Dear Tom,

I just got an interview with them, and want to know how long do their contracts run? are they short term like 3 months or can i work there longer? I teach english at a university in south america and dont want to leave it all behind just for a few months.. thanks..

Hey ya'll!

Here is my experience with "Amvill"

It wasn't the best job ever, but fun for a few weeks while I was traveling in Europe during college. You get paid "peanuts" to live in the South of France for a month. As long as you ignore everything your director says, eats lots of cheese, drinks LOTS of wine, makes friends with the rest of staff (get black out drunk and hitchhike after dark to the nearest discoteque (30 km away)), you can have a pretty good time here. I had my own room with my own bathroom over looking a river with a field behind it with free range horses in the south of france. NOT BAD. The directors were dicks, but mutiny is always readily available. If you were in this situation and couldn't have ANY fun, you probably suck. If you got fired from this job then you are also probably retarded. I even pooped the bed once, then through the evidence (my boxers and pajamas) in the river and I still had a good time! I also broke my nose, but I do that all the time. End of the story, if you're a huge pussy, you should probably stay at home and finger your butt.

Cheers,
Jimbo

Summer camps are always rubbish, the Chinese one's are the worst, but they are crap everywhere. Mr O'Shei is right: Why go and be a performing white monkey at some summer camp and get paid peanuts?

Sorry to say, but you are wrong. Summer camps and teaching English to snotty nosed kids from rich familes is a job for losers!

My biggest point is: why be a dancing white monkey in a country that is already full of white people? I think I'd actually rather teach/deech at a Chinese summer camp, at least I would feel that my white monkey skills were needed there.

I prefer having an actual holiday in summer like normal people though.

Yep, not all FT's are rich, but why would anyone want to come to China and basically rely on scraps thrown to them by the Chinese? It's like a dog having to beg for food, and I don't like this because it helps weaken the position of all teachers in China, including the ones with money. There are older and richer FT's who just work two or three days a week to give themselves something to do. And then maybe there are the teachers who are in the middle, in their late twenties early thirties ,not rich, not poor, but want to work at least five days a week.

Teachers who do summer camps ( often on the cheap ) are traitors to other foreign teachers, as it reinforces the false and racist Chinese superiority complex: that because we are white, "rich" and "priveliged" they deserve to pay us as little as possible.

It is why I also detest Western people who teach English in Asia for free. They are a disgrace.

Summer camps are always rubbish, the Chinese one's are the worst, but they are crap everywhere. Mr O'Shei is right: Why go and be a performing white monkey at some summer camp and get paid peanuts?

Sorry to say, but you are wrong. Summer camps and teaching English to snotty nosed kids from rich familes is a job for losers!

Hey guys!
I was looking for a group discussion that would gather all of the current and past counselors at American Village (I know there's a very active one on Facebook but i'm not on the big social media) and google directed me to this forum. I read your post and I'm wondering if we worked for the same camp: it's the one in France, they have a few camps mostly in the south area with each camp composed of like 10-12 counselors and 50 kids, crazy activities skits and theme days (<-Science Fiction Day is my favorite ^^) ? Because if it's the same, I worked there almost every summer and some times in the spring for the past years (good plan for the summer when you're a student) and I just keep coming back!! :D You do work a lot but it's super fun work and very diverse like playing games with the kids, teaching english with crazy skits (like really really crazy) and any other language immersion-like method. And you get to visit France on your days off (or with the whole group when there's a field trip, I remember the Mont saint michel that thing was mind-blowing)

Amvil is awesome people, don't pass out an awesome opportunity to work abroad just because two blokes got fired (and also, how do you get fired from there??? Like they hire like what 200 people every year and I only heard of one guy getting fired -> maybe it's you!). If people keep coming back, there's a reason for that!

So... You get to be a dancing white monkey, in an E.U country that is mainly populated with white people?

Wouldn't finding a random downs, putting him in a cage and whipping him be more dignified?

[edited]

What kind of loser would ever take this job?

Just sent you an email fried. I [edited] hated working at american village. A[edited] P[edited] is the b***** of all b****'s. The kids were fine but the directors were [edited]. (J[edited] is a [edited] *******). DON'T WORK AT AMERICAN VILLAGE. THEY ARE [edited]. I can verify that I also was not paid until 9 MONTHS AFTER THE CONTRACT. Here's something else for photo collection.

American Village ESL camp and the bad working environment at the Camps

Working there was a nightmare. Basically what happened was the site director tried to force me to write a resignation to the contract I committedly signed after the 1st week for no reason other than he was a scum bucket. When I refused I was sent to another camp and then a week later Nicolas C[edited], the main director, visited the camp, called me in for a meeting and forced me to resign. It was totally unexpected and to say the least, I did not sign up for two weeks of work. Little did I realize that I was not the only one. Coincidentally, I saw another bloke at the train station in Lyon whom I met at the hotel in Paris before we started the job and he was also fired by C[edited]. So it appears to be a regular thing they do.

That’s not the whole story though. What goes on at the camps at American Village is something I can best describe as classic workplace mobbing. It’s total hell. The site directors participate and encourage mobbing and bullying of other counsellors who display the slightest imperfection on the job. The mobbing starts with the site directors and works its way down from senior counsellors to rookie counsellors and whats left is an environment saturated with resentment and disputes. I will never work at another summer camp again. I’m sure not all ESL camp programs are the same but this experience totally burned me out. I tried even talking to Amanda Pardue- the summer camps recruiter about the horrible state of the camp but coincidentally that was when Nicolas C[edited] paid a visit to our camp. Seriously, this job is so unpleasant. Even if you are lucky enough to have a half decent director, you will be working mega long hours and be so exhausted to do anything else but rest in bed. And chances are you will either be the subject of their workplace mobbing or witness it. And before you say to yourself “I doubt that will be me”, you might find that it’s actually more humiliating to see than experience.
Just wanted to provide some advice to the masses and relay my experiences. Thanks.