Hello fellow ESL teachers,

I have a problem that I am sure many of you are all too common with. I was working for a school and trying to put up with their lies, misinformation, and misguidance throughout my contract but at one point I couldn't take it any longer after throwing on some more lies. I won't go into detail on that but I assure you my decision was after an incredible amount of stress and anguish. I left the school after eight months. I have been in China over two years now.

Moving on to the important issue, is that I need a release and reference letter from the school. They don't want to give it to me without demanding a huge and unreasonable sum of money. Anyways, I can't renew my visa with another local school due to the lack of those letters. My visa is going to expire soon and I was wondering if there was anything I could to buy myself more time... some sort of visa switching?

I fear I may be blacklisted in this province and may have to jump ship due to this school's lies and misdeeds.

It's all a very big headache and could have been all avoided if so many Chinese schools weren't run by complete morons. I think this complaint system is unfounded without interviewing the teacher and his students to decide if it was just a mismatch(putting it nicely) or they clearly are a bad teacher (but of course that's asking too much in China) Can anyone give detailed advice? The province I am in now is Jiangsu.

Thank you for your information in advance,

Rob