Well American School (薇爾文教機構) in Taoyuan

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

Original Title: Watch out for this school!

Dear forumosans, I would like to lay down the challenge to all of you out there to compare your schools to this one. To protect the names of teachers , I will refer to them as A ,B , etc. This is because I know the teachers involved and would like to protect them because this school will stop at nothing to ruin your life in taiwan. The name of the school is Well American school in Taoyuan.
In 3 years they have gone through more than 30 foreign teachers, some say the number is more than 50, but let’s say 30. Of those teachers the school has returned less than 10 people’s deposits. The school insists on taking 20 000 dollars for deposits. There is no way of getting out of your contract. if you even mention it , they start to threaten you with lawsuits and taking your money. Because they mostly get teachers that just arrived in the country, the teachers believe everything the school says.
The school has teachers on student visas which they make pay 6 percent “tax”. The contract is set up in a way that basically says you will do whatever the school tells you to do for one year, or they take your money. So during the year the school will give you a lot of extra things to do without payment. Things like cleaning and decorating the classroom, mopping the floor, making your own flashcards(because the school refuses to buy them) , putting leaflets in envelopes and the adresses on top and closing them(every teacher has to do more than 300 every semester) , working after hours or in your lunch hour for no pay, there was once even talk of going to visit parents to ask them to pay the school fees. If the school sees you punishing a student in any way, like asking them to stand up or to leave the class, they take your money. The school will tell you to work on a saturday or sunday, and pay you 200 dollars for the whole day.
When you arrive at the school they are very friendly and full of promises, until you sign the contract, then they completely change. They have a system of a evaluation bonus, its 3000 dollars that is a part of your salary. But you never get the 3000 dollars, they use it to threaten you to do what they want. Every time you do something they dont like, the 3000 gets less and less. For example, you will get an evaluation of 2000, then you ask them why, they tell you because you look unhappy. So the money has nothing to do with your teaching, its just a way for them to take some money from you.
Once , when teacher A didnt want to renew his contract for another year, the school told him they will blacklist him. When teacher B wanted to resign and go home, they told him he must pay the scchool 60 000 dollars. If you ever go to this school for an interview, ask the teachers that work there what they think of the school, you will save yourself a year of hell. Oh yes, if they tell you to stay late to do something that is totally unrelated to teaching and you dont want to, they take your punc-out clock card. Anyway, there are many more stories, but i think this is enough. if you still want to go work there, i cant stop you.

2

sounds great - where do i sign up? :wink:

if i have enuf free time, i might spin past and check it out. have not been there before, but have heard of them (nothing good or bad until this post).

got an addy?

3

Wow! Thanks for this info. Will spread the word…

4

of course, let’s hope mr 1 post is telling the truth.

if there have been SO many foreigners thru that place, let’s hear from some others.

5

I do believe the OP

I’ve applied to that school several times over 3 years, via phone and email. Not once have they got back to me. I assume now that its because they realised I was experienced from my resume. There’s no way an experienced teacher would put up with that sort of crap.
2. I’ve never met anyone who works there. Most people who get burned end up leaving Taiwan…

A quick not that there is also an other Well School that is not related to that one. Its a smaller kindergarten with only 1 or 2 foreigners working there. Both schools spell their name “Well”. They are not connected.

6

This is just another day in the life of an English teacher in Taiwan. Thanks for the post OP, but these practices are wide spread and will continue until the foriegn community says “NO MORE” and starts placing value on their services in other ways besides in the paycheck. As long as I stay here, I am continually amazed at the amount of crap that goes on when we KNOW we wouldn’t even stand for it in our homelands, yet we spend 1000’s of dollars to relocate and put ourselves thru various expriences that sometimes are more than what they are worth. Mann, I’m PISSED… Where is OUR Ghandi!!!

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I do believe the OP

I’ve applied to that school several times over 3 years, via phone and email. Not once have they got back to me. I assume now that its because they realised I was experienced from my resume. There’s no way an experienced teacher would put up with that sort of crap.
2. I’ve never met anyone who works there. Most people who get burned end up leaving Taiwan…

A quick not that there is also an other Well School that is not related to that one. Its a smaller kindergarten with only 1 or 2 foreigners working there. Both schools spell their name “Well”. They are not connected.[/quote]

I’m not defending the school at all, but to be honest just because a school doesn’t get back in touch, that’s confirmation of diddly IMHO. Apparently there is an oversupply of teachers at the moment, so non-physical means of job hunting (i.e. phone calls, emails, posting a CV) just go into the huge pile along with the rest, and when the next candidate walks thru the door, they automatically go to the front of the queue. Meanwhile the 200+ job apps (and growing) sitting there get binned.

Once again, I’m not defending the school, and the OP may very well be 100% correct, but this guy may very well BE at the front of the queue…at the moment, and there MAY be nothing wrong with the school.
Certainly doesn’t hurt going to first base with eyes wide open.

Myself and people I know have obtained the best jobs of their lives just by showing up, or networking. Think about it, if you were running a school and have a pile of faceless CVs sitting there, and someone walks in who knows what they’re talking about, they’re confident and you like them? Why would you go thru the other CVs? …getting back to the pile of the applicants would be nothing more than a time consuming courtesy - and remember this is Taiwan.

My apologies if I sound sceptical and/or a ranter. If the post had come from Toasty,Xtrain, Mugatu, jdsmith or yourself then I’d believe it off the bat.

Anyway, take my view with a grain of salt.

8

I agree.

9

Not for me it isn’t . I wouldn’t put up with any of that shit in any of my jobs.

Brian

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Not for me it isn’t . I wouldn’t put up with any of that shit in any of my jobs.

Brian[/quote]
Exactly.

11

I have a question or three for the OP: Do you or have you pesonally worked at this school?

I would think that the 6% tax on the Visitor’s Visa is a trade off, BTW, teaching on visitor’s visa is illegal last I knew. (There is no such animal as a Student Visa.)

The 20K deposit is totally illegal.

My point here is this, YOU may think this school is bad, but it seems that your friends, A and B, do not, as they still work there. I’d like to know why? What’s the attraction if things are so bad from your perspective?

You said:

I personally would like to hear the stories from the teachers who have worked there or still work there. It’s not that I discount your opinion, but I’d prefer getting it from the horses’ mouths.

We have lawyers up the yingyang on this site and many people with intimate knowledge of how to hold renegade schools accountable.

Speak out!

12

I too have some questions for the OP. I realize that my comments may come across as questioning the comments made by the OP but this is not my intention. I would just like to have a better understanding of the situation and how teacher continue to end up taking work such as that mentioned in the post.

The fact that the taking of deposits is illegal has been well publicised on sites such as this one, buxiban.com and tealit. How is that teachers still accept jobs where deposits are required? Are these teachers not researching about teaching in Taiwan or are they ignoring the illegality of deposits because of the other aspects of the position that the school is offering (i.e high pay etc.)

Does the school actually take the deposit upfront before the teacher even decides to leave, or do they take a penalty upon the teacher deciding to leave early?

This seems to suggest that they charge a penalty rather than a deposit, if they are taking the money after the fact.

This is clearly wrong, and this is a reason for a warning to be issued against this school as they are employing teachers illegally.

I assume however that the teachers working on student visas are aware of the fact that they are working illegally. If the teachers are genuinely unaware of this fact then this may suggest that they are not researching positions before they accept teaching work here in Taiwan. Again, this information is readily available online.

If you are a teacher there and this is the situation that you are facing then I suggest that you contact the CLA for mediation on this matter. The school cannot require you to work for nothing and I am sure that the CLA will support on this.

This is why I always recommend that teachers do not take bonuses into consideration when calculating earnings. There are so many ways that a school can avoid paying the monies, that bonuses should be looked on as being a bonus if you get them, but don’t rely upon them.

That is a pretty nasty thing for a school to threaten a teacher with, but the good news is that it has no basis.

Firstly, schools have no capacity to officially blacklist teachers. Only the CLA can blacklist teachers, and the CLA claims that the only reason they will blacklist a teacher is if the teacher leaves an employer without giving adequate notice. Cases to date bear this out.

So provided that teacher A fullfills his or her contract, or gives at least one months notice of their intention to leave (best done in writing and a copy kept) then blacklisting will not be an issue.

What penalty does the contract state for premature breach? NTD60,000 would be an extremely high penalty, but if it is stated in the contract then my understanding is that it is legal. You may have some grounds for appeal however as it is somewhat excessive.

That is good advice.

I would add to this that researching the school before you go for an interview would also be a good idea.

I would be interested in hearing back from the OP about this.

13

Yeah, I don’t know how valid the OP’s criticism is. I mean why should we allow a school to be condemned by second and third party accounts? It doesn’t seem fair. Now if the OP had worked there personally, that would be a horse of a different colour…

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Yeah, I don’t know how valid the OP’s criticism is. I mean why should we allow a school to be condemned by second and third party accounts? It doesn’t seem fair. Now if the OP had worked there personally, that would be a horse of a different colour…[/quote]

The reason this thread hasn’t been floundered yet is because I am still waiting for a reply as to whether or not the OP has worked there personally.

I was going to give it a couple more days before action is taken.

15

Folks,

I have been waiting to hear if the OP did in fact work at this school. I haven’t heard anything yet and until I do so I’m afraid I’m going to have to lock this thread. My apologies for letting this go on longer than it perhaps should have. When I hear from the OP then I will either unlock it or move it to an appropriate forum, be it public or private.

Please note that from now on all "warnings’ about schools must be based on first hand experience and I will be acting sooner than I did on this one. If the OP does not state that they have in fact worked at the school they are talking about then the thread will be moved.

I will wait two days for a reply concerning this particular thread before taking action.

Thank you.

Regards,

Durins Bane
Co-Moderator
Teaching Forum

16

The OP has PMed me and confirmed that he/she has indeed worked at this school and so this thread has been returned to the Teaching Forum.

I would like to thank the OP for his/her patience.

Regards,

Durins Bane
Co-Moderator
Teaching Forum

17

Some schools will treat foriegn employees as if they are Chinese/Taiwanese and come on as if you are lucky to be working in Taiwan so you better take what you can and like it. It’s usually because the school had been burned or the boss is hard-core and was treated the same way at his former job, so he or she knows no other way.

The schools that are good to work for are the schools that understand western ways and therefore, how to treat the western people. End of story.

That being said, usually the best way to check out any school in advance is discovery: For example, if you cannot talk to any and all of the teachers who are presently working for the school, then forget it and move on. The school I left about three months ago let the teacher who replaced me come in and talk to all of us individually. They had nothing to hide and although we were honest on a few issues, the applicant realised nothing is perfect and there were three teachers there who had been with the school for more than two years. I was the only one who had less than that.

So, hearing all the promises and “good” things from the boss is one thing, trying to figure out if school is good or bad from the contract is another very tricky endevour.

But speaking to the teachers who are working there is the best way to find out what really goes on.

18

I would like to confirm everything warning is saying in his post. I have also worked for Well American School in Taoyuan for more that a year. The foreign teachers at the school are treated very badly. I remember the day warning is talking about. One of the foreign teachers asked a student to leave tha classroom because he was behaving very badly. The manager of the school saw this and deducted NT$6000 from this teacher’s salary.

About taking 6% tax from people on student visas: I was never on a student visa at the school, but waited for more than 3 months for the school to sort out my ARC. During this time the school also deducted 6% “tax” from my salary every month. When it came to the end of the tax year, these deductions were not included in my tax dedution slip that has to go in with the tax return form. When asking the salary department about it, they told me that they “create a fictitious chinese person” and pay the deductions over on behalf of that person. I doubt whether that happens. All I can say is that this year, in March, the entire management team of the school was sent on a fully paid week long vacation in Japan!

And yes, they do take a NT$20 000 deposit upfront. They don’t even try to disguise it by calling it a training fee, or something else. They call it a deposit and it is written into the contract.

Well done to warning for having the guts to speak out about this school. :bravo: As somebody said earlier, most people just make a runner for CKS airport and never look back.

19

You guys should grow a pair each and report these bastards to the proper authorities! “Speaking out” means very little; you’re spitting in the wind IMHO.

CLA handles this kind of shit now don’t they?? :fume:

20

I’d really like to see a first had report from someone with other than 1 post.