In response to Re: Save yourself from HELL!!!!= STAY AWAY from Shane English Schools (AILE), Dongying, Shandong !!! (San Migs)

[originally posted on Aug 3rd but removed and reposted for clarity]

Wow.

I'm not even sure where to start with this. For those wondering, this is Wayne (Smithers who abuses other foreigner teachers Wayne to you) and as amusing as your BS is and as much as I'd like to ignore this, I can't. This is because I know which parts of this essay are genuine concerns or problems, which parts you have fudged to make yourself look better or make the school look worse and which parts are complete nonsense (not to mention the parts that make you look bad which you conveniently skipped over).

Starting with things skipped out, I notice how you're very quick to name everyone around you who doesn't get on with you (and failed at that – their names are Kimi and Xuan and have been on the contacts list for months) but somehow managed to omit your name. But you picked a modest, unassuming pseudonym ... more nodding dog than daring politician, it has to be said. The essay was dense enough that I'm only going to highlight the really obnoxiously misleading stuff. Let's begin, shall we?

Yes this man does not give a flying fig about the quality of teaching, the adequate abilities of his managers, the usefulness of his recruitment team or the reliability of his welfare officers because, lets face it none of these people "have" to have any people skills or do they "need" to speak or understand much English..... if they have a qualification in being dishonest, insensitive or able to suddenly want to screw you over at all costs ...

Of course, the problems you've had with this one manager mean that every manager hired by the school across all the different branches conforms to your comic book villain construction. Naturally there are some who are more and some who are less competent but from within this group of people I can easily think of a dozen people who are far smarter, kinder, more compassionate and better qualified than you. Speaking of English, I love the comment you passed in the office a few weeks ago complaining about how the Chinese staff “don't speak good English.”

employees in "responsible" positions who not only treated myself badly

Looking after your dog and visiting you when you were sick, helping you through the rough patch you had when you first got here with that other teacher, dealing with every petty issue you had and lacked the wherewithal to deal with ... You treat people (and I'm thinking of one Chinese teacher in particular) like dirt unless you need/want something and you expect people to continue to be at your beck and call despite this. Some day you'll find you've burned one too many bridges and I fear that despite all the signs it will still come as a shock to you.

two (places to socialise) to enjoy in East City

Jin Chen pool halls, whiskey bar, top floor pool hall by ming jian, silver plaza, food street, qing feng lake artificial beach, qing feng north pedestrian street, countless BBQs, other teachers' homes ...

I felt and feel even more so now, that foreigners are brought to this school under false pretenses.

I concede the Chinese HR struggle to communicate with foreigners effectively, speaking a second language over the phone to a new teacher who is in a position they have never experienced, coming from a culture the HR guys don't know. Following the meeting (where we completely ignored everything the teachers said and made things worse of course) we added an interview with a foreigner to make sure that there were no misunderstandings and that new teachers could talk to somebody they feel comfortable asking honest questions. An expression springs to mind about mountains and molehills ...

my contract stated I would be working 20 hours a week, this was not illustrated that infact I would be at school 40 hours every week and that 20 hours would be spent in the classroom,

For clarity, you have two full days of work (Sat and Sun totaling 12 hrs) which leaves two days completely free and three full days to do 8 hrs of classes at most. For a salary that is terrible for the UK but exceptional for the country and region (it's four times what the Chinese teachers get) that seems reasonable to me.

whilst the remaining 20 would be wasted confined to the teachers office as a reminder that the school "owns" us

Let's not drag all the teachers under the bus as wasting the one week of the month where you do office hours (which was provided as an option for more money and which you agreed to) as they for the most part made use of the time actually preparing classes (and not just recycling the same activities - how many times in your classes did you play 21 questions in exactly the same way?). That you chose to spend time in the office surrounded by other teachers both Chinese and foreign with a wealth of experience, a large collection of resource and training books and a mountain of digital resources you could use in the classroom sitting at your desk watching TV on your tablet speaks more about you as an individual than anything else. The school owns you? Christ the school just wanted you to put some bloody effort into your classes.

WAYNE'S ( foreign teacher / department manager/ sits in the foreign office defending the school abusing fellow foreigners and sprints vigorously back to MAGGIE to relay anything that is said) ..... all of these people are as much use as a chocolate teapot and should be ashamed of the way I witnessed them treating fellow teachers, aswell as myself.

Thanks for that. Abusing fellow foreigners? I'm just a malicious kind of person I guess. I particularly enjoy scrawling disparaging comments on peoples' desks and throwing things at them when they make eye contact.
Coming from somebody like you I find this particularly galling.

This woman will not only lie to your parents and tell them bad things about you,

The greedy, school which only cares about looking good and making money tells the parents negative things about you before asking them to pay money to keep their child in your class? What possible benefit could there be to putting down a teacher in front of parents?

she will also try to play you off against the other foreign teachers, discuss personal matters that she'd had with other teachers with yourself and then ask for your opinion

She tried to be friendly and get your advice on how to better communicate with other teachers? How dare she! As far as personal matters go I have to say that you loudly discussing your own very personal matters in the middle of the shared office with anybody who would talk to you tends to make me think you have a double standard in this regard.

try to bribe the Chinese staff and TA's with extra money for spying on the foreign teachings in the office and outside of work,

No. Just ... no.

Being taken ill anywhere in the world is unpleasant, imagine being admitted to hospital because you were hit by a car and nearly murdered for defending friends and your boss is more concerned on when you will return to work.

What happened was tragic but that's an outright lie. Every single teacher that was involved in that was given as much time as they needed and no pressure to come back until they were ready and I'm offended you would use their suffering like this.

After finishing two IV drips

In China they use IVs extensively – most pharmacies will do them in situ and they administer them for everything from having a bad cold up.

quiz me about the whereabouts of the teacher who had been nearly killed, did I know anything and she protested that she knew I knew something.

If you had a friend who had been seriously injured and was suffering physically and emotionally – was depressed and withdrawn and then suddenly disappeared and couldn't be contacted wouldn't you be concerned? Wouldn't you want to find out where he is and make sure he's ok? And for the record, you did know: you were with him arguing the night before he left. Also, it's Xuan, not Scwarn and she isn't in our school as she moved to another branch to be with her husband who works there.

After experiencing all of this and seeing how childish and ridiculous the school had become, I had made my mind up that under no circumstances or offers was I either staying or resigning another contract at that school.

Is this before or after being rejected when you applied to take on HR responsibilities for a new contract with a higher salary?

I could not let this happen to my students

Who you cared about so much that you didn't leave your lesson plans and what handover notes you did complete were poorly and lazily filled out ...

An American, married couple were hired a few months ago at the school ... They were also informed that they would not be separated.

They weren't.

When they arrive they have a schedule awaiting them which doesn't involve training but includes teaching the 2nd year teacher's weekend classes who had gone back to his home country to see family.

BS – they observed classes and had training in West city then came to East and went through further training here specific to this branch and the classes they were going to be taking.

Naturally they both felt inadequate and intimidated by the situation.

They came and signed on to full time contracts straight away which resulted in them having a heavier class load than they should have. This is something we learned from (again following the 'pointless' meeting after they left) and we make an effort now to be clearer on the pace at which classes are added and the option available when they first arrive of starting on a more flexible part time contract for the first few weeks then switching to a full time contract or starting straight off with a full time contract. I notice you failed to mention that somebody lied to them about their schedules when they were out with the other foreigners and landed them in trouble on their first day. Also, before they even had a chance to meet Maggie somebody who has a personal disagreement with her told them just how awful, mean and unfair she was which lead to a minor problem which should have resulted in a five minute conversation and fix being yet more proof of how evil the school is. It's one thing for you to have disagreements and complain about the school but quite another to dump all your personal stuff on others when they're at their most vulnerable and struggling to deal with a new job, home and culture. You say the school makes new teachers feel stressed when they arrive? Step outside your glass house.

WAYNE was doing his best to convince her she had done nothing wrong, like Smithers comforts Mr Burns.

Like Smithers comforts Mr Burns. Beautiful – almost poetic. Kudos.
Aside from anything else – we spoke in Chinese which despite being here a year you don't understand and can't speak, so your guesses as to what I said to her are interesting. Maggie is human. She makes mistakes, but the way these foreigners left wasn't one of them and if the foreigners who stressed this couple out don't feel guilty about ruining this experience for the couple and for how much it cost them financially and emotionally then I have nothing more to say.

Following this event MAGGIE decided to hold a manager's meeting to which all teachers must attend. This was her opportunity to try to bad mouth the couple to us and state that they had called her a liar

The school was genuinely gutted by two teachers we thought would do really well leaving and wanted to understand why yet you still think this is about Maggie?

All of us gave constructive and relevant advice which at first was immediately defended by WAYNE which just illustrated that we were wasting our time because nothing was going to change.

Everything that was said was taken down (a typed summary was posted in the office if you remember and we crossed them off as we addressed the issues) and as I've already mentioned has resulted in changes.

MAGGIE has now decided that new teachers will not arrive until the previous teacher has left.

WTF? Again, your situation where the teacher replacing YOU arrives late is not representative of the school policy or of other teachers. You remember the teacher who left just before you? His replacement didn't have personal issues before he came to China and they had a full week of observed classes and a week to plan classes together on top of the full training schedule for new teachers. It's not always about you.

it is more beneficial for the new teacher to go into their classes completely blind without any helpful information to prepare them for the class

Again, the resources you could have left behind for the next teacher but didn't speak volumes.

I knew during my last week at Shane that MAGGIE would try to pull some stunt on me

I'm tired of reading through your rant and honestly, I've seen enough teachers with common sense and more manners leave without incident, regardless of their opinions of the school so I'm going to cut past all the zany antics that ensue following everybody involved reaching the maturity of a toddler.

I truly wish you the best in your next job and beyond. I hope you find all you felt was missing here and that the problems (which were actually problems) you had here don't surface. Be careful though – people respond to honesty and being treated the same way you would want to be treated. It sounds simple but it's important.

I've said my peace and I'm not going to reply to this any more – you know how to get in touch with me if you have anything else to say but to be frank the reason I didn't sign your farewell diary when you were asking people to is because I have nothing to say to you.

Goodbye mystery nodding dog.

China can be a good place to work