Hi Everyone,
Let me tell you more about Huamei Foreign Language School located here at 509 Huanghe five road Binzhou City Located in Shandong Providence. The most shocking thing is that when I first came to the school everything was pretty good in the begining, and no problems at all at first when I got here on December 4th 2013. After I started teaching here is where the problems and concerns have started from the staff gossiping behind the backs of the native speakers for absolutely no reason and telling the native speakers not to speak freely about the country where they came from or if they are married to a spouse that came from that country, only when someone asks a question where does your spouse come from? you have to be honest with them and tell the truth, you cannot lie about it and at Huamei Foreign Language School the staff their are telling all foreign teachers not to even say much about that. I think that its not right thing to do.

Another thing is that they have a marketing plan to send teachers to other primary, middle and public schools by sending their teachers over their to get some students to come over to Huamei. Plus, the facilities of Huamei Foreign Language School is very dirty, not clean, not organized in the office with the office staff most of the time is not present most of the time and there is no Academic Director that works at the school. Our overtime salary there are times that it is not paid correctly, there are times that there are mistakes done to the salary in the beginning and terms in the contract is not honored at all times hours are not made up at all.

The chinese staff usually gossip about the foreign native teachers at this school saying that one to another is better than each other which its not good thing to say, racism and racial profiling is a big problem, plus phone calls at the last minute to foreign teachers to come in and work and the office staff didnot tell them exactly what to prepare...

that is it for today and i'll give you more info later

Sadly, I have been there and suffered that kind of thing at a TC myself in the past, I feel your pain. The farming out to recruit students tactic is of questionable legality and I wish that the PSB would wake up to it and make a defining statement, as although corporate training is legal, using another company to provide teachers if you do not have a license to recruit foreign teachers is probably not.

With the whole getting farmed out by the TC thing, the way that I dealt with this situation was to look at the facts: You are not their regular teacher, you will not get respected by the students to the same degree and Chinese teachers at those external schools will feel jealous about the fact that you may be able to get the job, despite not being quite as qualified or experienced as them (or jealous that you do not speak Chinglish). Also, I'm sorry to tell you that those Chinese teachers at the public schools, know that you work for a shitty TC rather than a real school (I do not mean to diss you personally, I'm just telling it, how it is). As far as they are concerned, you are just there to give them a 1 hour break from teaching.

I found that TCs marketing exercise backfired even from a marketing point of view, never mind an education point of view. I will tell you this: Not only are TCs just businesses rather than real academic institutions, they often aren't actually even that good at being a business anyway, that's why they have to cut corners in every way possible.

In my experience, it was impossible for even the best teachers to give an accurate representation of the lessons at the TC (the product that we were supposed to be advertising) as teaching 50 students for a period of 45 minutes, is completely different to teaching smaller numbers such as 4 to 10 for 55 minutes like you might do at a TC. There is a significant reduction in time personally dedicated to each individual student. Some of the shittier teachers struggled to teach their classes properly, the better ones adapted their lesson plans accordingly. I can't help thinking that some of the teachers that were farmed out actually deterred students from enrolling at the TC, rather than attracting them.

Chinese schools, whether private or public can be really disorganised. Although one may give face and avoid making people lose face, you have got to be firm and stand your ground or your will be used as a quiet obedient doormat. When I get last minute phone calls or instructions, I will directly tell people to get f**ked. Start doing the same.

My advice is whilst you can, quit this TC job, there are public universities that are recruiting teachers right now. Apparently, Shandong is not a great part of China to teach in either, consider switching cities.