I worked for a while at the Web International school in Suzhou. There will be small differences in different locations, but most things will be the same. Most policy and curriculum comes from Command Central and the local schools have little autonomy.

This review, at least, does not contain a tale of dodgy behavior, really. It's just a deal that isn't very good. I left for health reasons and decided to stay left when I got better.

The Basic Mezz in Suzhou is:
- 1 month probation at 7000 RMB; afterwards it's 8000 per month. You are responsible for up to 25 hours classroom per week. (Taxed) These salaries can be higher in larger cities; may be lower elsewhere.
- Paid Residence Permit/Work Permit.
- Housing allowance of 1500 RMB (expect to pay at least 2000 for an apartment in Suzhou!) (Taxed)
- Travel allowance of 3000 payable after 6 months.
- 2 days off per week; can usually negotiate them consecutively if you don't insist on weekends.
- Lunch and dinner provided; sometimes you might actually want to eat it.

These are for full-timers. I don't know details for part-time...I think it's 120 RMB per hour.

Requirements include:
- You gotta have, like, a college degree, man. This is, like, teaching and stuff.
- Teaching experience, preferably with adults.
- TEFL cert preferred but optional.
- Be a bipedal mammal from one of the Big 7 English-speaking countries (USA, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa).

This job is a very mixed experience. GOOD parts include:
- The best students anywhere. Never seen the like.

- Student body completely uninfested by children. Most are adult professionals.

- No hassles with pay.

- Each class only one hour; no papers to grade.

- Most classes are very easy to teach. We ain't payin' ya to think or nothin'.

- No early mornings. Weekend classes never start before 10; weekday classes never start before 1.

- Suzhou is not one of the hardass Web schools. If you have time between classes you are free to wander off as long as you're back and ready for class in time. This isn't true everywhere.

- More hot babes than there are stars in the sky. Boffo. A good one, even by Suzhou's high standards. The foreign teaching staff was all male at the time, and we all had to walk like hunchbacked hermit crabs all the time to hide our enormous bulges.

- Mostly very nice Chinese teaching and admin staff. Most (but not all) of the managers and admins seem to get an adequate oxygen supply to their brains.

BAD parts include:
- Massively stupid arrangement for sick days. A bit of a flap at the school, and a quick scrutinizing of the contract, revealed that you get a total of 3, count 'em, 3 paid sick days per year. Pretty poor in itself, but there's more: If you miss more than 3 days, the school can (and most likely will) fine you for the extra days in addition to not being paid for those days. One teacher I know there, a pretty solid guy, called in sick and was fined 245 RMB per day. Another teacher I know there recently fell and broke his elbow in 2 places, and is in for a bit of a hospital stay. This guy had long been going above the call of duty for them, voluntarily working extra hours and giving up his days off for weeks at a stretch to help them overcome their eternal teacher shortfall. When HE was injured, they kindly told him that after his 3 days were used up, he could give up future days off and avoid paying the fine. Sweethearts, eh? This is of course classic English-school-in-China stupidity, and it's bad news.

- The schedule from Hell. You WILL work every non-off weekday evening until 9pm. You WILL work at least one, and usually both, weekend days. With periods between classes, you can pretty much count on hanging around nearly one hour for every hour in the classroom, so that "25 classroom hours" actually becomes more like 40-50 hours total. This long week makes the salary less attractive than it might seem at first.

- The schedule makes it nearly impossible for all but the most rabid coffee-achieving mutants to do any freelance work. It's also hard to have much of a social life. You exist largely to teach at Web International.

- At the time I worked there there was NO break between consecutive classes, and you will always have 3 of these on weekday evenings. They've since added 5-minute breaks between the evening classes, but not for afternoon classes. I promise you: I never once taught 2 classes in a row without taking 5 minutes to smoke and curse. I was not hassled about this because none of the admins wanted to shag over and teach the damn class themselves.

- Many of the lessons you're given range from downright goofy to completely useless. Some refer to material you don't have and never see; others require objects you don't have available. Still others were apparently written by people who were huffing airplane glue at the time. When these happen, you have to figure out for yourself how to reach the goals of the lesson (which themselves aren't always clear) on your own. To be fair, many of the lessons are perfectly straightforward and quite nice to teach.

- There's no books. All lessons are kept in a file cabinet. There's only one copy of each and they're shared by all the teachers. You can't prepare at home very easily. If there are handouts etc. in the lessons, you have to have the reception desk ladies copy them. Often you find yourself cutting out little cards, strips of paper, etc. You have to fish the lessons out of hanging files when preparing, and then replace them after your classes. All in all: something of a minor pain in the ass. You also often have relatively little time to prepare for a class, making these problems and those mentioned in the previous item even worse.

- There's no class continuity. Web's schedule works on an a-la-carte-menu basis; the students can pick any available section they want. So, you don't have the same group of people in any two classes. You never really know what they've already studied or not.

- You may get one-person classes, and others with only 2 or 3. This especially happens with pre-beginner-level classes that should really be taught by Chinese teachers but sometimes you get them anyway. May not sound bad until you consider that you've got a lesson that assumes a roomful of 10 and the ability to do things like pair-work. Sometimes you've taught the entire 1-hour lesson, look at your watch, and realize you still have 40 minutes left. As the old saying goes, "How long can you tread water?"

- The level-placement system is entirely computer-based; there are no interviews. As a result, actual student fluency can vary a lot from where it really should be for your lesson. Every new face in your classes is like a box of chocolates: you never know what you're going to get. If you're really lucky you get a whole group that can't handle the lesson you have. I called these "The Silence of the Lambs" classes.

I loved many things about teaching at Web, particularly when it came to the students. I used to recommend this school to others despite a few warts. However, the recent revelation of their handling of sick days has taken Web off my "recommended" list.

You should also be aware that such fundamentals as getting work permits/residence permits paid for, getting the housing allowance paid without having to present receipts, and so on have come about only after prolonged and fierce battles waged by previous teachers at the Suzhou school. It's entirely possible that these battles are yet to be fought at other schools. Be SURE and ask. Read contracts VERY carefully!

The Suzhou school has long-term chronic problems with hiring and retaining teachers. Gosh, I can't imagine why.