It is actually a wonderful place, but maybe not for teaching.

I recorded this conversation on my phone for record with a meeting with the school and me - as usually they often spoke to each other in Chinese before they responded to my questions. The school was not properly managed and after pointing out many flaws in their school system that required improvement, they immediately presented a list of 100% totally false accusations of me, (such as asking the parents to buy me gifts, or treating the children in an improper manner, etc.)

Good, now everyone will know who this "Kathleen Hong" is. She'll probably need to change her name if she still wants to reel in naive teachers. The false accusations are the typical slandering in chinese culture and represents more a projection of the illegal actions of Kathleen and her cohorts themselves. I am sure they have extorted gifts from parents before, and for them to know so much about treating children "in an improper manner" shows they may be well versed in these practices themselves. Would I ever send my kid to a place like this, HELL NO!

tape recording is available to the public
, and will be posted on various public media outlets across China and Internationally, in the expat community and Chinese parent community .. also in Chinese.
As a result:

1. The school refused to pay my last month’s salary

2. They did not agree to 8 weeks payment in lieu of termination letter.

3. They would not give me the copy of the signed contract.

4. They showed me papers where

You are very brave to do this. You knew there would be consequences that turned out to be unjustified actions on the part of this scam "school". You have suffered injustice and for that this "school" will reap the bad publicity and karma that will drive its demise. This "school" wants your records expunged from it's database so they will tell future employees that you never actually worked there because they don't have any records. Most likely Kathleen will spread a rumor like you worked for a rival company and you were jealous of her success, yaddayaddayadda... You have the physical proof, they can never take that away from you.

they admitted they had forged my signature
on them, which claims I owe them money. (I have a copy of this paper)

Not very clever or intelligent criminals, but good thinking on your part.

* They also used very unethical and manipulative sales techniques on both the parents and the children while doing demos. For example, when the children were separated from the parents for any period of time, they would promise the children gifts if they told their mother they wanted to learn English there.

The human beings(if we can call them that) who started this scam "school" know they are just trying to steal as much money as possible. What better way than to go after the children in their minds? Some sick, depraved lunatics we have here. They do not know what "ethics" means, and they will lie like they just telling you what they had for breakfast. If these people had no money on them they would soon run some sort of pickpocketing activity out on the streets.

* They also used pirated copies of a very well know English Teaching software. In fact, they would put their school stamp over the top of the brand name logo of the software.

Of course, they were too cheap to actually get copyrighted material and be more serious about their business. They obviously will only go so far as to make things look good enough on the surface to fool naive Chinese parents (too many of them unfortunately). Damn what anybody else from a more civilised society thinks. I wouldn't be surprised if Kathleen started her career as a DVD/CD bootlegger with a few long cardboard fileboxes outside a computer bazaar.

* They used & advertised their Chinese School name under a franchise name they had formally lost their license to.

False advertising is still too common. Franchised chain training centers also calling themselves "schools" are bad to begin with. But for this company to LOSE the license shows a special "talent". I guess they didn't want to play ball and pay the full tribute to the head honchos at the franchise.

* Much of their material had very bad and incorrect grammar, and there was no real set standards.

Haha it was written by a whole brigade of chinglish speakers, with each contributing but 2 words so as to guarantee millions won't starve to death! Lol.

* If there was ever a child with issues, such as learning challenges or was "hitting" in class, you were told to ignore them and not say anything to the parents as it was important the parents renewed their membership.

Hey corporal punishment and violence are the norms for what constitutes "education" at these types of places. The parents probably did the most hitting , hence the imitation on the part of the child. After all these training centers are just another extended tool on the part of the parents to continue the cycle of abuse/neglect they heap onto their children, and they are paying for it in cash! What an upside down world some places are.

* Most of their computers and software did not work properly and all had illegal copies (unlicensed) copies of software on them.

Yep. I think if it was up to the boss everyone would still be using Pentium II's and playing DOS/Windows 3.1 games on these things. Probably bought them on the cheap from the local junkyard. Someone should run a file recovery software on these babes and see if aol instant messenger or lotus was installed on these things :)

* The school also employed another "American" western teacher who was mentally unstable and would suddenly, and without warning start yelling and cursing and accuse people of of speaking about him, and would then walk out of the school. He also would often comment that his phone was tapped, people were following him and that people would go into his apartment when he was not there.

Wow sounds like someone has Paranoid Schizophrenia. I do think these training centers employ mentall unstable folks like these to create a wedge between ft's and drive them apart so as to make them more easily manageable. But being that you're in China you will run into losers no matter where you end up.

I hope you find a place that is much, much better.

You'd have been better working for 'Hangzhou Helen', albeit only marginally so!
Anyway, I hope you get your money, and that rubbish training school closed down, and the director sent to jail!

Teachers – Parents – Stay Clear

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DETAILS:

I recorded this conversation on my phone for record with a meeting with the school and me - as usually they often spoke to each other in Chinese before they responded to my questions. The school was not properly managed and after pointing out many flaws in their school system that required improvement, they immediately presented a list of 100% totally false accusations of me, (such as asking the parents to buy me gifts, or treating the children in an improper manner, etc.)

The

As a result:

1. The school refused to pay my last month’s salary

2. They did not agree to 8 weeks payment in lieu of termination letter.

3. They would not give me the copy of the signed contract.

4. They showed me papers where

In Addition:

* They also used very unethical and manipulative sales techniques on both the parents and the children while doing demos. For example, when the children were separated from the parents for any period of time, they would promise the children gifts if they told their mother they wanted to learn English there.

* They also used pirated copies of a very well know English Teaching software. In fact, they would put their school stamp over the top of the brand name logo of the software.

* They used & advertised their Chinese School name under a franchise name they had formally lost their license to.

* Much of their material had very bad and incorrect grammar, and there was no real set standards.

* If there was ever a child with issues, such as learning challenges or was "hitting" in class, you were told to ignore them and not say anything to the parents as it was important the parents renewed their membership.

* Most of their computers and software did not work properly and all had illegal copies (unlicensed) copies of software on them.

* The school also employed another "American" western teacher who was mentally unstable and would suddenly, and without warning start yelling and cursing and accuse people of of speaking about him, and would then walk out of the school. He also would often comment that his phone was tapped, people were following him and that people would go into his apartment when he was not there.