Do you get maternity leave? Or is there a job sharing scheme? Look for a viable proposal and suggest it but don't be surprised to be turned down. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

We..ell it is a case of suck it up and go without or pay around US$6-10k a year or go to a nice generous European country.

Do what is in your best interest. Covid in all its variations is serious and some countries do not have the vaccines or medical facilities for dealing with it. I just turned down a job in Malawi for this reason. No job is worth my health or life. Covid is going to be a real threat for the next 2-3 years and kids are serious carriers. Don't take a job without international medical coverage or in a country without international standard medical care right now. Contracts are rescinded all the time on both sides. That's life.

Depends on the school. 120K a month plus housing should be a minimum. There are some appalling schools in Bangkok: teacher beware.

School pays the salary; school calls the shots. Different schools have different policies. Your choice to stay or go.

I have worked with two great principals out of five. The bad ones are usually con artists who take in clueless Asian schoolboards and are on an ego, power and money making trip and will squash anyone who is a threat or gets in their way.

The school has already proven dishonest and misleading. There are likely to be further incidents. I would cut my losses and leave fast. There are still immediate vacancy jobs out there - look on TIE and Teacher Horizons or Joy Jobs. Before going, talk to a local lawyer or get your first-month pay cheque. Let us know how it ends.

I am at a 3rd tier school with a bunch of older teachers i.e. over 65s who are just there for the medical insurance and to pad their pensions. They are a pain in the neck - always off sick, always complaining and always dominating. Admin. loves them because they are inexpensive to hire and put up with crappy housing. I just ignore them all and do my own thing in my own class room. Being mid forties, I will outlast them anyway!

I've come across a number of teachers who have fake credentials and as another poster said, admin. doesn't bother especially if they are cheap to hire. I've also had a 'fake' principal and I am sure he was using some kind of fake name and had a passport in that name but too expensive to investigate.

A good IS will reimburse all your expenses relating to visa, travel and medicals etc. If it is not in your contract then try and negotiate it before signing.

If it is only a 3rd tier school, presumably the salary and benefits aren't that great anyway. Why not look for a better school and move on. A few negative and nasty people can make life hell. I had two of them in the small secondary department of my last school and left because of them. They were allowed to poison the students with negative remarks, deliberately undermined anything that my department did and the spineless jellyfish of a 'principal' did nothing. I could see it wouldn't change. After leaving, I felt like a weight had been lifted and began to enjoy life again and I'm now at a school with more professional colleagues who don't run round trying to stab me in the back and a secure principal.Should have left sooner. Life is too short for nastiness and trust me, the students will know all about it.

Schools always give deadlines for acceptance in my experience.

Why on earth are you befriending students on Facebook? Very unprofessional and asking for trouble. If you didn't befriend them they wouldn't be able to post! Second: Was this an appropriate topic for the country you are teaching in? You should critically reflect on your cross cultural skills and teaching. The students obviously have little respect for you and you have a spineless principal who is covering his own rear end. You have to let it drop or move on at the end of the year as you can't win battles against locals. The local admin. probably already have you labelled as a 'trouble-maker' and it will go downhill from here. Nasty but fact of life in some international schools.

There are a few concerns you should have about China; one is nationalism and its impact on international schools; the government recently announced it wants to promote Chinese education over the international variety, some provinces enforce a rule that Chinese students who do not hold a foreign passport cannot attend international school. Sometimes this rule is enforced and sometimes not. Of course, the Chinese govt could actually put a slowdown or limit on work visas for Americans if Trump upsets them enough. It's bad news to be paid in RMB. and you need to carefully consider highly polluted areas like Beijing which has just been put on a red alert for five days as the air quality is so bad that schools are closed.

Total rubbish - your idea of "negative" is another person's idea of reality. It is very useful and forewarned is forearmed.