Do You Have What It Takes To Work in Training Centers in China?

TEFL Training Center jobs has been referred to as everything from rewarding and fun to being compared as an English Teaching sweatshop, a staycation, a way to make quick cash, and the fast-food chains of language teaching. It attracts backpackers, former grade school teachers, college students, and any other type of person you can think of. Working in training centers is what you make it. It's fast-paced and cut-throat. If you don't fulfill the needs of the training centers, they will recruit another fresh face as fast you you can say "TEFL". This business practice leads to high-turnover rates. Meaning if you step foot in a training center and check back at that same training center 6 months later, chances are you'll see all new faces from teachers to management. Awkwardly the janitors stick around longer than anyone in the entire company. Most expats that take this job mostly say the kids are the best or the worst part of the job, while everything else is an unnecessary burden. Training centers will make you or break you. I felt it is too fast paced for newly hired teachers. Too many people quit early because they didn't have enough training or experience to deal with children, along with sloppy management.

Phrases You Will Often Hear

1. Teacher, Teacher let me try!
2. I’m off on Mondays and Tuesdays.
3. Think of a game.
4. I’m fine, thank you.
5. Where’s Ayi?

Top 5 Things You Will Hear Yourself Saying

1. But, today is my day off.
2. There’s only supposed to be 15 students in the class.
3. That’s not in the contract.
4. You said the company can extend my visa.
5. I can use this for class.

The Stereotypical Rankings of English Teachers in China

Sometimes it seems like your credentials and experience are never as an important as your nationality, your personality, appearance, attitude, and skin color.

Promises EFL Training Centers Often Break:

"We will apply to extend your visa."

Usually the big name brand TEFL companies have all the juice, all the pull, all the proper licensing to hire teachers and apply for them a Z-visa/Residence Permit. However it’s the off brand local schools you have to worry about. The type of school that sounds generic with no thought, for example>>> Happy Lion Academy <<< a school like this you have to stand clear of or ask to see their documents such as their SAIC business license number.

(The license will look similar to this, with their business license number and what type of business they are able to conduct.)

Any Chinese person can rent out a building or a suite, quickly hire unqualified staff and wallah you have an EFL school on your hands. Then proceed to recruit TEFL teachers and lie to them in order to attract them to their school. There are plenty of unsuspecting people that can’t spot out a shady EFL school in China. Eventually this will become common knowledge with more news breaking out on shady schools illegally hiring teachers. These rag tag schools promise teacher applicants they can apply for a Z-visa or extend their visa only to later make up an excuse after they arrive, then apply for tourist or business visa which is illegal. It leaves the teacher in a bad spot. If they refuse to let you go to the visa office and be there for the process and tell you don’t worry about it, that’s a red flag. For the work visa you have to be present to take a photo, tourist and business visa it’s often not required for you to be present, anyone can apply for these visas on your behalf for instance a travel agent can do this for you.

Lastly, if you are in your home country, a legally operating school can send you all of the necessary paperwork to get your Z-visa before you enter China. Some schools will claim to give you a business visa first as a 90-day probation period. If no problems occur they will apply for your visa. Some companies go through with their promise, which leads you to take a trip to Hong Kong for express visa service and some employers won’t fulfill this promise because for some reason they think you aren’t good for the job or they never had the ability to apply for you a Z-visa to begin with.

"You will only work 25 hours a week."

What they won’t tell you is that you have 25 hours teaching time, 25 hours of actively working in the classroom. Sometimes they like to leave out the fact that you will have required office hours, they will try to make you do promotions for the school while on or off the clock, and there will be meetings, lots of meetings, useless meetings were the management staff just regurgitate the same stats every week and not providing any new information and certainly not talking about how to improve what’s going in the center.

"You will have Chinese holidays off."

Most schools, most of the time will leave your holidays alone, but you can count on some unruly management staff or local off brand schools to push the limits. You can expect sooner or later that your holiday off is not yours to claim. There has been plenty of times where I found myself working on a Chinese holiday, and had no say so in the matter. My promised day off was somehow mandatory for not only me but everyone. Why? Because no one respects the contract in China. A contract in China is more like a FAQ sheet than a legal binding agreement. I have worked on Dragon Boat Festival which is one of the biggest holidays China has. I have seen some people be forced to work during National Day period, but offer teachers days off later to make up for it.

"You will be working in (Insert Big City Here)."

When you apply for work in China. A lot of people think they are applying for a job in Chengdu, Shanghai, Hangzhou, and etc. But what the schools don’t mention is that you will probably be working close to the city by their definition, an hour bus ride near to the city you thought you would be working in. Some teachers find out when they arrive they will be placed far away from the city. After arriving at the airport, they realize they are getting farther and farther away from the bustling city and end up arriving in a shoddy environment that looks like the aftermath of the apocalypse. They check the GPS on their phone and realize they are far from the city center, nearly falling out of the city limits or in some random county area next to the big city. The reason why, the schools in big cities have the recruitment process on lock. The have the best recruiters and best benefits to offer, so they have no problem attracting new hires. Not to mention EFL teachers are less likely to let these jobs go if they are treated fairly and have a decent salary. Off brand training centers and schools in the outer districts struggle to attract teachers, so they must resort to using agencies. These agencies will often not give you detailed information about the specific location of your school. Sometimes agencies will send you to an entirely different city than previously agreed upon, which wasn’t mentioned during the time you came on board.

"You co-teacher teacher will help you."

Lol… if you’re lucky you will have an experienced veteran co-teacher that knows his/her stuff and is friendly towards you. Usually your co-teacher will be a fresh female graduate with not much skills in teaching. So you will carry the load most of the time for lesson planning and controlling the class. The Chinese co-teacher will mostly focus on talking with parents, interpreting the class for kids who don’t understand everything, or yell in Chinese to get the children from misbehaving. But as far as helping with teaching goes, good luck with that. I have had co-teachers fall asleep in the back of the class while I do all the work. I kid you not, they are bold enough to start napping in class, even when the class has cameras. Why? Mainly because the Chinese co-teachers already have classes where they must teach the class by themselves. So of course they will take it light when playing the role of co-teacher or show no effort at all regardless of what the contract states they should do as a co-teacher.

Does all of this sound worth it for the salary? Do you think you could handle everything English training centers have to throw your way without getting burned out?