Happy Goal English - Shanghai

Its been a long time saloon members, but I'm back. I did my due diligence and used the search function concerning this topic but got squat back except a job ad for WEB International in Taizhou. 

Anyone have any information on this school?

It apparently has been around for about 2 years. They seem pretty legit. They have centers in almost every district in Shanghai, so that must mean something.(..right?) They won't give me the emails for any teachers until I sign - which I think is a bad sign (but also could easily be interpreted as a sign of respect after all, I wouldn't want my email handed out willy nilly) Its a WEB school and they teach adults as well as children. I need to pick which I want to teach prior to starting work.

The contract is decent too.(..right?) Its a total of 40 hours a week, only 17 of which is class time. Rest is office (go to training, plan lessons, grade tests etc.,-nothing too intense) Salary is 14500 w/o apartment. Goes up after 6 mo by 1,000. 3 sick days, 11 (Maybe more?) paid holidays.

Also, I get a free meal when I'm working.

Any info on the school? Any contact details for teachers please would be helpful.

Thanks 

40 hours   and you'll have to trust that they'll only want 17hrs actual, teaching time?

I'd look again.  There's bound to be other - better - deals out there

It says in the contract that there are only 17 teaching hours. There is also a post about the contract that they gave me.

I'd also love it if anyone who reads this post also goes to review the contract. http://raoulschinasaloon.com/index.php?topic=8086.0.

Thanks 

They won't give me the emails for any teachers until I sign - which I think is a bad sign (but also could easily be interpreted as a sign of respect after all, I wouldn't want my email handed out willy nilly)

I think you should insist. Of course they should ask the teachers before they give you their email address.

It's not as though you're asking for the adresses of every disatisfied teacher they've ever had. You want the addresses of a couple of their teachers who are relatively content.

I can think of only one reason why they wouldn't provide them; because the situation on the ground is not as they described it.

Contracts are worthless; and i say that as an ex contract manager. Of course it's good to recognise pitfalls, but all these contracts can be used and abused by both sides. What matters is whether the school respects its teachers, is honest etc.

My Uni provides emails addresses up front, and to be honest if someone came to us without communicating with teachers I'd be a bit suspicious that they were an overly trusting idiot. It doesn't present a problem for us, because though things in this world are never pefect, we are careful to be frank and honest with applicants, so why wouldn't we provide these details?

It may be a good school, but you should insist.

Only had a quick look, so I may have missed these things, but I'd ask, amongst other things

-How many different locations will you be teaching in?
-What do people do during office hours?

Yeah, I agree that the refusal to hand out emails is a bad sign. They dont want u to talk to someone before u sign?

At my school the office asked me if they can give out my email to prospective teachers who ask and I said yes, so I think its pretty standard at most schools.

Also, the contract, to me, looks horrid. 40 hours a week monday through friday AND weekend?! And you have to be available from 9am to 9pm?!

Sorry, not worth selling your soul to a company for a mere 10,000 a month.

Also, those 40 hours a week jobs suck. I have a friend working one now, and during her "office hours" he boss offered her a little trip to the countryside. She thought it sounded really nice, but of course they ended up at some school where she had to immediately teach for a few hours with no prep or warning. And they didn't consider it "teaching hours" because it was just an impromptu thing.

So if you are in their clutches all day, you can be sure they are going to work you as much as they can.

I used to work at EF long ago, and they required some amount of office hours and it really was just office hours. We'd spend time there making photocopies and writing lesson plans and basically just fooling around for a couple of hours. Schools like to have the appearance of having a lot of foreigners just milling about. I wouldn't say that all office hour jobs are horrible (although I don't usually accept office hour contracts anymore -- I keep my office at home), but that's why you need employee e-mail addresses so you can ask about these things.

There are other pitfalls to this contract, check out my reply on the other thread.

40 hrs a week. Feeeerk thaaaaat. Also why does you're salary go up 1000 after 6 months? Seems completely arbitrary. Either you're good enough for the job, upon which they should pay you a solid wage you're happy with, or you're not, upon which they shouldn't hire you. They could pull out all kinds of reasons to ensure you don't get that extra 1000.

Also I went for part-time work at a Web school in Ningbo once, they offered me a contract that would've paid me something like 60rmb ph there, I was not impressed. Way to value your teaching staff guysh.

I posted the contract in the contract zone. Link in above post.

The 40 hours need to be completed on a 5 days of the week TOTAL. Meaning I'm off on either Tuesday and Thursday or Monday and Wednesday. It seems quite bearable to me. And to answer AMonks question, they offer overtime if you work more over 17 hours.

I get the feeling that the office hours really are something like LD said, they just want some whites, 'milling about.'

40 hours a week...
non-consecutive days off...
Web International...

I'd give it a miss based on those factors alone.

Hmmmm....the unis I taught at didn't have a problem giving me the email addresses of their current and former teachers. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and looks like a duck...

It's been a few years since I knew people who worked at Web in Guangzhou, but everything you describe is what they told me, and they did say their office hours were just hanging around, not teaching.

First thing that popped into my head was, "Why the heck wouldn't they schedule the days off together?" There's a specific reason in the mind of the person who decides that. From what angle can this possibly make sense? And the 9 - 9 availability is more demanding than any corporate retail jobs I ever had in the USA.

I knew a few people who worked there and it was the kind of job people take when they first come to China before realizing there are much better options somewhere else. From what I was told back in '06, no foreign teacher stays there longer than the first 6 mos or 12 month contract, and my understanding is that students usually pay for programs that are a few months long, so they don't notice. My impression has always been that Web in GZ was for young, white foreign teachers. Never saw any teachers there who looked over 25.

In addition, one of my uni students went there during the summer for something like a 6 week program, maybe two or three times a week during the summer. He liked it and thought it helped his English, thought the foreign staff was great. He was an exceptionally keen go-getter type: the kind of person who could help himself. Most other students I met there were the standard learn-by-passive-osmosis, wait for teacher to give the secret of english types.