Daves ESL, Tealit, ESL Dewey, just about any site you can think of to search has very little on offer in Kaohsiung. There are still jobs elsewher, even south of K-Town, but most of what’s available in the second city is on the outskirts or is ALWAYS available. Substitutions and very low hours abound, but almost no full time work. Why? Or is it just me who’s looking and thinking that there’s an out of proportion job drought in Kaohsiung?
Demographics i.e. world’s lowest birth rate and incomes in Kaoshiung are too low.
It has been like this for as long as I have lived here. I found out the hard way by leaving a job only to discover there was very little work, especially anything with twenty plus hours, available. I know people who have stayed seven years in the same school, and I am sure it’s because they know if they left they would have trouble finding something to replace it.
When I first moved to Kaohsiung, more than 10 years ago, maybe 14, there were plenty of jobs. People would stop you on the street sometimes and ask you to work for them. Now, I realize that those days were gone a long time ago, but these days as contrast are shocking. I left Kaoshiung in 2005 and there were jobs at that time. I came back last year and there weren’t many, and over the last year, more of those have gone–or so it seems.
And it could be because I’m looking for better than average jobs, too. But across the board, there is very little.
I can stay here next year, but I really miss my friends there. I went to Kaohsiung when I returned to this island because Kaohsiung is home. I MAY be able to find another MOE job there, but I worry that if something happened to that job, I’d be stuck in jobless wasteland.
Are incomes in K town so much less? Are birthrates there less than overall for the island? About the only thing there’s much of there is kindy.
I really wonder what’s different down there and when that difference will start to be felt everywhere else?
As has been mentioned, the two factors everywhere in Taiwan are birthrates and income levels.
The former have fallen off a cliff pretty much everywhere. Expect that to really start catching up very soon. Indeed, at the elementary school I teach at, the fifth and sixth grades each have more than 20 students. The fourth grade and below have about a dozen or less. The sixth grade I teach has more than double the number of students as the fourth grade I teach.
In terms of income levels, outside of Taipei, Taoyuan and Xinzhu, things are really screwed up. There are handfuls of people making lots of money in all of the major cities, and people in Taipei, Taoyuan (because a lot commute to Taipei) and Xinzhu do better on average. Everywhere else is fucked though. Wages and salaries have basically stagnated in the past decade from what I’ve heard. Inflation has not.
In short, people simply cannot afford to shell out great heaps of money for English. Frankly, if I were to lose my MOE job, I’d probably leave Taiwan as I wouldn’t want to work in the private sector (assuming I could even get a job). It’s getting more and more like immigrant fruit picking jobs every day from what I hear around the traps.
A third issue not mentioned already is that there are plenty of people who can’t get jobs back in the West who are coming over here now. The MOE programme seems to be picking up numbers now, and there seem to be plenty of recent college graduates who can’t get jobs in the U.S. thinking they can do the teaching in Asia thing for a couple of years. The guy who runs the Canadian office of Hess wrote a rather snarky comment along those lines in a recent Hess newsletter. I was actually surprised he would do so as if I were American, I would have complained about it. Anyway, the perception is most definitely out there that it’s a customer’s market, to a lesser extent an employer’s market, and most definitely not an employee’s market.
I get a daily download of new jobs available from this site. Every day there will usually be around 20 new positions in China, and perhaps 1 in Taiwan (usually Shane). Pretty depressing reading.
One other factor just mentioned by Guy is the sheer quantity of foreign teachers coming to Taiwan. Where I live there are significantly more westerners than 5 years ago. I can understand why they’re all leaving their screwed-up home economies to look for work abroad, but why are so many of them choosing Taiwan? Surely they realise that EFL in Taiwan is a busted flush?
That’s interesting. I don’t see that at my school, but this is considered a very good elementary and lots of our students come in from fairly far outside the city. Perhpas that’s why I still have lots of younger students. We did have a school visit and bring its eintire fifth and sixth grade classes and that still was fewer kids than one regular class size here. I thought that was just a one off, though. Perhpas the birthrate drop off is just much worse than I’d realized.
And the adults can’t afford to study, either? Sheesh. Just when I was looking at the economy in the States and feeling thankful that I’m not there right now.
You are right about the demographics, but be careful when talking about current 5th and 6th grade numbers. I believe those years include the Year of the Dragon when many Taiwanese feel it is auspicious to drop sprog.
Ah, yes, the Year of the Drag-on. When was the Year of the Tiger? Whenever those kids hit school there will be very few.
housecat: There are three elementary schools kind of in this vicinity (which covers a town and several spread out farming communities/villages) and they all have small numbers. There used to be at least two others around here, but they closed a few years ago. It’s only a matter of time before they close another one around here. The schools around here are a fairly good measure of the problem because there aren’t a lot of schools around here, so people can’t pick and choose from a large number. Most kids attend the school closest to where they live. My junior high school is the only junior high school in this area. There isn’t a senior high school here, so the kids here either have to go to one in the next town or they have to travel all the way to Taidong City.
My junior high school was built decades ago and it was presumably built roughly for capacity (and back then, classes were much bigger too). All of the homerooms, the teachers’ offices, the principal’s office, the administration offices, the English classroom, the conference room, the special education classroom and one storage room fit in one wing of the school now. There are three wings plus a few stand-alone classrooms. Most of the rooms in the other rooms have been turned into large special spaces such as an aboriginal centre or a recycling centre. We basically have under a third of the students here than there were back in the day. There are sixteen teachers (I think) for six classes. There are a number of abandoned houses in my village. If this place is in any way indicative of rural Taiwan, then rural Taiwan must be in complete demographic freefall. It’s pretty sad.
tom: After the cuts in the U.K., I’m surprised there isn’t a massive influx of Brits, or is there? I wouldn’t know since I really am out in the sticks. I think it’s probably virtually impossible for anyone other than a Brit to get a job teaching English in the E.U. these days and even in places such as Turkey and there must be a massive exodus of qualified teachers from the U.K. to anywhere in the E.U. they can find work.
I think people come to Taiwan because they hear the money is better and they think it’s more developed/civilised than other places. I wouldn’t go to China. That place sounds like the Wild West.
When I first came to Kaohsiung, I kept the contact details of every school I saw advertised on various websites. I must have the contact details of 200-300 schools at least.
When I change jobs for whatever reasons I go to this list( which I constantly update).
With it I have never had a problem finding teaching gigs in Kaohsiung.
While I agree there are far fewer jobs then previously I also believe that the market has changed and thus the methods. I now see a lot of older teachers. No more 20 year olds fresh off the boat. I have spoken to a few bosses I have worked for. They tell me that the parents now prefer older teachers as they are seen as more stable and keep working at the school for longer. Gone are the days when you could simply change jobs because the boss complained that you stunk of booze and were hungover.
When I first came to Taiwan, I lived with a Canadian guy. He used to party, go to school hungover, missed 2 days a week etc. I remember he complained how f’ed up this country was because after a few months he got fired. I remember this was pretty common.
Schools also seem more reluctant now to give ARC’s to teachers. Most of the jobs I have got are mainly because I have an ARC through marriage. So do many of the others I work with (Also PARC’s).
I do not know if this experience is similar to those with such visa’s?
Silly me, I avoided answering the question 
It is because Kaohsiung is a dying/dead industrial city. Its days of glory have long passed as I think many of the factories that used to be here relocated elsewhere or at least were scaled down. I honestly believe the whole city runs on cram schools, tea shops and restaurants. My boss told me that Yang Ming elementary school has 13 students in some classes. You’d be amazed at the number of people who are looking to come to Taiwan to teach, even if it is only showing an interest in the place. A website I run got 1414 hits last month from people looking to teach in Taiwan. 64% were from the USA. So people obviously don’t know what it is like or will be like here in the future.
I live in Taichung and search Dave’s and Tealit sometimes, and I must admit that even Taichung pops up more frequently than Kaohsiung.
What website is that?
I have my MOE job through DEWEY and they claim to have three new MOE jobs in Kaoshiung and that those schools have been swamped with resumes from teachers in the US and Canada. These new jobs aren’t on their website, though (and no old jobs either, in Kaohsiung), so I don’t know how the teachers there knew to send resumes, but it doesn’t sound unbelievable.
And Kaohsiung is still a port city. There’s more to it than buxibans and tea shops still, surely.
housecat: Firstly, I thought Footprints did the MOE recruiting (and they get a one-time finder’s fee). Secondly, as far as I was aware, the agency doesn’t get to handle the individual positions. People basically list preferences for where they want to go, but it’s handled centrally through the MOE (presumably in Taipei) and they send teachers where they want to send them. They don’t offer/advertise individual positions. In some cases, it’s slightly different in that you can directly contact the local county government. That’s what I did with Taidong County. Then you deal with a representative from that county government. You’re essentially still in the MOE programme and get the same benefits, but you get allocated to one of the schools in the MOE programme that happens to be in the county you applied to.
I could be wrong, but that’s why I’m sceptical that what you’re doing is really MOE. Maybe that’s what Dewey is telling you, but it sounds really different from anything I’ve heard regarding the MOE programme. I used to work in a government school in Taoyuan City through Dewey. We had a similar (though not identical) contract to that I now have, but it wasn’t through the MOE programme.
Who pays you? Your school or Dewey? (It should be your school.) If you have a problem with something or someone at your school and you need to go over someone’s head, who do you speak to, someone at Dewey or someone at the MOE? (It should be someone at the MOE. In my case, it’s their representative in the Taidong County government.)
To be honest, I’d take anything and everything Dewey says with a grain of salt. Dewey is a business, and a fairly nefarious one at that. This isn’t just me. Check out anything written about them online (including here at Forumosa). They’ve burnt a lot of people. By the way, if you see Sonya, please tell her I say, “Fuck you, you fucking cunt whore bitch.” A swift punch on the nose is optional, but wouldn’t be unappreciated. You know, just to reminisce.
Here’s how I’d interpret what they said to you. They know that you don’t really know whether they have those jobs or not, but they’re aware that things aren’t as rosy as they were even a few years ago and this is not an employee’s market anymore (not that that ever stopped Dewey from fucking people before). They probably know about your own personal and financial situation and that you can’t/don’t want to leave without something decent lined up. So what they’re saying is, “You should be very grateful for your job, peon. We have lots of other peons in the wings and we can fuck you at any time if you get uppity. Now who’s your daddy, bitch?”
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]housecat: Firstly, I thought Footprints did the MOE recruiting (and they get a one-time finder’s fee). Secondly, as far as I was aware, the agency doesn’t get to handle the individual positions. People basically list preferences for where they want to go, but it’s handled centrally through the MOE (presumably in Taipei) and they send teachers where they want to send them. They don’t offer/advertise individual positions. In some cases, it’s slightly different in that you can directly contact the local county government. That’s what I did with Taidong County. Then you deal with a representative from that county government. You’re essentially still in the MOE programme and get the same benefits, but you get allocated to one of the schools in the MOE programme that happens to be in the county you applied to.
I could be wrong, but that’s why I’m sceptical that what you’re doing is really MOE. Maybe that’s what Dewey is telling you, but it sounds really different from anything I’ve heard regarding the MOE programme. I used to work in a government school in Taoyuan City through Dewey. We had a similar (though not identical) contract to that I now have, but it wasn’t through the MOE programme.
Who pays you? Your school or Dewey? (It should be your school.) If you have a problem with something or someone at your school and you need to go over someone’s head, who do you speak to, someone at Dewey or someone at the MOE? (It should be someone at the MOE. In my case, it’s their representative in the Taidong County government.)
To be honest, I’d take anything and everything Dewey says with a grain of salt. Dewey is a business, and a fairly nefarious one at that. This isn’t just me. Check out anything written about them online (including here at Forumosa). They’ve burnt a lot of people. By the way, if you see Sonya, please tell her I say, “Fuck you, you fucking cunt whore bitch.” A swift punch on the nose is optional, but wouldn’t be unappreciated. You know, just to reminisce.
Here’s how I’d interpret what they said to you. They know that you don’t really know whether they have those jobs or not, but they’re aware that things aren’t as rosy as they were even a few years ago and this is not an employee’s market anymore (not that that ever stopped Dewey from fucking people before). They probably know about your own personal and financial situation and that you can’t/don’t want to leave without something decent lined up. So what they’re saying is, “You should be very grateful for your job, peon. We have lots of other peons in the wings and we can fuck you at any time if you get uppity. Now who’s your daddy, bitch?”[/quote]
I absolutly cannot STAND Dewey, I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. You’re preaching to the choir in that aspect. I’m paid by the MOE, or at least that’s what everyone insists, but I’m never given a name. Some have expressed surprise that I don’t pay any fees to Dewey, though, so maybe I do and I’m being lied to?
I’ve begged my school to write a contract with me that doesn’t include Dewey, but they insist that they can’t because Dewey guarentees to have a new teacher within three months should the current teacher leave.
Anyway, thanks–I’ll contact Footprints and see what they say.
And yes, I don’t trust what Dewey is telling me about jobs in Kaohsiung. I honestly feel like the just don’t want to be arsed with sending my resume, since I already have a job.
You’re definitely not working through the standard MOE programme then. They don’t start contracts mid-year. I bet Dewey is creaming a ton off the top and probably collecting a fee from the school too. Part of Dewey’s agreement with the school would be that the school pays them X amount in order to gurantee a new teacher within three months. Why would Dewey make such a commitment otherwise? There’d be some sort of penalty if they didn’t get a new teacher, so obviously, they’d want to be handsomely compensated for that. Obviously, that’s problematic in terms of quality control because if it’s two and a half months between teachers and they get a dubious teacher applying, they’re going to palm that teacher off onto the school purely as a business decision. That’s why I think there’s a massive conflict of interest involved in using agencies, or at least that particular incentive scheme.
When I first worked at my previous job, there was a woman who started less than a month after me. She’d lived in Australia for 23 years (she was ancient – sixty something and had decided to come to Taiwan because her Australian husband had recently died), but was originally from the Philippines. I’m not sure whether she had Australian citizenship or not, but her university qualifications were from the Philippines and were deemed unacceptable in terms of getting her a work permit and ARC. They strung her along for around four months or so (and she had to do visa runs on her own dime, I believe) before sending her unceremoniously back to Australia, where she had basically sold her house and packed up her life with the intention of being abroad for at least a couple of years. How fucked up is that? I think they were basically stalling the school for time. They had a teacher, and Dewey probably kept their cards close to their chest on it all (we also had some South Africans who were not qualified teachers “subbing” on a long term basis, and it’s then that the school got wise to things and cracked down on Dewey a bit), so they probably got out of paying a penalty to the school, but obviously, they were only using her as a stop-gap measure and dropped her like a hot potato at the first opportunity someone better came along. The ironic thing though is that she was probably the person there least likely to create waves. Anyway, the whole thing was profoundly unjust. That woman was incredibly stoic though and didn’t really complain at all. Fuck, I would have been ropable.
If we ever meet up (perhaps when ironlady comes out here later this year – the guy in charge of the MOE programme for Taidong County has scheduled a workshop with her for Sunday, 20 November), we should compare contracts. I bet yours is very different from mine.
[quote=“GuyInTaiwan”]You’re definitely not working through the standard MOE programme then. They don’t start contracts mid-year. I bet Dewey is creaming a ton off the top and probably collecting a fee from the school too.
If we ever meet up (perhaps when ironlady comes out here later this year – the guy in charge of the MOE programme for Taidong County has scheduled a workshop with her for Sunday, 20 November), we should compare contracts. I bet yours is very different from mine.[/quote]
From what you’ve written here, it sounds very much the same, with the same pay scale and bennifits. That’s why I haven’t complained much–they don’t seem to take anything at all from me, but I have no idea really.
I’ll fill Nov. 20 in on my calendar! And I was planning to ask my own director to make an appointment with her, too–but hadn’t asked her about it first yet!
BTW, do you have a contact number for Footprints–or for your guy in Taidong?
housecat: PM sent with contact details.
About a month or so ago, there was a lot of emailing going on between me and ironlady, and me and the director of the programme in Taidong. I’m sort of the go-between because I first proposed the workshop and he wanted me to handle some of the details. Anyway, the workshop has apparently been booked. I know the financial details of it and the date, but not the venue or schedule yet. I’ll be seeing the other foreign teachers and the director next Monday, so I’ll bring it up then and discuss it in more detail. I’m trying to get it all sorted out before mid-July (when I leave for Australia) because September and October will probably be a bit hectic for both me and the director (who will have to deal with new teachers trying to adapt to life and work in Taiwan). Next semester, there will be ten foreign teachers working through the MOE programme in Taidong County. There are also a lot of Taiwanese English teachers in Taidong County. So, we should be able to get reasonable numbers at the workshop. We’re going to open it to people from other counties though.
One of my friends works through the MOE programme in Xinzhu County and he has also expressed an interest in trying to get ironlady to come to run a workshop in Xinzhu County. When I know more about this, I’ll let both of you know and it might be possible for ironlady to do several workshops in different locations.
Basically, the plan is that we’re going to have the TPRS English workshop on Sunday, 20 November in Taidong. Ironlady and I are also going to organise an intensive Mandarin workshop for the day before if we can get enough interest. My wife has also made enquiries into a venue in Taipei so we’re going to try to run at least one intensive Mandarin workshop in the north also while ironlady is out here. Ironlady is also going to train my wife (who is also going to watch the Ben Slavic DVDs) to use TPRS so as to teach me Mandarin, but if there’s enough interest, my wife will also do ongoing Mandarin workshops (perhaps once per month) at least in the south of Taiwan, and possibly in the north too. Later this year, the ball is going to be rolling with TPRS in Taiwan, we hope. We’ll advertise more details about all of those ideas later this year when we have more information.
I would like that information as well.
Actually, are there any organizations around here that can help me with the job interview process? Is there an organization that can critique my resume and interviewing skills and help me overcome any shortcomings? I would like some help here.
Whole Lotta Lotta: Are you a certified teacher?
As to your questions, what would be in it for them? Maybe you would want that service, but would enough other people want that service? Are resumes really important here? I was under the impression that they weren’t even really looked at. Don’t shortcomings in the EFL industry here come down to having the wrong physical appearance and not playing enough games? Cynical answer, but have plastic surgery so you become a white girl from California and sharpen your sticky ball throwing skills. Because I think you’re assuming a level of professionalism that simply isn’t present for most jobs here.