bonus scheme for foreigners or the withholding your tax and keeping it shennagins of buxibans). Sure you can get lucky every now and then with employers but it’s the exception rather that the rule.
Today at my school I was told that a student from one of my other classes would be joining today’s class because she had missed her previous class. Never mind that she was not a member of today’s class and the level was too high for her. I was just told to teach the rest of the class and give her homework to do in class at the same time. Basically teach two classes at once 
.
I think if I want to find professionalism, I will have to look out the window. Hopefully it isn’t scattered in pieces all over the ground 
.
Whole Lotta Lotta: That’s basically the school’s way of giving the parents their full number of lessons, even if it’s their fault that their kid missed her other class. It’s shitty, but it could be worse. When I was at Hess, they tried to make me teach a makeup class for two students who had missed a class (which I had already taught) because they went on vacation to America. I quit before I would have had to teach it, but even if I hadn’t quit, I wasn’t going to come in and teach an extra class for free just because my employer wouldn’t have the balls to set the parents straight. I just love the philosophy that because the kid or the parents miss a class, that’s somehow the teacher’s fault/responsibility in both our cases. Never mind also, that in your case, it detracts from your ability to teach the other kids in your normal class and give them/their parents what they paid for. Muppets.
I have readsome of Hess’ printed materials for foreign teachers and they say they are a ‘high standards’ buxiban. I also heard that at the school I complained about above. Essentially, what ‘high standards’ means is when they screw up, it is the teacher’s fault.
Whole Lotta Lotta: Precisely. Heads I win, tails you lose. That said, Hess is high standard compared to some places. I had a friend who was working at a buxiban that was run out of an apartment with books either photocopied or twenty years old.
The “international” school I was just fired from insisted that we teach the same book “Ahp” and teach it “Down” in the same class.
In a class of Eleven sixth graders, I had a high end that included a kid who should have been in 4th grade, but had skipped two grades because he was so smart–but with the maturity of a 3erd grader.
The bottom end included a kid who did nothing at all but play computer games until 3 in the morning and had no parental supervision what-so-ever, an Autistic girl who was as smart as the top kid in class, but didn’t comminicate well and needed lots of support I was forbidden to provide because the other parents didn’t want her in class with their children and would have a fit if they thought that she might get an ounce of attention that their kids didn’t get, and one who was not English profficient.
And I had to try to teach the same materials to all of them. “Just teach it ‘ahp’ and teach it ‘down,’ it’s not that challenging for a profesional teacher to do this.”
Basically teaching it up and down simply meant giving more and tougher homework to the smarter ones, and giving less and simpler homework to the less able ones, but then the parents bitched about that too, and of course that was my fault.
There just IS no professionalism. I went to an interview a couple of days ago and was asked nothing but personal questions about my family life, then offered 55,000 NT for a forty hour work week, depending on returning next week to demo. They want me to stay at school all day for this demo, too, to see what goes on at school and to prepare, then demo, then discuss.
I was in the States for five years and I read these boards the entire time, but I didn’t realize how tough it was going to be here. There are too few kids, way too many “teachers,” and there is almost no respect or professionalism to be found.
housecat: That’s all really shitty. A while ago, I was discussing work – what constitutes meaningful, satisfying work – with a friend. He said he thinks teaching is inherently unfulfilling because there is such a lack of control involved. You may be lucky and find the right job, but in the main, I think this is a problem with being a teacher and it’s probably a problem in most places. I had to stop being a teacher in the West for a whole lot of other reasons, mostly to do with the complete lack of discipline in most schools. Here it’s another set of problems.
One thing that irks me incredibly in my current job is that between sixth and seventh period every day, the kids clean the school. I have lessons seventh period every day of the week. I have my year 7 classes on Mondays and Fridays, and with those kids, it’s a bit like herding kittens at the best of times (and I speak better Chinese than most of them speak English). Every Monday and Friday, I go off on some grand adventure to the distant corners of the school to find kids with brooms, and every Monday and Friday, my English classes with the year 7 students start at least ten minutes late. Sometimes, I find my students (sometimes the entire class!) have been comandeered by another teacher (who has a free period) to sweep a pile of leaves. I could cause a big fuss about it all, but no one would understand. I’d just be the angry foreigner and they wouldn’t see why. Yet let’s get our bloody priorities straight. Are the kids at school to sweep leaves or are they at school to actually study? I wouldn’t even dream of taking another teacher’s kids without a bloody good reason and without first consulting the teacher. Sometimes, when I have small groups of supposedly advanced students, they don’t turn up. When I go looking for them, I then find out that their English class has been switched with a Chinese class, but no one bothered to tell me. Or a few weeks ago, I walked from the junior high school to the elementary school only to find out that the kids there were doing a rehearsal for something else. The teacher had apparently rung the junior high school, but no one had bothered to tell me, so I wasted twenty to thirty minutes round trip. Or another thing that pisses me off is when I come into a classroom and the board is still covered in writing from the previous teacher. I always clean what I’ve written (or grab a kid to do it if I’m running late) so it doesn’t inconvenience the next teacher. The next step up in annoyance from this is when I come into the classroom and the board is full of the previous teacher’s writing, and when I start to erase it, the students tell me the previous teacher told them it had to remain on the board. Sometimes, it’s only 10% of the board and I can live with that. Sometimes, it’s a third or a half of the board. Or how about people who want to print thirty copies of a thirty page hand out in the break between two periods, instead of printing it after school the day before so it doesn’t screw people around who have a full schedule on a particular day and can only use the printer/photocopier between periods? I encounter all of these things and more every day, and I mostly roll with them, but I do feel sometimes as though people don’t have their priorities straight or don’t give a shit about their fellow teachers.
These people want all sorts of things from you, and then they want to pay you 55,000NT/month. So then they wonder why the good teachers get out and go to other countries or teach in real international schools. It’s an endless spiral downwards at times.
GuyInTaiwan, I have experienced many of the things you have talked about. Sometimes teachers at one school I worked at left their writings on the board for. I erased them and the boss complained that I was spending too much time with my back turned to the class. They said that my class was my class when I came in and was my responsibility, no matter what the previous teacher had done. I then explained that I need to turn my back to erase the board and got a run around .
One thing that keeps me in Taiwan is that I actually do like teaching when it is going well. Their is nothing more rewarding than seeing children learn things when you taught them. I think there are some students who are better for having had me and I am better for having met them.
But even when those things happen, it is what the boss thinks of you that matters most. The school I complained about above said that the students liked me and I believe they were sincere about this. I can remember times when the boss would want to talk to me and a student would see me in the hallway and say ‘Teacher Lotta! You are so funny! You are a good teacher!’ :big hug: 
The boss would say 'Okay Julie. Go over there and play. I’ve gotta talk to teacher Lotta (usually about something trivial and unimportant) now :brokenheart: !
When the students liked me, it didn’t count much in my favor. However, if somebody didn’t like me…
I would like to say at this point that I could have complained more loudly about teaching a student from a different level at my current job, but didn’t. There have been other things I could have complained about as well. I largely don’t say much because I only view them as an ends to a means until I find something better. I work this job while looking for whatever I can find as an attempt to make my life better in the future. Maybe housecat could consider this with the 55,000 NT 40 hour a week job. Of course with those horrible hours, she wouldn’t have much time to look for anything else :s . Just a thought.
I didn’t go back to demo all day for the 55,000 NT job. I ran a fever all night, and so far today, and just don’t fell well. But I had decided I didn’t want to go anyway because the woman is so pushy with her personal questions about my family. Today, when I told her I wasn’t comming, she tried to get me to come tomorrow, asked where my son is and who’s taking care of him if I’m sick, threatened me that my work permit has been fired and I have very little time to accept a job or get out of Taiwan, asked what I’d do with my son then . . . . She just really creaps me out. And besides, I got a strange vibe from the other teachers there when I visited the first time.
Some things just aren’t worth it.
I feel like I fell into some sort of vortex a few months ago. Nothing makes any sense. I mean, why in the hell would someone try to intimidate someone into accepting a job?
You are hot property obviously.
Housecat: If someone is trying to intimidate you before you start working for them, imagine what it would be like once you had started working for them.
Exactly.
Here is how things went for me today. It is a bad economy, but sometimes schools can still get really desperate to hire a teacher to fill a class.
I was sitting there minding my own business when the phone rang and a school asked me if I would like to demo a class for them. I said that I would as people know that I am looking for a few hours here and there. I went in to do my demo and the school said it was brilliant. Then the main teacher left the class and started talking to the front desk. I asked what was going on and they said he had some problem with his ARC and was at the desk working it out (he has to go to HK). This went on for some time after my planned demo was over, but I was still in front of the class. Then, I was called out of the classroom and was told everything was okay. They told me they would talk to me after they were fininshed talking to the main teacher. The kids were in the classroom and started going nuts. I waited a while more and they still didn’t acknowledge me, so I went to the restroom. They called me out of the classroom and told me that I should go back and teach the class as they were going to be a while with the main teacher. I was surprised and went back in front of the class :s . The problem was I had only prepared for my demo. Nothing more. I basically babysat the class while they worked out some problem at the front desk. After a while I thought to myself that I am essentially teaching the class and they should pay me. I told the Chinese assisstant that I had only thought I was going to do a demo. I had no idea I was going to actually teach the class. I stood up there with nothing and only went over the demo again and again. They finally called me out of there. I was only going to demo and wound up teaching the class. They told me they would like me to teach that class. I told them I would have to think about it later this week. Meanwhile, the search for professionalism continues…
Good grief.
Ah, yes. I remember those demos. I have a trick I use and am happy to pass it on: I always ask to speak with a staff member outside of the class and I ask basic questions. What days do they want me to teach, what English level, etc. Nonsense questions really. Then I thank them for their time and I leave. Sometimes I get harried pleadings to return to the classroom but I am out the door. If they want to meet with me again, they email me.
Case in point: I recently interviewed at a school and they asked for a 30 minute demo. I said I would give exactly 30 minutes and asked for confirmation. They wanted to see the demo before the interview but I arrived half an hour early. They made me wait (of course) until someone gave a half assed interview and then asked for a demo. I walked into a class and immediately sussed that I was subbing for free. No staff member observed the “demo”. I taught exactly 30 minutes, left in the middle of the lesson and found the person who interviewed me. She was completely baffled as to why I was talking with her and not in the class, and literally pulled me toward the class to continue teaching. I left. As the door to the elevator closed, all of the staff were standing and looking at me with dumbfounded expressions on their faces.
They called and asked if I wanted to come and do another demo. I turned them down politely. And this is coming from someone who REALLY needs the work.