The.dude,

While you were here working with us early in 2015 you must know the school was going through a transition phase, you were already here before I started and we are in a much better place now. Salaries have now been boosted too! I don't know how the tax rate varied unless overtime payment was included?

Ouch, now Teacher Development time isn't always fun and games for the Host either (unless, of course, you're presenting a Fun and Games workshop). The training and development sessions were specifically designed to help the new/inexperienced/serious teachers hone their skills and discuss new ideas in an open meeting. It's also a great chance to practice group speaking and presentation skills which are highly valuable in most professions. Lots of work goes into designing these modules, but I am sorry that you would have rather been elsewhere, though we all have jobs to do. The formal TD training sessions are only held occasionally these days, we are more focused on being left to organize and prepare our class materials during office time.

Night classes can be a pain if you'd rather be elsewhere too. The absolute latest you finish class is 7:40 (5:10 on weekends), again, this is just part of the job you have to take into stride. I hope your new employer meets your needs, for us, this mid-week evening class scheduling is due to student availability and is a necessity.

I wasn't here when you signed up initially, so I don't know what was offered or promised regarding these 11 days you mention. I am aware that there was a 'holiday time' misunderstanding among some staff so you must know that this was discussed back then and hasn't been an issue since.

Back to the transition phase in early 2015. Yes, the school lost some local staff members due to conflict of interest and this was a shame as many of them were dedicated employees. On the plus side, it provided a chance to clean the slate and re-build from the ground up. After 4 months you really should have had a permanent schedule though as we were overstaffed at the time this left room for activity classes such as finger painting and book clubs. These classes were somewhat flexible which caused schedule changes.

The main branch is approaching it's 10th year, and sometimes kids write on things they shouldn't.. the TA's now all bring their computers for the listening exercises and the class limit is still 14 students. Busy and loud. Not all classes are this big though.. and we still have reasonably decent materials and resources, even more toys now!

All courses have books, course guides and cards. If we're missing any cards you can just make a note to have it made, the 'Flashcard Request' list is still on the wall where it used to be.

We aren't forcing office time to make up your contract hours anymore, this was done away with some time ago. There's no 'data capture' or typing either. If this was a thing then it stopped with the change of management early 2015.

Swirling vortex of hell. Dramatic!

I apologize to the Reader if I seem overly familiar, having worked directly with 'the.dude'. I also extend this apology to 'the.dude', you raised some legitimate concerns here though you must know that we've really worked hard to get back on track.

Best of all, things are pretty chill now.

Regards,
Academic Manager
Shane English School Dalian
dl_am@outlook.com

*Note, bugger, hitting 'reply' individually to each Poster doesn't format as I thought it would (i.e. not under/attached to the original post) - it appears that I am building my own long message chain in attempt to personalize my responses to each individual (Red, Irfas, FencingMad, The.dude, Silverboy, looking;). Must be time for a coffee. I'll just wrap it up here guys.

Thanks for reading.
DP