Teaching in Taiwan and Discrimination/Racism

Now, I’m not in any way suggesting what the OP’s country of origin is; I’m only addressing the issue of whether there exists a Central American country whose passport might, if everything else was in place, legally qualify a person to teach English here:

It’s sort of Caribbean. :2cents: :slight_smile:

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I worked at TeachME for some months, and can back up the OP’s experience. TM was of the worst environments I’ve ever worked in – not due to the other staff (they were all trying really hard to make it work), but just due to ownership/management.

I’m not a lawyer, and idk about many of the specifics on how the work permits, etc, need to be done. However, I can’t stress this enough: I didn’t know one truly content employee there. There were many empty promises in the whole experience, piled on lots of emotional labor, leaving even great employees drained and NOT well-compensated for hard work.

I wouldn’t ever recommend this business as a good place to work. you’re better off taking your skills elsewhere.

Hopefully I can clear this up–as people mentioned, TeachME Tianmu (the one identified as 教教我) is a buxiban in Tianmu that used to be called TutorME. The name changed after the owner was contacted by TutorABC, with the latter threatening legal action over the name similarity. Aware readers might note that there’s also a tutoring company in Taipei called Tutor4U, and that the new name the owner chose was already taken by the Xinyi online teaching outfit. I’m not a lawyer, so your understanding of that situation is now as good as or better than mine.

It’s definitely a buxiban as far as Taiwanese law is confirmed, by the way, the owner just says it isn’t because she’s too good to have a buxiban.

I also worked there for a bit. This wasn’t my first go 'round at teaching English in Asia so the dishonesty, pushy sales tactics, and laserlike focus on incoming cashflow at the expense of learning outcomes didn’t especially surprise me. What surprised me, after working there, was that the place had lasted as long as it did.

All the usual foibles of an English school are there, but they’re all exacerbated by the owner’s particularly unpleasant personality. She doesn’t pretend to be nice, to be fair–she’ll tell people she’s not! But she ignores what that does to her business. There were a few students and parents just that I was aware of who actively disliked her and only kept buying more class hours because they liked the teachers. This is because she has a personality best compared to a rat that habitually bathes in dip spit.

The OP mentioned the racism, and I definitely witnessed that, but I can’t cover that ground any better than the OP can. I can say that she alternates between short-temperedness and indifference and gets away with it because, being the owner, no mistake can be her fault. She employs some teachers as full-time in order to use them as office workers and invents meaningless busywork to justify their time in what I can only believe is a power trip for her. She formulates pointless tasks that must be done a specific way, communicates what she wants poorly, promptly forgets what she asked you to do, then mis-remembers her already muddled instructions at a random point in the future and scolds you for not predicting what she actually wanted.

She will attempt to police every aspect of an employee’s actions, up to and including telling a teacher off for having a hand in a pocket while talking to a parent. She insists that bilingual staff only speak to clients in English if at all possible–as far as I can tell this is simply to put parents with poor English on the back foot compared to her at all times.

Her English, on the other hand, is far from perfect but cannot be questioned. Now, as someone who hardly speaks fluent Mandarin, I totally understand not having unchallenged mastery of a foreign language, but she’ll communicate poorly and then get angry at a native speaker for not understanding what she meant. If she’s unhappy with you, she’ll badmouth you to the other staff. If she’s happy, she’ll shower you with gifts or raises so that she can hear your thanks.

I understand why people stay, because the teaching is a great opportunity. It’s hit-and-miss like any 1-1 tutoring can be, but you get a lot of people who are interesting, engaged, and studying reasonably advanced things. And I never had to sing a single song about counting, animals, colors, or shapes. I think if you have the right personality, you can manage it. Remember:

  1. She is always right.
  2. She is always smart and knows the right answer.
  3. GET EVERYTHING IN WRITING. If you see her in the hallway, and she asks you to do something, ask politely for her to send you a Line message about it. Saved Line messages will save your life.
  4. Confirm that you understand the message. That’s actually one of her rules–if she sends you a message, you have to respond quickly, even if you’re in class, saying you’ve read and understood it.

Barring a disgruntled employee burning the place down, or a typhoon blowing a fridge through the front doors, what may finally bring the place down is if she can no longer find any foreigners in Taipei willing to work for her.

I can’t recommend it.

Wow, sounds like having another wife.

I agree, worse than Chinese bosses. Scum of the earth

They’re looking for German Teacher. As a native German speaker, this is interesting.
Someone else who had better experiences with that school (TeachMe, Shilin district)?

Hey, back here again. Its been a few years, thank you for sharing the video, I see some of the teachers are still there. One of the things I see in her is the inexperience in the Education field. Whoever lives on this side of the earth, or in the American continent knows that preparation in social skills is also as important as preparing for an SAT exam, she clearly is not experienced or prepared for that either. I still remember the child crying his eyes out in the bathroom and hearing when she was humiliating him. Then she calls and treats the parents so hypocritically.
If it was on this side of the earth she would be sued for child emotional abuse.
Don’t work for her, find another buxiban they may be less fancy, but the work environment and the Taiwan experience will be far better.

Thanks!