I responded to this remark in your post: “I have 14 tattoos and I'm a girl.” It was a very brief response and I did not offer any explanations. Because of that, you misconstrued me and took umbrage. You said: “Comments about me having a disgusting body aren't hate-filled?” You had read too much into my post. Nowhere did I say in my post you had a “disgusting body.” I clarified my comments in later posts but I will explain in detail here.

I said your tattoos could cause distraction in class and you replied: “My tattoos are not visible at work, I keep them covered. My students don't know I have tattoos.” I said if they happened to see you outside of work your tattoos that are visible, they would be shocked and might change their attitude towards you. You yourself affirmed that people could be shocked. You said: “I make sure my employer knows so that there is no shock or horror if after they have hired me, they see me outside of work with my tattoos visible.” You knew your tattoos could cause “shock or horror.”

Cunning linguist had commented on tattoos. He said: “The downsides of having tattoos are that they are often associated with criminality in many cultures (Yakuza in Japan, for example) or prostitution in other countries.” In conservative countries, especially Muslim countries, tattoos are associated with vice and are not symbols of virtue. A man nicknamed the ‘tattoo king’ was sentenced to one year in prison and 200 lashes in Saudi Arabia, a Saudi newspaper reported yesterday. He went to women's homes to draw tattoos on their bodies. He was finally nabbed by members of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice in an undercover operation.

What impressions are you giving to people if they see your tattoos, and, worse still, if they know you have 14 tattoos? As CL has pointed out tattoos are often associated with criminality or prostitution, so they may think you are involved in crime or prostitution, and so may find an occasion to harm or violate you. Hope it will not happen but one cannot be certain it will not happen.

You are inviting stares – people may think you are weird or outlandish to have so many tattoos.

Parents will think you are not a good role model for their children (if they and their children happen to see you somewhere outside of work). They don’t want their daughters to imitate you.

Normally a woman who is satisfied with the natural beauty of her body will not want to do anything to make it look worse. Tattoos are not natural on a body. You love your tattoos and have good intentions for having them but, again, “good intentions aren’t always good.” You keep your tattoos covered at the EF center for obvious reasons. You have proved the point that good intentions aren’t always good.

You have every right to have tattoos just as everyone else has every right not to see them lest your tattoos shock their senses. It’s like a smoker who has every right to smoke just as a non-smoker has every right not to inhale his smoke. That’s why smoking is banned in certain places to which the public have access (I am not saying people with tattoos should be banned too).

Today so many people do what is right in their own eyes. Tattooing the body is right in your own eyes and you have no regrets whatever for having them. CL remarked: “I have read that as people get into their 40s they often regret having them done in the first place.” You responded: “I believe the people who regret having them, had them done for the wrong reasons in the first place. I had my first tattoo 20 years ago, and I sill love it as much as the day I had it done. It's a personal thing.” Yes, it’s a personal thing – it’s right in your own eyes – but one day your eyes shall be opened and you will hate the very tattoos on your body! You said: “A tattoo is something you have for life and should be something you have done because you want it.” In that day you will not want your tattoos anymore – you will want them removed instead. You said: “I believe the people who regret having them, had them done for the wrong reasons in the first place.” In that day you will realize you had them done for the wrong reasons or intentions. You can’t see now what’s wrong with tattooing the body. But you will see when your conscience is awakened . . .

In that day your conscience (all of us have conscience) has been awakened to tell you how wrong you have been – you have done what is not right according to the standards of what man knows to be right by his conscience. We can ignore conscience but it can return later with a vengeance to trouble us. Someone in America was troubled by his conscience all because he knocked down a street sign. He paid US$50 to clear his conscience. A county supervisor-chairman received an unsigned note with a cheque for US$50. The note read: “The enclosed should take care of a street sign post I knocked over some time ago in west Hollywood.” A newspaper reported a man whose conscience was “finally at rest on Tuesday, more than 60 years after he failed to pay US$1.50 owed to a newspaper”. The man, 75 years old now, gave a cheque to the newspaper for US$1,500 to “cover the debt and what he estimated was 60 years of interest and inflation”. It had taken the man so long to put the matter right only after conscience had knocked at his heart’s door.

You don’t understand why I said I felt so sorry for you. You told me not to have pity on you. I was not being sentimental but I knew the day would come when your eyes shall be opened and your conscience awakened. Then you shall regret having tattoos and shed many a tear. . .

Posters have spoken against demo lessons. They said:

Demo lessons are useless and a total waste of time.

Demo lessons do not serve any useful purpose.

They are ridiculous and unnecessary.

The lessons are evaluated by unqualified assessors.

Demo lessons are crap.

What a waste of time, money and effort! Rubbish!

You are the only poster who strongly defended demo lessons. You said: “I don't think that demo classes are a bad idea at all! If I was recruiting a teacher, I'd like to see what they can do in a classroom before I set them on my students!”

It seems you did not understand me when I told you to go and learn this very important principle: “Good intentions do not justify a bad action.” I did not explain how this was applicable to demo lessons. You misconstrued me and called me a “pompous” person instead (you know three fingers point back at you).

There are so many examples of this principle in real-life situations, but I will give you only one example.

A couple came home in the middle of the night and suddenly heard someone shout “Boo!”. The man shot and killed the ‘intruder.’ He found he had shot and killed his beloved daughter, whose last words to his father were: “I love you, Daddy.”

This sad example tells us that "good intentions aren't always good."

I have already told you: “You have good intentions for supporting demo lessons but good intentions are not always good.” I will now explain why it is so.

A good teacher may not mind giving a demo lesson in front of the people evaluating him but it is not fair to him as he is not giving the lesson in a real class situation. The evaluators are adults and cannot behave and imitate real students in class. The teacher will not get the same kind of reactions he can get from teaching a real class. You say: “I'd like to see what they can do in a classroom before I set them on my students!” What a load of bunk! How can you see what he can do in a classroom if he is not given a real class to teach in the first place?

Take the case of YoungEnglishman, or any new teacher for that matter. If he were to give a demo class before he joined the training center, the evaluators would never know of his difficulties in dealing with kids (his post tells us he had such difficulties). In the demo lesson, the evaluators themselves can never act like real kids – like kids crying in class (YoungEnglishman did not know what to do with a crying kid), feeling restless and walking about in class, talking, and urinating on the floor (we should know some kids have urinary incontinence), etc. How will a teacher deal with the children in such situations? Will the evaluators do any of those things during a demo lesson? Obviously, they can’t but these things do happen in a real children’s class. Will one of the evaluators urinate on the floor during the demo lesson and see how the teacher will deal with the situation? (Yea, you have to make it real.) So demo lessons can never give a true picture of how a teacher will react or deal with problematic students.

The evaluators may pass the teacher after the demo lesson, but it is ultimately the students (the adult students) who decide whether they want that teacher to teach them or not. Some companies send their employees for English lessons and pay a large sum of money to the training centers. You are from London, and what if the adult students don’t like British or Cockney accent?

If the company prefers its employees to hear American accent, it will tell your center to get an American to teach the class. If your center refused to listen, the company will pull its employees out of the center. Do you think your company will want to lose money that way? No way, your center will accede to the company’s request. As I have said before, students come first, not teachers (foxy agreed and gave a good comment on that point). I don’t know whether this had happened to your center, but I know of a company that requested a training center to provide an American teacher to teach its employees. At the end of the day, it is not the demo lessons but the companies, adult students or parents who decide whether they want that particular teacher or not. You could feel bad that the class was taken away from you just because they did not like your accent.

From his post, it could be seen YoungEnglishman did not have the gift or the natural aptitude for teaching young children. Not every teacher has this gift. If the evaluators themselves don’t have the gift or aptitude, how on earth will they be able to assess a teacher and know for sure he or she has it? It needs an experienced child education psychologist to find out for the center whether a teacher has this gift. You are no child psychologist and so cannot assess a teacher accurately. And training centers can ill afford to hire such psychologists.

Evaluators may be influenced by an evaluator who has a strong personality or is strong-minded. What if the evaluator happened to be the most senior among them? They tend to listen to that evaluator for his senority lends weight to what he says. In this way, demo lessons cannot be fair and objective, even if it is given in a real-class situation.

My post is getting lengthy. I have other points to prove your argument for demo lessons is flawed. No matter how, your good intentions for demo lessons aren’t always good or right. Your good intentions can never justify demo lessons. I have said that the more you justify (demo lessons) the more you make a fool of yourself.

You will not like my next posting.

What Dragonized said is true: “You have wasted a lot of peoples' time.” Now I have to spend time writing this post.

In Part 2, I mention that the conditions at EF Dalian could have affected YoungEnglishman’s work attitude and performance. I have read YoungEnglishman’s post and your posts about him. You said: “I did evaluate him through class observation (2 weeks after my arrival as a senior teacher from a different EF) and made several training recommendations to him straight away; all of which he either ignored or became defensive about. He was given a written warning and a training plan to try and help him improve, but rather than put any effort in, he continued as before which is why the decision was made to terminate his contract.”

In his post, YoungEnglishman showed he was unhappy with the conditions of your company (and the training center as well) because the company did not meet his needs and expectations. This could have affected his morale, a very important factor you had overlooked when he was at EF. His post and your comments indicate he was suffering from low morale. The work environment, the pay conditions, your attitude toward him as his immediate superior and other factors could have contributed to his low morale.

You had not explained why “he either ignored or became defensive about” your “several recommendations to him.” You could have given them in a manner that offended him. You accused him of lying in his post. I have to say this again: when you point one finger at him, three fingers point back at you. You could be blamed too for causing him to behave like that. To quote a source: “Workers feel comfortable when they work under a sympathetic caring leader in place of one who is authoritarian, dictatorial and dominating.” Most likely, he found you “authoritarian, dictatorial and dominating.” He did not mention you in the post but you did mention him and accused him of so many things. Your own posts have shown you have a hard spirit that is not conducive to dealing with such a person like YoungEnglishman. You see you even lambasted those who disagreed with you.

You said you had evaluated him through class observation. If you did it alone, your evaluation could not be considered impartial and fair. If you did it with another evaluator, you could override the views of the other evaluator, or that evaluator could be influenced by you as you have a very strong personality, and you are very strong-minded, as seen in your posts.

YoungEnglishman complained: “The salary is also low. My salary started at 8100 for the first 3 months, and then increased to 8600, however the cost of an apartment in Dalian is very expensive.” Concerning pay conditions, one source has this to say: “Employees can become disgruntled when they feel that their pay and benefits are not in line with current industry rates or are not in keeping with rising prices.” His low pay could have affected his morale. He could think in this way: “I work so hard for so little pay. Why help to fatten the pockets of the boss? They charge the students and parents very high fees but pay me so poorly.” You would be unhappy too if you were paid 100 or 200 more than YoungEnglishman for being a senior teacher.

The pay at EF is really low compared with other schools (I mean real schools – EF training centers are NOT schools) that I know of. I can honestly tell you the teachers’ pay is about two to three times higher than that of EF centers. I had worked in such schools. You are a senior teacher, and I don’t think your pay is that high. The teachers, including you, working for EF have been short-changed. I have more to say about this in a later post about “perks.” You retorted you received no perks.

You are complaining that your company is profit-oriented and said you have clashed with the management over this. I don’t believe you. The management would have dismissed you long ago for opposing their policy and clashing with them over this. If you really felt so strongly against the company’s profit-making policy, I don’t understand why you did not resign long ago. If you were really a woman of principle, you would have quit long ago. You have given the lame excuses that for the students’ sake you want to complete the courses. The centre can always find another teacher to take your classes, who - who knows – is better than you, has better rapport with the students and will not oppose the company. You are not a woman of principle, that’s all.

Working long and irregular hours had affected YoungEnglishman’s morale. He said: “The hours suck. There are two 'intensive' periods during the year (combined total 3 months) where you are required to work 6 days a week.”

EF centers are training centers, and, as such, open seven days a week all year round. Teachers usually have to teach either morning and afternoon, or afternoon and night. There are centers where some teachers have to teach seven days a week because they keep on accepting new students and there are not enough teachers to go round. In real schools, teachers work only five days a week, Mondays to Fridays, and there are no night classes. Accredited schools have only trained, certified teachers. You are not a real schoolteacher. You point one finger at Silverboy and said “you are not a ‘teacher’.” You put the word teacher in inverted commas. This is insulting and one poster has to remind you that Silverboy is a highly qualified educator – he teaches at a university and you at a training center. So you are worse than Silverboy. You are not a real schoolteacher at all in spite of your credentials that only exist, as one poster says, ON PAPER.

YoungEnglishman remarked that “the school seriously resented it when I took time off (Like when I took three days off to get married!).” You have not refuted him on this point. Training centres are not happy if a teacher takes leave because they will have a hard time finding a replacement or a relief teacher. The centre should have rejoiced with him and given him leave for such a happy occasion, and it was only for three days (he had to travel far to Outer Mongolia to meet his parents-in-law). This shows EF Dalian does not really care about the welfare of the teachers. They are inconsiderate and only interested in making profits. The teachers have been hoodwinked.

He was mercilessly kicked out of his apartment. You said it was dreadful and: “They gave him a very short time frame to leave, which was wrong considering his wife's condition.” Before that happened, did you try to help him and speak to the management not to be so hasty in evicting him as his wife was seven months pregnant? So you had no pity for him either, and your company no compassion. But you praise EF Dalian and encourage people to join your company. Who knows they may end up suffering like YounEnglishman. You cannot guarantee it will not happen.

He complained about the kids – I have more to say on this when I touch on demo classes in a later posting. You have said they sueezed students into classes, etc. I don't know whether this action and others by the management had happened to YoungEnglishman but definitely these practices would lower his morale.

I have a lot more to say but I have to stop here. I have already written a lengthy post. The bottom line is this: conditions at EF Dalian had definitely affected YoungEnglishman badly and you chose to ignore this valid point raised by Dragonized.

Sorry for the belated reply. I have mentioned before I don’t have the time as I have other important things to do. Since you have demanded a response from me, I will, though reluctantly. I don’t like to waste time responding to your senseless talk, but this time I am forced to so do.

You started this thread with the heading: A WARNING FOR NEW TEACHERS USING THIS BOARD. Who are you to issue this warning on the Forum? The Board has already given advice on this matter, but to you this advice is not good enough and so you issued your own warning.

This is the advice given by the Board:

Post Against a School
When you read a bad post against a school, it may be true. There are also reasons why it may not be true. For example, it might be written by a competitor. It might also be written by a disgruntled teacher who has good reasons to be disgruntled. Or not really good reasons (went overseas with the wrong expectations, for example). Ask yourself how credible the writer sounds; and if you are interested in this school, do some further research including speaking to present and past teachers.

Your warning is so totally different from the advice given by the Board. The Board’s advice is friendly and dignified but your warning is harsh, manifests a hard spirit (as seen in your posts), and unfriendly. You started off the thread by labeling YoungEnglishman as a liar . . . – that is already bad enough (I will talk more about this in a later posting).

Kudos to the Board and its Moderators

The Board has been very gracious to let you post your messages. Posters like me are very grateful to the Board for providing this Forum to help people seeking to come to China or other countries to teach to be aware of what they will be getting into if they should choose to teach at a particular school or centre. The moderators themselves have been doing a great job. Their work is not an easy one as they have to read and edit the many posts in one day.

I have to stop here, but before I stop, I will tell you in my later postings how you had misconstrued me, how abusive, derogatory and demeaning you have been, that you are not a real teacher at all, that you have been hoodwinked by EF, etc. I cannot write all that I want to say in one post as I don’t have the time, and, also, it will take up a lot of space here. So I will do the postings one at a time. I normally don’t like to write long posts, but I am forced to do so.