1) Would anybody be interested in contributing to a journalistic piece on the exploitation/bullying of teachers in international schools?
2) Ditto for the "trap" set for unsuspecting individuals at flashy recruitment fairs where "cash cows" posing as schools are fronted by well known recruitment agencies?
international schools and
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TexianTravel
- Posts: 44
- Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 11:35 pm
- Location: Egypt
Bullying
You mean like, you sign a contract to teach one class in addition to your Director of IT duties and the school gives you six more when the elementary IT teacher bails? And you tell them you want more money for doing two jobs and they ignore you? And they leave you there for three months before hiring someone else for the job? And then when they do hire someone they still don't let you do your job but have you do something different for a month? And when you finally get all the other stuff finished and get back to your job, you only do it for a month and then they take half of it away because you haven't been doing it efficiently all year? And they do this by leaving a letter on your desk during Spring Break? And then they begin sabotaging your job performance and change the terms of your contract and your salary? And your wife has signed a contract to be elementary principal next year, but people keep coming to you with conversations they have overheard where the school is looking for an elementary principal? And a retired teacher from last year just "happens" to be in town when all of this is going on and the superintendent's wife is heard asking her whether she can take over a class for a teacher who is leaving, but there's no one you know of who's left or planning to leave except you? And when you do leave, the school threatens you with felony theft charges and says that someone with a felony conviction can't hold a teaching license? (They're wrong, but that's beside the point.) And in addition to the criminal charges, they will also file for punitive damages for breaking your contract along with lawyer's costs and interest? When all the time your departure was engineered and manipulated by the very people who are now punishing you for it? Is that what you mean?
Re: journalistic piece on international schools
Despite having been at five international schools in five different countries over my career, I thankfully could not personally contribute any real examples of abuse, which is not to say that they don't occur. What is obvious to anyone who has been teaching overseas for a while is that there are different (perhaps unspoken) tiers of international schools.
The not for profit schools which have mostly been around awhile, which have connections with various embassies, operate for the same honorable purposes as the majority of schools in our home countries, where ever they might be. If a person sticks with these schools (far more competitive, admittedly), while happiness is not guaranteed, one will not be treated like the horror stories that come out of mostly proprietary schools. While Search and ISS initially set out to serve schools like the nonprofit, honorable institutions, what has become very clear - especially through sites such as this one - is that as new schools crop up, these recruiting agencies are not doing enough to make sure that the TEACHERS they help place there are treated justly. (Note: obviously just because a school is new does not make it automatically bad - it seems to me that the clearest red flag is whether the school is a for profit concern.)
An article that addresses this difference, that clarifies what many experienced people know and assume others know, would serve the novices and newcomers well. Name and list the schools that are NOT complained about at sites such as this - the reason is most likely that they function well. Name and list the schools that have repeated problems - it's up to teachers to speak up and help each other out and to insist that recruiting agencies do their jobs in investigating charges and dropping schools that have records of abuse. I hope you get lots of honest input and start something that could save teachers from the problems that others have unfortunately had.
The not for profit schools which have mostly been around awhile, which have connections with various embassies, operate for the same honorable purposes as the majority of schools in our home countries, where ever they might be. If a person sticks with these schools (far more competitive, admittedly), while happiness is not guaranteed, one will not be treated like the horror stories that come out of mostly proprietary schools. While Search and ISS initially set out to serve schools like the nonprofit, honorable institutions, what has become very clear - especially through sites such as this one - is that as new schools crop up, these recruiting agencies are not doing enough to make sure that the TEACHERS they help place there are treated justly. (Note: obviously just because a school is new does not make it automatically bad - it seems to me that the clearest red flag is whether the school is a for profit concern.)
An article that addresses this difference, that clarifies what many experienced people know and assume others know, would serve the novices and newcomers well. Name and list the schools that are NOT complained about at sites such as this - the reason is most likely that they function well. Name and list the schools that have repeated problems - it's up to teachers to speak up and help each other out and to insist that recruiting agencies do their jobs in investigating charges and dropping schools that have records of abuse. I hope you get lots of honest input and start something that could save teachers from the problems that others have unfortunately had.