The following are my own personal opinions and experiences after having worked at this school for 2.5 years. I know quite a few people at other campuses and a couple at mine who are satisfied with their jobs. I just feel that it is my responsibility to warn people who are applying for jobs which are currently advertised on Tealit. The ad says “COMPLETE Lesson Plans & a WELL-Organized curriculum provided” and that the school is a “GREAT Environment” for teachers. I have not found this to be the case.
As far as the curriculum, teachers are expected to write detailed weekly lesson plans for a theme-based curriculum. In order to do this, teachers must attend theme preparation meetings, weekly meetings with co-teachers, and theme review meetings. These meeting are unpaid, often take place during lunch breaks, and are in addition to regular staff meetings and training workshops (also unpaid). The time that teachers spend in meetings can be used to leave work early, but most teachers rarely have the opportunity to do this due to class schedules. Teachers are also given very little training about how to write theme-based lesson plans. (They usually receive a one-hour workshop, which did not happen this year.) If lesson plans are not written correctly, your monthly salary can be deducted by as much as 2,000NT. Teachers are also expected to spend office hours creating teaching materials which are then discarded every 3 months. [If a teacher is seen doing something other than lesson planning or creating materials in the office (i.e. talking, eating, reading the newspaper), they will be reprimanded and their salary can be deducted by up to 2,000NT.] Of course, all of this information is vaguely mentioned in the contract, but teachers rarely realize how much time and effort will be required and how much pointless pressure will be put on them. Organization at this school is a joke. Of course, ESL teachers in Taiwan should be flexible about last minute changes, but this school is notorious for making key curriculum and schedule alterations at the last minute.
Now let me address the “great environment”. Things are fine when there aren’t any ‘problems,’ but don’t expect the administration to support you when you need it. Here’s what happened to me over the course of my last year working for the school:
1) I was characterized by the owner of the school and my supervisor as only caring about money while they paid me less than my contracted salary. They then took over a month to sign a revised contract with me. My supervisor tried to shame me in the office by pulling money out of her own wallet.
2) My supervisor ignored my many verbal and written requests for support in dealing with troubled students in my classes. They then blamed the lack of progress in that class on my “teaching style”. This erroneous claim about my teaching was never elaborated on or any formal reprimand given. In fact, all of my official and unofficial observations yielded positive feedback. They put me and my co-teacher in an abusive situation every day and then blamed us for being “emotional”. Most of the abuse we were subjected to was verbal, but my co-teacher was also threatened and struck, and one student threw his desk.
Not only were teachers under threat, but students were also put in an unnecessarily dangerous situation. They were subjected to bullying and one student was choked. The students not only suffered physically and emotionally, but they also lost their opportunity to learn. Most of our class time was wasted and the students who wanted to learn were instead stunted. It’s no wonder that most of the parents did not want to register their children for the next semester. What is surprising is that no plan was put in place for how to deal with these types of problems in the future. My supervisors believed that these students were “special,” that it was the teachers’ responsibility to “maintain a good relationship” with students, and that such a situation would never happen again. Not having agreed upon, school-wide regulations or procedures for teachers and administrators on how to deal with disrespectful or violent students has already had an effect on other students in our school.
Recently, a student in another of my classes was allowed to return to class unsupervised after he had repeatedly ignored me, my co-teacher, and my supervisor, and displayed a lack of control. He yelled at my students and slapped me and threw objects at me. The next day, he continued to harass other students and later had to be physically removed from the building while he kicked, punched, and wrestled the man removing him. Students from 2 classes were left stranded in their classrooms during their P.E. time because this one student was blocking the stairwell.
My supervisor promised me that this student would only be allowed back into class after apologizing to students, teachers, and administrators, but they allowed him back into class after he had only apologized to one student. By ignoring my repeated requests for training, support, and clear regulations and procedures, they also impeded my efforts to teach that class. The other students saw that there were no consequences for their actions and the disrespectful and violent behavior spread. My classroom became a holding cell for children whose parents had nowhere else to put them and whose school administrators showed little concern for their safety or education.
3) The owner of the school and my supervisor treated me as if I were irrational. The lack of support from the administration with regards to my classes led to strained relationships in the office. When I asked what I could do to improve my relationships in the office, I was told that the owner of the company had never liked me, that she thought I was overly emotional (apparently, though, it’s acceptable for her to yell at and threaten students for not sitting properly during a show rehearsal), and that I was seen as unfriendly because I didn’t say ‘hello’ to her secretary while feverish in the waiting room of a doctor’s office (I didn’t even see her). I was also told that I was “physically and emotionally unstable” because I had taken some sick days due to stomach problems which I was hospitalized for. The advice I received was to smile more because “people with blue eyes look angry when they don’t smile” and to wear “cute clothes”. The overt hypocrisy and xenophobia I was subjected to made it difficult to find the motivation to go to work.
4) My supervisor ignored my requests to communicate in writing in order to avoid further miscommunication. She treated me as a pariah and stopped giving me information about what was going on in the school. She made it impossible to execute the responsibilities of my job.
Again, I realize that working in a different culture and under different constraints can be difficult. There is a certain amount of stress that we accept as foreign teachers. We all need to try to accommodate each other. However, I feel that the administration at Season Arts completely failed in their duties as educators and fellow human beings.