He broke his contract with the university and he was penalized for doing so. I was not involved in the decision. It was purely a legal one between him and the university.

Apparently, Mr. Stanelle assumes that the University was in a perfectly competent position to know exactly what the teacher was thinking. Foreign teachers don't need to help each other all the time when in fact there is the GREAT UNIVERSITY admins around. What guarantees do you have that there wouldn't have been a breakdown in communication? You haven't shown anything to inspire confidence in us in that regard.

He later sent me an email complaining to me and I simply told him that he had a contract and he broke it. Did he think there would be no penalties for that? Did he expect us to serve has a future reference for him? I think not.

I see, instead of going by the rules you use the contract as the excuse to impose whatever penalties you would like onto the teacher? Was the teacher necessarily trying to just screw the school over??? You seem to sound very defensive which only serves to tell us that you only see the vested interest of the school and not the, er, shall we say human side of a job such as being in a foreign country without anyone to help you deal with situations that suddently come up. You have not shown one ounce of empathy towards the teacher and just assuming that hiding behind dogmatic ideas of being high, mighty, and righteous will somehow intimidate all of us in shutting up. Nice try.

He, of course, whined to other foreign teachers and friends about it to try and make the school or me look at fault. It is the typical young American. Tale no responsibility for your own actions/decisions - just blame the other guy. These young people need to understand that in China a contract is a contract. This is not professional sports where they can just break a contract without penalty. Fulfill your contract and you will never have any problems.

WOW, WOW, WOW, AND WOW. First you do a character assassination. 2nd you stereotype all young Americans. 3rd you assumed in your biased mind about someone "blaming" someone else. Finally you make yourself out to be an expert in the world of the American Sports/Entertainment business. Seriously consistency isn't in your reportoire, is it? The last part is especially laughable with how you just put the ESL Business in China ABOVE Professional Sports in America. Why can't foreign teachers like us get agents who'll look out on our behalf, huh?

We are a first class school with a first class administration and faculty.

Take your own advice, you just insulted yourselves. I do have to say it's quite funny, though.