I have heard this criticism before, that most western FT's are self-serving. It is true that many are recent college grads and are primarily looking to have a good time in a foreign country, and are therefore not overtly conscientious but it is also true that many schools, particularly private schools are for profit entities run by business people (not educators) looking to cash in on the lucrative English demand. Unfortunately, this tends to attract unscrupulous individuals who do not honor agreements and often willfully perpetrate wrongs against said teachers in order to maximize their profits. That is why the most frequent complaints from FT's are that their contract has not been honored and they are having problems with getting shorted on their pay. To say that someone who flew half way around the world under a certain agreement is selfish when that agreement has not been honored is reversing the actual case; the boss is selfish and using that individual anyway the please for their own ends. This is why people at public schools often have more positive things to say--they are working with educators who are not guided by a profit motive and under the auspices of a goverment organization, hence their agreements are met and their pay is not subject to the sneaky designs of an unscrupulous business person. What I think is sad is that working for these shady private school bosses often jades someone toward the culture, when every culture has shady, untrustworthy people as well as good, honorable people. Any time there is an unregulated industry where large profits can be quickly made, it tends to attract some who will misuse their situation, especially if they have someone at their legal mercy, the way FT's are and migrant workers are in the US. I've gone public school and I am never going back.

I do give you credit for telling me that I didn't provide enough details about the z-visa process. I had a z-visa for Guiyang when I came back to China and the YinChuan school provided a z-visa as well as an experts certificate. However they tried to force me to leave my passport at the school by telling me to bring it to the school the day before I had left.

I literally had to "wrest" the experts certificate as well as the certificate of health out of "Martin"'s hands and tell him I needed to make scans of those for my own personal record.

The one thing I might have a little bit of disagreement with you is on my "knowledge" and that I should have done more research. But this isn't something I would hold anyone against since I'm new here on the discussion boards.

You see since last December I have applied to well over 240 different institutions in China and I got a grand total of less than 10 genuine responses, with this school being the only one that showed interest. The job links I applied to were on websites like this one, Dave's ESL Cafe, iatefl.com, esljobs.com, etc. The main reason is because many people believe I'm Chinese when they see my passport scan and photo. Chinese Canadians, Chinese Americans, and people from the west whose roots are descended from China get second class treatment here compared with people of other backgrounds (I trust the honesty of the good people so I will be blunt, WHITE IS BEST). I do understand and speak Chinese as well as my parents taught me the language when I was growing up. However they don't really know much about modern China as they have been living outside of this country for almost 30 years! They do come back for weeks about every other year but only as tourists, so I couldn't exactly rely on them for decent help.

I have had numerous experiences where when I let out the fact of my Chinese knowledge I was immediately given more work or the boss of the training school suddenly decided that I wasn't from the States and decided to get rid of me. But I think this is a topic which should be discussed separately.

Dithering although your criticism sounds a bit harsh you are right about most training schools being in a state of corruption and general negativity. However at the same time you have failed to provide an actual good experience at a school where you were treated fairly. Perhaps you should give us a rundown of what a proper experience for an ESL teacher should be like and give the newer ESL teachers researching "tips" as so far the only reliable source of information on ESL schools is on discussion boards. I'm not exactly business saavy but I know that if I were to banter and complain like many of the foreign teachers I've seen I most likely would've lost my job on the spot. Teachers and Franchisees are more emboldened to criticize non-White foreign teachers. No offense but most of the White teachers I've worked with were only self serving types, not the types who would actually take action and help you. Maybe ESL teaching isn't the best option for foreign people of Asian descent in China?

Looking forward to hearing back from you.