I feel I need to write a reply here..yeah, yeah, first post. Before you suggest I am in the employ of Omeida, feel free to check my 800+ posts over on Daves, or add me on Facebook to know Im genuine.

I have just finished a contract at Omeida ... and Im not a backpacking youngster either. Im 41, have a related degree, a diploma in English Language Studies, and hold a Trinity. This was my 5th ESL job, 3rd in China, and has to rank as one of the best. If not The best. Ditto for Odar as a boss.

Ill address a few of the issues noted.

Students are not spolit and stuck up. Mostly, students are adults who earn between 2000-5000 and they save to come and study as they have a strong desire to improve their english. One or two can be troublesome, and lets face it, you cant like them all! But the vast majority of them are decent, hardworking and motivated.

The majority do expect to learn, and be taught. And of course, like all adult students, they may complain. HOWEVER, this is not quite as represented in the posts here. Omeida will always side with the teacher, and in the event of a complaint will discuss, monitor, and support the teacher first every time. This may involve observing a class, offering feedback...and in extreme cases, asking a teacher to drop a class from his/her schedule and take a week to observe other classes giving them a chance to improve. This is really the kind of thing we would all expect of a professional school right? Esp considering the quality of some of the teachers in China.

Ill add to that...not that Im suggesting any of the posters in this thread are like this, but if you are used to teaching classes of 40+ students and just entertaining them with witty anecdotes and stories...this probably isnt going to be the place for you. Whilst it isnt perfect, (more about that later) Omeida does offer a chance to really 'teach' students in very small classes with lots of contact (5x90 min lessons a week) where you really have a chance to work on and analyse language problems.

I have seen some terrible teaching here in China, and here at Omeida. In small classes of adult students....for example, just 4 students...you cant get away with the nonsense that EFL teachers do in lots of other places in China. However, if you are semi-decent at your job...give the students lots of time to talk, and give them useful, functional language to use ... you aint gonna have any problems.

I should also add...This isnt one of the plum jobs in China...it isnt one you work in country for, and get with considerable amounts of guanxi. But it is in a nice location, and it does have its benefits. Not everyone wants classes of 50+ once a week, or wants kindy or middle school. Not everyone wants to work weekends or evenings either...and as a training school, Omeida doesnt ask you to.

Contracts? there are some clauses in the contract as mentioned. I have never seen them put into practise as the school does side with teachers first...i think they are there purely to stop some teachers taking the pee and doing a terrible job. these are the teachers we often moan about...Omeida is trying to weed them out. There are other small clauses about fines if you skip meetings (one a fortnight) and social nights. In practice, I have never seen this enforced, even though some teachers rarely attend social nights. Again, I think its there just to stop teachers taking the pee.

Ill finish the post with some comments about Odar. In my experience, he is a straight up boss, and I actually like him quite a lot. He has never lied, or pulled the wool over my eyes in any interaction I have had with him. In addition, he has proved to be very supportive to one of my colleagues who had an issue with a sick mother, another teacher who had to take a 3 week break at no notice to return to the USA for a family illness...and he was actually at the birth of Trevor's son and took photos at 3am in the morning of a new born baby which he shared with all the other teachers.

Yeah ... trevor took a job there...and was in yangshuo in December last year.

Sure, there are some problems in this school...name a school in China where there isnt...generally though, I reckon its a pretty good gig, and I would recommend it to any new teachers, teachers who wish to experiment and use their CELTA/TRINITY teaching skills, and who are sick of big city living/kindy/large classes.

One last thing, they dont insist on teaching from books...I actually dont like this, but it does give a certain freedom to experiment. I used this time to develop a new range of transferrable grammar lessons, and develop some nice activities with music, that DIDNT involve just asking students to sing a Britney Spears songs.

I also got bored of that, so my final months there I taught exclusively from Face 2 Face and New interchange.....with just some supplementary material from the Guardian Weekly....

Its not a bad gig....recommended IMO