To those who work for, or used to work for Hess:
I am thinking of signing up with them for next summer and I am trying to decide which contract would be best. It’s important to me to save a decent amount of money while teaching because I want to pay off some debts, so I was going to go with contract B which is both kindy and cram school. However, I’m wondering how difficult it would be to instead go with contract A and find privates instead of having to deal with the whole shady issue of teaching kindy. I was thinking of teaching in either Kaoshiung or Taichung, not Taipei. I don’t know if this has been discussed in depth already, but since I am on public comps and only have a limited time, I keep running out before I can properly research past posts. Your advice and opinions would be greatly appreciated:)
The answer to your question is: neither A nor B. If you want to come to Taiwan and save money, Hess is the wrong school. They are the lowest paying on the island. I worked for Hess for 3 months and it was a nightmare. Experiences will vary based on the branch people work for, but Hess is by far the worst gig I have had in Taiwan. They say they will hold your hand through everything, but they don’t deliver on the hype.
Their entire website is designed on hype that will get you in the door. The illusion that you have the choice between A and B is something they do quite well. They will not offer you the higher paying contract until after a year. They do this on purpose. When you get through your training, they will offer you a 16 hour per week contract, which is what is offered to every newbie, which will be working nights with their elementary school program. They suck. Everything about Hess sucks. Don’t work there.
I worked for Hess for about a month, then I had to quit.
Their website and marketing is awesome. Actually working there is another story. They have ridiculously long unpaid hours, they expect too much out of you (you’ll be exhausted), you get sucked into “hess world”, and they’ll scare you into staying. I know a lot of people who really hate working for hess, but stay there because they “don’t want to screw over their coworkers” It is seriously a screwed up system.
That being said. If this is your first job teaching English, you are bound to get screwed. The best you can do is. Fly over here, go to at 5 interviews and pick the school you like the best.
Another thing. Sometimes Hess puts you into a really crappy one-horse town. If you fly over here, you’ll be able to pick your location.
Cheers!
I totally agree with everyone, I have not worked for Hess, but some of my friends have and they say the same thing. Just fly overe here, find the location you want to live in, then find a cram school. You will be much happier. Hess is full of lies, but be careful because lots of cram schools are full of lies too.
Well, here I go again.
I did a year teaching for Hess, then 18 months as a full-time programmer for them, then after a gap went back and taught for another year.
Hours: The standard contract is minimum 20 hours a month, not 16. The exception is the first month, when as a newcomer you probably don’t want a full schedule anyway. The only unpaid time of any note is homework and test marking. It can indeed take a while, depending on your classes (regular Step Ahead classes can be long, Kids Club are pretty short, Tree House are trivial, and Focus you shouldn’t be marking homework at all, only tests). Most other schools will not ask you to do marking for free – they will ask their Taiwanese teachers to do all of it for free instead.
Pay: The starting pay is about the same as most other chain schools and many small independent schools. It’s higher outside Taipei. There are regular raises at six-month intervals. I’ve heard that cram school pay in general is decreasing, but Hess’ has stayed the same, so the difference is smaller than it used to be. They pay on time, they don’t diddle you on taxes.
Some Hess schools are franchises, others aren’t. It isn’t necessarily the case that franchises are worse. The schools I worked at in Taichung were all franchises owned by the same person, and I had consistently excellent support from them. When our first apartment turned out to be owned by the mob and they tried to kick us out without even giving back our deposit, Hess negotiated with them on the phone, got their lawyers involved, wrote letters, and finally sat down with them and argued for five hours, after which we got back our whole deposit and a month’s rent extra. Then they helped us find a new place.
I never taught kindy, but if you’re going to then Hess isn’t a bad place to do it – for a start, they tend not to get raided.
As a big company, they offer more options beyond teaching than smaller schools. I took an office job for them as a programmer. They also have foreign designers, writers, marketers, trainers, and various levels of managers. Many of these jobs are full time, non-teaching, and legal.
The Hess materials are generally pretty well designed. They’re easy to get started teaching with, and once you’re on your feet there is plenty of room to do things differently.
You can definitely make more money elsewhere, but until you know the lay of the land you’re equally likely to get horribly screwed over.
If you decide on Hess, shoot me a PM and I can recommend branches.
To answer your question, as someone who has worked both contracts, go with contract B. It will be much harder to match Contract B earnings on Contract A plus privates at first and those first few months are really critical. Taking privates is just as shady as kindy but carries more risk relative to Hess because of the very strong relationships Hess has. As the conventional wisdom goes, Hess is a great way to go to Taiwan but not a great way to stay in Taiwan.
I did contract A for my first six months, it’s just not enough money to make teaching in Taiwan worthwhile. As has been mentioned, the first month you are restricted to 16 hours of buxiban a week. Your income for the first six months in Taiwan is also taxed at a rate of 20% which makes A extra painful. You can exist in Taiwan on contract A, but you can’t save or have a life. Being poor in your own country is bad, but being poor in another country really sucks. On contract B however, I averaged 80k NT a month and occasionally hit six figures a month. In Taiwan that amount of cash is real good. (I really busted my ass to top that $150k a month though, I don’t suggest it unless you are truly hardcore and until you can teach a class off the top of your head.) Buxiban teaching (in general, not just at Hess) can be a real soul sucking experience. If you like children, working kindy will be a joy and vastly improve your quality of life in Taiwan. There is also much more freedom teaching kindy vs. buxiban at Hess so you can actually get some teaching done.
Some people suggest taking contract A and then subbing kindy to see if you like it. If you want or think you’d want a kindy class, I’d recommend against this because they were highly prized when I was there, making them extremely difficult to get. It’s much better to arrive on the island already slated for a class than to convert from contract A to B. If you don’t mind potentially not getting a class however, Contract A plus subbing is a great way to bolster your income because there is ALWAYS demand for substitute kindy teachers (you can’t take a vacation unless you have a sub). Once you get your bearings you can start picking up privates along the way. In my case though, I eventually grew tired of hopping from class to class and implementing another teacher’s style. I wanted my own class with my own kids.
The key advantage of working at Hess is that the company excels (generally) at providing a soft landing for foreigners in Taiwan. They offer group training which allows you to establish relationships with other teachers. They provide teaching materials (both blessing and curse). The cultural orientation they gave was priceless. I avoided A LOT of frustration because of that. I routinely see people on these boards struggling with issues that Hess explained in orientation. The company handles paperwork quickly and without fuss. They are consistent with hours and pay on time. Pay is about average for Taiwan, it’s far from being the worst, don’t listen to anyone who tells you that, but it is also certainly not the best. Depending on where you are, the kindy facilities are likely to be fantastic.
Disadvantages are that you will work HARD. If that can be called a disadvantage, some of the people on these boards really are pansies. You will work SATURDAYS. That sucks no matter how you cut it and was the hardest thing for me to adjust to. With seniority though I eventually got my Saturdays back. Your branch will make up all kinds of bs to get you to spend more and more of your time working for FREE! Savvy teachers know how to work this system though, make sure you find some seasoned level-headed teachers to get advice from. Avoid both bitter teachers as well as the kool-aid drinking apologists. Hess decides where you will get posted in Taiwan. This is probably the greatest disadvantage depending on what your goals are.
On unpaid hours, it is true that Hess unpaid hours such as preparing for class and marking homework can take up much of your time. If you let them. Marking two 20 student classes worth of buxiban homework should take no more than about 40 minutes and is often less, depending on the level of English. If you’re clever, you can get most if not all of it done during your breaks, which means you’re getting paid for the work, hint hint. Once I got into a groove, I probably did about 5 unpaid hours of work a week which added up to a 35 hour work week for me. If you’ve kept up with the math that’s about 527 per hour. Not bad, but it did take me about 6-8 months to reach that level of proficiency so keep that in mind. Reaching it really depends on how well you teach your classes. Well disciplined students make less mistakes and write legibly. It’s all a game at Hess, and everyone is a player in it. Teach the kids their part in the game and they will reward you. 
I’ve rambled on here longer than I intended to but I hope this is helpful. This all just scratches the surface so If you’re really considering this feel free to pm me with any questions you may have.
[quote=“Brendon”]Well, here I go again.
I did a year teaching for Hess, then 18 months as a full-time programmer for them, then after a gap went back and taught for another year.
Hours: The standard contract is minimum 20 hours a month, not 16. The exception is the first month, when as a newcomer you probably don’t want a full schedule anyway. The only unpaid time of any note is homework and test marking. It can indeed take a while, depending on your classes (regular Step Ahead classes can be long, Kids Club are pretty short, Tree House are trivial, and Focus you shouldn’t be marking homework at all, only tests). Most other schools will not ask you to do marking for free – they will ask their Taiwanese teachers to do all of it for free instead.
Pay: The starting pay is about the same as most other chain schools and many small independent schools. It’s higher outside Taipei. There are regular raises at six-month intervals. I’ve heard that cram school pay in general is decreasing, but Hess’ has stayed the same, so the difference is smaller than it used to be. They pay on time, they don’t diddle you on taxes.
Some Hess schools are franchises, others aren’t. It isn’t necessarily the case that franchises are worse. The schools I worked at in Taichung were all franchises owned by the same person, and I had consistently excellent support from them. When our first apartment turned out to be owned by the mob and they tried to kick us out without even giving back our deposit, Hess negotiated with them on the phone, got their lawyers involved, wrote letters, and finally sat down with them and argued for five hours, after which we got back our whole deposit and a month’s rent extra. Then they helped us find a new place.
I never taught kindy, but if you’re going to then Hess isn’t a bad place to do it – for a start, they tend not to get raided.
As a big company, they offer more options beyond teaching than smaller schools. I took an office job for them as a programmer. They also have foreign designers, writers, marketers, trainers, and various levels of managers. Many of these jobs are full time, non-teaching, and legal.
The Hess materials are generally pretty well designed. They’re easy to get started teaching with, and once you’re on your feet there is plenty of room to do things differently.
You can definitely make more money elsewhere, but until you know the lay of the land you’re equally likely to get horribly screwed over.
If you decide on Hess, shoot me a PM and I can recommend branches.[/quote]
Not quite accurate here!
Unless things have changed drastically since I left Hess - which I doubt.
In addition to unpaid homework and test grading, you’re also required to prepare for your lessons without pay. At first, one two-hour class could easily take you over thirty minutes to prepare and some seasoned Hessies still take twenty minutes per class.
When I first came to Hess, we were paid a miserable pittance to cover transportation for training sessions. A year later, this pittance was done away with. Training sessions at the branch and weekly meetings are also never paid.
Also, helping the branch move everything to the second floor because a typhoon day is unpaid.
Helping the branch set up a stage/seating for a special event is also unpaid.
Helping students prepare for contests at their public schools by writing/correcting/recording/listening to speeches is also unpaid.
Showing up to special events to watch your students and give support is not required, but strongly suggested(forced upon you?) and it’s also unpaid unless you’re chosen to be a judge in the event.
Typhoon days, sick days and national holidays are also unpaid. I’m getting a little off-topic here, but you should know that a lot of schools pay you for those things here.
Regarding getting paid on time, it happened occasionally at my branch. Most often, the “accountant”(meaning, the unemployed close personal friend of the branch manager with absolutely no experience in accounting) forgot to pay you for at least one class.
Many schools actually understate your earnings so that you and your employers can pay out less in income tax. Hess would never do such a thing - which in itself doesn’t mean that Hess is ripping you off, but in practice it means you keep more of your wage at other schools.
I worked at a corporate-owned branch. Everything that went on there is considered acceptable Hess practice at any corporate-owned branch.
About the contracts, I started on a contract B. The hours weren’t overwhelming, but the fact that you need to be at kindergarden at 8:30AM and you won’t leave your HLS gig until 8:30PM makes the day an exhausting twleve hour drag for a mere six and a half hours of paid work. Yes, you could sleep in your 12:00PM to 4:00Pm break, but then the only rays of sunlight you get exposed to will be the ones you catch on the way to and from work. It’s a miserable way to live.
Now, since teaching at a kindergarden is illegal anyway, you might as well do some illegal private lessons instead. Less prep. time, more money, no chance whatsoever of being deported if you do it in a private setting.
So yeah, I’d say go with contract A. Be prepared to earn less than the average Taiwanese for your first few months, but at least you won’t kill yourself doing it.
Well, this isn’t entirely true – you get paid two hours for each 100-minute lesson, so that’s 20 minutes per lesson of paid prep time, or marking time, or (for me) smoking on the roof time.
We got paid for training, though the sums were so tiny it was actually insulting, and I’d have preferred to be paid nothing. At the branches I was at, meetings were theoretically monthly, but often skipped.
[quote]Also, helping the branch move everything to the second floor because a typhoon day is unpaid.
Helping the branch set up a stage/seating for a special event is also unpaid.
Helping students prepare for contests at their public schools by writing/correcting/recording/listening to speeches is also unpaid.
Showing up to special events to watch your students and give support is not required, but strongly suggested(forced upon you?) and it’s also unpaid unless you’re chosen to be a judge in the event.[/quote]
Except for the typhoon help, I just refused to do any of this stuff. After a while they stopped asking. It meant my raises were 25nt instead of 30nt, but that didn’t seem like a big deal. I did play in a band for the wei ya once, and got paid for it. Not enough to constitute work, admittedly, but it was voluntary after all.
In case you’re not being sarcastic here, Hess actually did do this until a couple years ago – they reported all your pay at 400/hr. These days they report all your income, and when it changed they gave everyone a raise which slightly more than compensated.
Less prep time maybe, but more money, really? How much can someone fresh off the plane expect to make a month doing privates?
I know that some people have good experiences at Hess, but it really varies from branch to branch. You will have no idea of what you are getting into until it is too late.
The (relatively) positive experience on here differed from mine. They screwed up my pay every time. My last month, the left out $10,000NT because someone lost the sheet for one of the classes I was teaching. My boss’ response: you can wait until next month. My response: I’ll stand here while you go to the bank accross the street. They screwed things up and never took responsibility for it, and when I looked out for myself they treated me as though I was being unreasonable. I am a pretty mellow guy, but they really tested my patience.
I agree that the training is good. However, they did absolutely no follow up with me. I had some classes that were management nightmares with awful kids. They tell you in training that the branches have a duty to observe your classes and help you out when you are having trouble. I asked over and over, and they said they would come, but never did. When I finally pinned them to a specific time, they just didn’t show up and later said they got busy.
I have been here for more than 3 years after my short time at Hess, and while other places are not perfect, nothing compares to the awful experience I had there. Again, this is probably branch related, but you never know what kind of branch you will be stuck in. Working at Hess is far too great of a gamble for me to suggest it to anyone.
“Saving a decent amount of money” and “Working at Hess” are NOT synonymous.
There are a lot of buxibans out there with cookie-cutter curriculums (better for beginners) that pay a better wage or salary and which will not require all that unpaid work. Get a 60-day visa and look around. Explore the different parts of Taiwan and choose where you want to stay. This is the perfect time to get a gig in any buxiban (or public school, if you’re qualified).
To add my experience to OP’s actual question (and to sidestep the flood of venom and anger every time someone mentions Hess), I chose contract A over contract B when I felt like the travel time between my kindy and HLS would be too much. Also, when you’re first getting in, it is good to have a lot of time to avoid being overwhelmed. I’m only one month on, but if I feel like my time can handle it and its not too far away, I would probably consider switching over at the 6 month point. You can make and save a little money on contract A, but you can make and save a LOT of money on contract B. Problem is the shift from having to be at work at 3:30 to having to be at work at 8:30 has been a bitch for some of the people I’ve seen do it. It might be a more viable option (that no one has mentioned, but I have seen work out in action) to do HLS for your ARC and jump on at a non-Hess kindy that has better hours, doesn’t require you to be up and at 'em so early and pays you under the table. Hell, illegal’s gonna be illegal no matter what, so might as well make the most of it. A lot more reliable than privates, too.
Ooh…where to start on the topic of Hess?
claphands22 (whom I should mention I met in initial training and who is my best friend on the island) is more measured than me because he got out sooner (and he’s not a psycho like me). At the time, I remember it being quite traumatic for him, but it was a blessing in disguise getting out so soon.
Other people I know weren’t so fortunate. A couple I know toughed it out at a branch that should have had four teachers but for the first few months only had them, and then later got one more. They were worked into the ground to the point where either or both of them were constantly sick. The guy ended up in hospital and the staff at his branch were still asking his wife if he would be available to work in the afternoon. They lasted about five months before eventually leaving Taiwan.
Another guy was diagnosed with lactose intolerance and a severe respiratory condition due to pollution (both of which he had doctor’s notes for) and was understandably barely able to keep on his feet, let alone be all chipper. Not only did his branch fail to give him ANY six month raise (the minimum is 10NT/hour), they gave him a warning letter saying he had a “lackadasical attitude”. He left Taiwan.
In my local area, someone who didn’t want to be an HNST (low level manager) was coerced into going to a meeting. When people were discussing why six people in two cities in our county had quit in the past six weeks (me and my housemate being two of them), the NAM (area manager) told them the company didn’t need troublemakers. Incidentally, in later discussions, this NAM tried to tell me that if I had problems with the company, I could discuss them! I don’t think she knew that I knew she’d been talking about how to deal with so-called troublemakers. Haha! Anyway, that guy ended up leaving too and went elsewhere.
Earlier this year, another couple couldn’t go out on 2/28 Day (a national holiday) because their branch had scheduled a training for them (so they wouldn’t have to hold it on a normal day and cancel or reschedule classes). Now, of course, it wasn’t compulsory as such, but it was right before their pay appraisal…
I don’t know how many people from my initial training group are still here, a year on, how many quit Hess, how many re-signed, etc., and for what reasons (no doubt some left because of reasons other than Hess, some only intended to be here a year, and so on) but someone else I worked with from an earlier training group said that by six months, about 3/4 had left for various reasons from her group. That has to tell you something, either about how they will take literally any warm body (which should lead you to ask the subsequent question about the company’s academic standards, or lack thereof – which I could rant about endlessly) or about how they treat (good) staff.
Then we get to my wonderful situation. I’m over the bitterness now and actually kind of glad, in some Nietzschean way, because it really opened my eyes and given that I have a somewhat long-term plan here, I have a great many ideas about what to do and what not to do as both an employee and employer.
I spent all of November and December last year extremely sick. Sick as in I lost 10kg in the first 2.5 months I was here (admittedly, I needed to lose a little back then, but not like that) and could barely do Exercise Time at kindy without getting severe head spins and cold sweats. I went on anti-biotics several times. I took quite a bit of time off work. I spent most of my weekends sleeping it off (and unlike a lot of people, no, I wasn’t out drinking). Could this have been to do with the fact that I was supposed to be working 8.5 hour days but often putting in 12 or 13 (the extra hours being unpaid, of course)?
I know some people who do get away with very little preparation and marking time, but my branch was constantly heaping more work on us or constantly expecting us to do even more preparation and more detailed marking. Not just me, but people who were more experienced than me. The HNST had been there two or three years and she was still putting in probably up to an hour extra for a lot of classes. She took a lot of work home with her, so I’m not really sure. Morale was extremely low at my branch. The permanent teachers were all very sick, tired and stressed all the time. We were constantly beaten down emotionally by those above us. I’d been a high school teacher for six years before I came here, and yet I was constantly told how crappy I was as a teacher here (which is not something I got prior to being here or since I left Hess – indeed, my school throws a lot of optional, lucrative extra-curricular activities my way from speaking at seminars for other teachers, being a judge in speech contests for the local government or other schools, or even, as happened on Friday, the principal asking me if I could tutor his friend’s son), and not even in a constructive way. Complaints were not listened to. In fact, at one point, because our return rates were so low (no doubt because we were all so emotionally flat or outright sick and missing classes), they sent people out from head office to get all over us. Their main assessments? The staff aren’t working hard enough and there aren’t enough posters on the walls. The latter is absurd, moreso if true (in that if parents really take their kids out because of a lack of posters, then there’s something really bizarre going on). The former attitude is precisely why there was such a low return rate: sick, unhappy teachers are not good or happy teachers.
Another thing I should mention is that when there were extra-curricular activities, if they weren’t deemed proper “teaching” gigs, such as sports days, activity days, etc. Pay was about 1,000NT for 3-4 hours. That’s right, less than the normal hourly rate.
Am I painting a picture of what a bunch of evil bastards these guys are/were?
The upshot was that I ended up leaving after a bit more than four months and got an excellent job in the public system, and I also do private individuals and group lessons that are EXTREMELY luctrative.
Hess tried to screw me on the exit, but I took it right back to them. They wanted money for breaking the contract and for reimbursing my airfare earlier. I said I’d pay them if they paid me all the free overtime they’d coerced out of me. Believe me, they do coerce it out of you because they know that you know that if you don’t do it, they’ll fire you, and then you’ll lose your ARC. Once you lose your ARC, you have a short time to get another job or leave Taiwan. They know they have power over you and exploit it ruthlessly. I’d actually been looking for a job from about three months in, but hadn’t found what I wanted (I was looking for a public school system job in a different city and it was also hard to get time off to go to interviews, hence why it took me another six weeks to get what I wanted, although I’m still in my initial location, plus I was pretty inexperienced about how to go about it). So, back on point, I told them I’d pay them the 45,000NT they wanted (wisely, my kindergarten let this go) if they paid me what I considered to be a modest estimate of 80,000-100,000NT. We could call it even if they wanted to do it quickly, or we could fight a protracted battle for it. They tried to intimidate me (as they had with another friend from training who quit who ended up paying them back), but I just took it back to them. I got the CLA (Council of Labor Affairs) involved because Hess had illegally deducted that money in advance. The CLA made them pay it back. Hess brought lawyers and threatened me with court action to get me to then pay it back to them. I told them that’s fine. Actually, I wanted them to get more and more people involved (I know over the course of this there were at least six people dealing with my case, often several at once) as that would keep them bleeding resources. Basically, I fought a war of attrition and refused to be intimidated anymore. I ignored their e-mails or letters or drip-fed them information. I dragged meetings out to several sessions, which involved them having to send their lawyers out from Taipei. If necessary, I was prepared to go to the media and get some muck-raking journalist involved, especially over the guy who got the warning letter for having a lackadaisical attitude. I used all their dirty little tactics against them. In the end, I’m sure they realised that it couldn’t have done them any good, and could quite possibly have hurt their reputation, which is everything for any business. They also probably realised that even if they did eventually beat me in court, it would cost them a lot more than what they would get out of me. I haven’t heard from them in about five months now.
Now, as I’ve mentioned, I’m past the bitter phase and I’ve been recently reflecting upon all of this and how I would do things better as both an employee and employer (ie. Not to screw or be screwed). In some twisted way, I’m also glad it happened to me now because it’s made me stronger. I’m also proud of myself for being the only person I’ve known with the sack to stand up to these bastards and win in a staring contest. However, it was hell, and I really do mean hell, at the time, from the extreme physical illness to the enormous stress and not knowing about how to get out in one piece, and not limp home with my tail between my legs. Most people probably don’t take some perverse pleasure in such masochism and extreme confrontation as I do though. In such cases, I’d highly advise against working for Hess.
So you signed a one year contract and they gave you airfare. Then you quit after 4 months, but didn’t pay the airfare back? That doesn’t really sound decent. I don’t expect you to agree with me, but I just don’t see how you feel they should have to pay for you to get over here so that you can quit after a few months…
It sounds a bit like you wanted to take revenge. And did so.
Your experience doesn’t sound good, and I am glad you got a better job, it does suck to be in a crappy situation. Especially if you are sick.
My experience was more like Brendon’s. Good overall. Really good. Yeah, things aren’t always a bed of roses, but it really worked out for me and the vast majority of my coworkers. Brandon already covered most of the details, so I won’t go over them again, but suffice to say I agree with the points he made.
When I first came to Taiwan, my friends working at other schools would chide me because they were making a little more than I was per hour. They couldn’t understand why I didn’t rush off the minute another school offered a job for a few NT more. Then their stories came in: having to beg the boss for a raise after 9 months, not getting paid on time, not getting paid at all, school closing and needing to scramble to find another job, hustling to get enough hours at a bunch of different companies to make ends meet, having gaps between jobs of a week or two here and there, trips to Hong Kong for visas, changing paperwork with schools, school didn’t pay their taxes, and on and on and on. I have seen this over and over again.
I never had any of these problems at Hess, and eventually I realized I was making more money than my friends, consistently. Not only less stressful, but more lucrative.
That is not to say there aren’t better jobs out there. There are worse ones too. But there is always a story of someone who is making more than you, getting better hours, slacker job, better vacations, ad infinitum. However, I have heard far more horror stories about getting screwed over from other schools, especially smaller ones that may have trouble making ends meet. Not bad people. It just is.
That is my experience and opinion anyway. I don’t speak for anyone else.
BTW I think contract B is better - a lot more hours than A.
If you took contract A, you would be mostly working during the evening, leaving you free during the day. If you intend to make extra income teaching privates, daytime is not the best time to try to schedule students - most are working or in school. I think A is a great contract for people who want to study Chinese.
kage: Nowhere did it stipulate that I had to see the contract out in order to get the airfare reimbursement. It was purely to get me over here. Otherwise, there would have been a clause in the contract stating that. Additionally, there was the option of getting return rate bonuses or the airfare reimbursement. If I’d taken the return rate bonuses and quit, I wouldn’t have had to give those back. Whatever though, that’s not my point.
Like I said, I would have been happy to pay that back and the fee for breaking the contract. However, I wanted them to pay me for all of the unpaid overtime (calculated at the rate specified in the labour laws available on the CLA website that state it’s illegal for them not to pay overtime) they coerced out of me, and as mentioned, it wasn’t really voluntary because everyone in the situation knew exactly who had the power and how it could be exercised. I didn’t come to Taiwan to rip anyone off and I didn’t come here to screw anyone. However, they tried it on with not only me, but a lot of other people too. They took the gloves off, I was just a better scrappy fighter. At what point were they decent in any of this? Some of my friends or other people I knew tried to be “decent” as you call it. I call it being a sucker. Hess (and organisations like it) relies on bringing starry eyed kids over here and then constantly intimidating them or running them down and making them feel worthless so they won’t fight back or go elsewhere. They pull their dodgy antics because they figure most people will be far too intimidated by the prospect of taking on a huge organisation with massive resources. Far from letting that be their advantage, I turned it back on them.
Was it revenge? Actually, it started out purely as survival. However, they also made it personal by screwing me and my friends into the ground. It’s easy to say that it’s not personal because a huge organisation like Hess operates by indiscriminately grinding people into the ground so they can squeeze that last drop from them (to mix my metaphors). They don’t give a toss about the collateral damage along the way. The same goes for their shitty educational standards and how they constantly lie to the parents about their children’s progress so they can keep sucking them dry too. From one end to the other, it’s a completely unscrupulous organisation.
Having said all that though, I actually went into the whole process of fighting them with a level of detachment where I didn’t expect, or even hope, to win. I figured they were treating business as business, so I’d do the same. Yes, in one sense, I was really emotional, but I didn’t get emotional about it in the process, which is perhaps why I was able to avoid being intimidated.
To address your other points, yes, there are plenty of really dodgy smaller schools that are probably even worse (and I know a few people who have had all the sorts of issues you mentioned), and to be fair to Hess, they do pay you on time and it’s all fairly stable. All those points you made are correct. However, I think there’s a systemic problem with both the education system (private and public) and also the business environment. Of course, I’m not saying I expect that to change (at least not overnight). However, that doesn’t mean we should excuse Hess its dodginess simply because there are even worse. I think a large part of Taiwan’s problems stems from a real defeatist attitude with regard to accountability in this country. Everyone throws their hands in the air and just says that’s how it is.
sigh… well, I can’t argue with some of the points you have made.
I stand by my experience, but I can see where you are coming from.
kage: Of course. One of my friends really likes working for Hess. He worked insane hours for a long time; he was at more than 40 teaching hours per week, but has dropped back to 30 something. He likes it though because he’s ripping into his student loans back home. Also, he says his branches are incredibly slack and they don’t really get on him about preparation, etc., so he does very, very little. There’s no way in hell most people could get away with simply photocopying the Teacher’s Book though. If he had to put in the preparation (and have people breathing down his neck) like I did, he’d be on death’s door.
From most of the people I’ve known through Hess, my experience is much closer to the norm than his.
Hello all!
I’ve read through as many Hess topics as possible and couldn’t find an answer. Please forgive me if the answer’s out there.
I’m going to apply for Contract A with Hess. I’m trying to get an idea of the working hours since I will be pursuing my B.A. online. I understand that mornings are off (except Wed. & Sat.), but do you have set hours (i.e. 12 p.m.-9 p.m.)?
How long are the semesters? Are instructors expected to work the entire year? Most American teachers have 2 months off per year. This would be great since I could complete most of my credits during the school break.
Thank you!!!
[quote=“ord2tpe2011”]Hello all!
I’ve read through as many Hess topics as possible and couldn’t find an answer. Please forgive me if the answer’s out there.
I’m going to apply for Contract A with Hess. I’m trying to get an idea of the working hours since I will be pursuing my B.A. online. I understand that mornings are off (except Wed. & Sat.), but do you have set hours (i.e. 12 p.m.-9 p.m.)?
How long are the semesters? Are instructors expected to work the entire year? Most American teachers have 2 months off per year. This would be great since I could complete most of my credits during the school break.
Thank you!!![/quote]
First things first, you’re going to be doing your B.A. online? So you don’t currently have a B.A.? Do you have any kind of university degree? Hess isn’t going to accept you if you don’t. One of the basic requirements is a degree.
If you do have a degree already, then oh boy! You’re in for a rude awakening.
Once you get your class timetable, you will have fairly set hours. You will have set classes that will meet at set times each week. Those shouldn’t change too much or too often. They’ll be in the afternoons and evenings.
However…
There will be a whole lot of office hours where you have to do marking and preparation and that really depends partly on you, but more on what annoying fuckers your supervisors are. This is a major beef for a lot of Hess employees or former Hess employees (like me). You may end up being required to spend a lot of time doing unpaid office hours outside of your paid teaching hours.
Also, there will occasionally be other events that you will not be able to get out of (and may or may not be paid for, or may be paid at a lesser hourly rate to your normal rate) such as open houses for prospective parents and students, performance or sports days, speech or writing competitions, training sessions, etc.
Forget the concept of semesters, normal holidays, etc. also. Different programmes they run have different running times, and they may not all start or finish at the same time. For instance, one of your classes might finish the level they’re on next week, but another of your classes might finish a month after that and another might finish two weeks after the second one. The start and finish dates are to do with when they could get enough students to open a class (it’s a private business, remember), not to do with any kind of official government school year. Kids will go to Hess during their government school holidays. This should tell you a lot about the difference between school in Taiwan and the U.S., which should tell you a lot about the difference in work between Taiwan and the U.S.
In terms of your holidays, if I remember correctly, you get two weeks of holidays per year, plus an additional four weeks off between finishing your contract and starting a subsequent contract. All of these holidays, along with national holidays, typhoon days, etc. are unpaid and you will need to find your own substitute teachers (which isn’t a problem usually if you live in a major city, but could be if you don’t). Basically, if you don’t work, you don’t get paid. Also, it’s not unheard of for Hess to call a training session on a public holiday just before your pay evaluation. It’s also not unheard of for them to try to get you to make up classes for free that some of your students have missed for personal reasons. They have a whole bag of tricks for screwing you over. If you think it’s going to be anything like the education system in the U.S., then you’re in for a very rude awakening.