6 WayS To TeLL A SUCkY LaNGuAGE SChOOL
So you send 'em your CV on the Internet, they accept you, you receive loads of glowing recommendations form current teachers and lots of promises and assurances that your life will be great -- but how to read between those lines and know when a school sucks ass?
I offer a few warning signs. Now these are by no means all inclusive or definitive, but are a good rough guide.
1) NOBODY IN AUTHORITY SPEAKS ENGLISH
If the emails that you're getting from them are chock full of errors, and they don't suggest a phone interview, be wary. This means that not only does no one in authority speak English, they don't have the werewithal to hire somebody that speaks English, or even to convince one of their teachers to edit their correspondence for them.
That pretty much guarantees "shitty fucking English mill."
2) THEY DON'T USE TEXTBOOKS OF ANY KIND
Make a point of inquiring what kind of textbooks are used before you start a job. Familiarize yourself with the names of the major text book lines, like HEADWAY, ENGLISH FILE, REWARD, STREAMLINE, INTERCHANGE, etc. Most reputable schools use these books (probably due to extensive kickback deals, but I digress.)
Why should not using these books be a warning sign? Certainly these books have their own flaws. But some schools are too cheap even to provide these, and might, for example, just use photocopies. That's a good sign that they'll be cheap bastards about other shit, too.
Worse yet, they might have their own shitty book they slapped together somehow. May as well have "WE ARE CHEAP PROFITEERING BASTARDS" tattooed on their asses, if that's the case.
3) YOU CAN'T FIND ANYTHING AT ALL ABOUT THEM ON THE INTERNET
That could mean that it's a very new school, which means it will have low cashflow and inexperienced administration, or it could mean that there are so many bitches and gripes about them that they change their name all the time to get around them. Both, needless to say, are about like walking through East Detroit singing "Camptown Races" and "Momma's Little Baby Loves Shortening Bread" in an exaggerated AAVE* accent.
You're just asking for a whupping.
(*AAVE -- African-American Vernacular English)
4) THEY HAVE SOME RIDICULOUSLY CONVOLUTED PAYMENT POLICY
It's not exactly rocket science. You pay people for the amount of work they do each hour, or you give them a salary for a certain amount of work each month, with any additional hours being paid extra.
But a recent trend among the sucky schools has been to pay people in some incredibly complex way to maximize the rip-off possibilities.
English Teacher R showed me something from a Chinese school recently that was something like this:
"Your salary will be $1800 a month. We will subtract $300 a month for the cost of your accomodation, and also the amount of your utility bills and and phone. Any time you work less than 120 hours in a particular month, we will subtract $10 per hour. Local taxes will be subtracted, as well. Any time you work more than 120 hours per month, you will receive an extra $8 per hour. You will be reimbursed for travel time at the rate of $3 hour, if that travel time exceeds 20 hours per month. $100 will be subtracted from the salary each month, and you will be repaid this amount upon completion of the contract."
And on and on, completely and unnecessarily convoluted, all the better to bend you over and give you a good violent reaming. Eat my ass. I'd run as fast as I could in the opposite direction if some school tried that shit.
5) HUGE AMOUNTS OF STUPID PAPERWORK
There tends to be a direct relationship between how much paperwork a school has and how shitty it is. If you're required to do too much more than fill out an attendance register and maybe some kind of paperwork regarding test scores, start to worry. If you have to, for example, turn in a complete list of all the stuff you did in class, fill out "progress sheets" or "student profiles" or something, that probably means that school has a huge turnover of teachers, so they have to keep track. If YOU are required to keep track of things like how many hours the students have studied in total, that's probably a sign of a badly fucked-up organization.
6) SOMETHING IN THE CONTRACT ABOUT HOW TEACHERS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO DATE STUDENTS
I mean come on, how many perks do we get in this job?
CommeNt on My BriLLiANce On The MESsAGe BoarD