The places I worked in Taiwan all hired local and Phillipino teachers. HuaHsing high school (for elite students) had a Phillippino director of studies, and three full time Taiwanese English teachers. The white faces were all on temp contracts only.
If you find a proper school, not a sticky ball money machine, you’ll find better jobs, in my (limited) experience.
I’ve heard relatively good things from Cambridge Linkou campus.
Me too. They hired people from all nationalities.
Back then, they had a head office in Guting (which I don’t think is there anymore) where they would centrally recruit teachers from all over the world. I’m not sure if it still works that way or if each branch has full autonomy to recruit who they want.
Each franchise school can still use the main office recruiting service and/or hire their own teachers. This was told to me by a current franchise owner.
The big boss is the same woman. My first impressions of her is that the stick up her ass couldn’t get much bigger and she acts like a bit of a princess but she is pretty fair and reasonable and she keeps her word. She seems like an OK problem solver too
Each to their own 
we’re all different. She doesn’t come across as a nightmare boss
I would say there is a niche way for Filipino to teach English professionally here.
Be it from the NTNU link above, or special channel example Catholic Church or missionary works.
There are more and more non-whites Saffers, Canucks, Kiwis, Ozzies, Irish, Brits or Yanks teaching English here. Not sure whether they are paid the same rate?
Although, I never know anyone of any race from India, Malaysia, Singapore or Nigeria actually taught English here.
I do met several local aboriginal English teachers that work primarily as a contract teacher for different school every year. Seems it is more difficult for aboriginal teachers getting fixed position? Or simply they are considered not good enough?
Regardless of the necessity for school having a white face for commercial purposes.
More teachers from Belize too. I remember when I got shit for my weird British accent. Times have changed.
Which American English? Redneck American English? AAVE? Imagine a Taiwanese spoke in ghetto accent/slang.
But true to that, American English is the prestige dialect nowadays. That’s just the reality. Same goes, most people/countries taught Chinese the mainland way using Hanyu Pinyin instead of using Zhuyin.
That’s the way I learned it. Never wrote a bofomomo in my life.
I am a white guy from the United States, and I have worked in Alaska, Hawaii, Texas, and Taiwan as a teacher. My certification is ECE (Early Childhood Education Pre-Kindergarten - 4th grade), Special Education Pre-Kindergarten - 12th grade, Gifted and Talented Education Pre-Kindergarten - 12th grade. I personally experienced the racism that you mention firsthand. I was recruited by Happy Marian (a cram school) at a teacher’s Job fair and referred to Taipei American School, immediately.
However, that is the Private School System, I now work of the Public School System through the BOE in Tainan and nothing could be further from the truth here. Tainan is a vibrant community of people from all walks of life. In fact, I am the only White guy in my school and one of very few in the foreign teacher community of Tainan. Filipinos, Malaysians, South Africans, Indians, and even people from Beliz are welcomed here with open arms, unbiased by skin color.
Just so you know, jimipresley is dead.
Yes I’m believe things have changed , Jimi was out of order with some.of his remarks above. He has now passed on to rock legend heaven.
Thing is, most kids are learning from Taiwanese teachers with bad pronunciation and think that their Taiwanese teacher is god. “EE EE uh PEE.” “EE EE uh PEE?” “MEElyKuh. Muh Muh MEElykuh”. “EE Sa CAE-MEEL”.
You, the native speaker, dare teach them to enunciate consonants correctly and make the short i sound not another “EEE” sound? Hilarious.
I’ve attacked school principals about this. “You hired me to teach them ‘correct pronunciation’ but they spend far more time with a Taiwanese teacher enforcing bad pronunciation than they do with me, insisting the idea in their head is correct and not only is my pronunciation wrong, the pronunciation in the videos I play and ask them to imitate are also wrong”. To which I get the whole “no one holds the power over ‘proper English’”. Sure, but then don’t ask me to correct their pronunciation.
I even caught myself spelling a word with ‘n’ in it and saying ‘un’ because I’ve become so accustomed to “should be fluent” people speaking Taiwanese English.
I learned proper Mandarin pronunciation from shadowing and chorusing professionally produced recordings. Therefore, it’s very good. Most Taiwanese teachers learned English from reading, therefore they’re not confident in how to say a lot of words. And they push that on their students, who also don’t learn.
Edit to add: I didn’t realize I was half-grave digging an old post. I’m not the one who started it, but I had assumed that new comments were new. I managed to miss comments about bilingual Ed from over a year ago?!
No worries. It’s always the right time for a good rant.