In response to all of your questions (and accusations):

This is the first time I've ever posted on this board.

I'm writing the story because I'm a journalist and I get paid to write stories that are of interest to an audience. This article, obviously, is of interest to people interested in teaching abroad. If you look at my column at TransitionsAbroad.com (there is a link in my post) you will see that I've written quite a lot of articles about teaching English.

No, I don't want to be an agent. I know agents have a bad reputation, but recently I've heard more positive things about them. Normally I advise people to avoid them, but I want to be sure that my advice is good, so I am interested in finding out if the industry is changing.

If you think agents are crap, and would like people to avoid them, then maybe you will consider giving me some information I can use in the article so that I can dissuade people from using them. The website I'm writing for is very widely read and respected.

Best,
Matt

Hi Everyone,

My name is Matt Gibson. I'm a journalist working on an article about teaching agents in different countries around Asia.

In Taiwan (where I live) agents traditionally have had a bad reputation for being untrustworty, greedy, dishonest, etc. However, it seems that this has been changing in recent years.

Since I have little experience with agents, I am looking for teachers' opinions about agents so that I can find out what the general attitude towards them is in different countries.

I'd like to know:

1) Do you feel that most agents are honest?

2) Do you feel that agents work in the best interest of teachers?

3) Do you feel that agents contribute to lower overall teaching wages by trying to convince teachers to accept less pay (so that they can make more money)?

Also, I'd really like to hear about anyone's personal experiences with agents, or anything else that anyone has to say on the topic. My article will be based mainly on the opinions of the teachers who respond to my post.

If you would like your opinion included in the article (although I can't guarantee it will be) please include the following information about yourself:
Name (just a first name is OK)
Home country
Country you teach in.
This is just so that I can attribute quotes to people, for example, Beth, a British English teacher living in Japan said, ....

If you are interested in reading my writing, it can be found at:
http://www.transitionsabroad.com/information/media/matt-gibson-bio.shtml

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-gibson

http://www.matt-gibson.org

If you would like to contact me privately about this, I can be reached at xpatmatt@gmail.com.

Thanks very much for your reading!

Best,
Matt