Korrnell Academy FAQ

Pros

Pro – They will help you get set up with a Taiwan flat, phone number, and bank (More on that under the cons).

Cons

Cons - 1) They claim to have the best English proficiency in Taichung. This is correct only when you remove the bottom 40% of scores and call them “Outliers”. 2) Directions to Foreign Staff are ambiguous. When you inquire about something they respond, similarly, to “You are a professional teacher, you should know how to do it.” 3) The paid time off gives you payment for 1/2 of a workday only if you get a Doctors' note. (Illegal under Taiwanese labour laws) 4) They do set you up with a Bank of Taiwan account, however, no merchant accepts that in and around of Taichung. You must carry cash. You can tell them about the issue and the co-CEO says (again, not verbatim) “How can you be correct, of course a Bank of Taiwan card can be used in Taiwan”. 5) In the Taiwanese warm weather months, you cannot turn on the a/c unless the a/c units both say 30 degrees or higher, and not allowed at all until 2nd period (Approximately 9:30). Similarly, you cannot turn on the heater until the temperature drops below 18 degrees. While uncomfortable for the teachers, the students either complain about the temperature being uncomfortable or following what their home room teacher tells them and that you are killing endangered species. (Whale is usually the top one used). 6) You have to give the classes homework daily. You have to do the first marking of their workbook in red ink. They then have to redo the problems/questions they've got incorrect, and you must remark them in blue pen. If they do not get them correct, you must remark them again. The issue is they have to do all of their homework, which makes them unable to do new homework you're giving. 7) No one ever gets the marking bonus at its highest value. You can do them flawlessly and still be missing NTD. 8) Teachers aren't allowed to quit unless they follow what the school says, which is disallowed under Taiwanese working laws. The school wants you to quit in a month's time, and charge you an inconvenience fee of one month's pay. So for that final month you're working for free. 9) At the weekly teacher's meeting you will be bashed and berated in addition to you being retroactive procedures which you should have known already. 10) With regard to the school events, you aren't allowed to skip them due to religious/belief reasons. A Jewish teacher could not get off for the first and last days of Hanukkah (the important ones) and was given off time around Christmas. They also didn't get time off for Halloween, Easter, etc. 11) Mind you, I am teaching maths, but the Chromebooks are not usable by me, but other classes where they don't seem logical they can. (Biology and Chemistry, and not in a report sense) Maths could show them what graphs look like, what linear approximations look like, etc. 12) For me, they “forgot” to fix my hire/contract signing day. If you have 6 months in Taiwan, you can file your taxes. The corrected date was After July 1st. The payroll employees also will not talk to you about it and to speak to aforementioned department head. 13) During class changes for teachers having to go from classroom A to classroom B, students are shouting and screaming while running. They most of the time cannot hear the late bell and will slowly wander back into class. 14) Parents can also be overwhelming. Some classes are “Elite” classes. This does not mean their maths or English proficiency has a certain score to it, rather this means their parents paid extra tuition so that they could be in a smaller classroom. (20 students, rather than the 30+ in other classes) 15) The actual materials can be non-existent. Manipulatives, technology (Like microphones so the loud students can actually hear you; out of pocket with no reimbursement). 16) Finally, this school acts like a huge Buxiban. It is more toxic than Chernobyl. This post was extremely long, I apologise. People have no idea what they're getting into because after you get a job offer on a Friday (Taiwanese time) you need to accept it before 8:00 AM (again, Taiwanese time) to accept or decline it. They do this, so you cannot research Taiwanese labour laws, and you're trapped there, complicated by the fact that no teacher's country of citizenship has an embassy there. ---

Advice to Management

Find someone with a brain to manage your business. Even if your profit margin is lower initially, you will eventually have more students enrolling. Hire more teachers. Of my experience in teaching in Japan, South Korea, PR China, Vietnam, and France, you are the only one which loads teachers with a 25 - 27 class schedule. In those countries I had 16 - 22 classes. I was able to do everything on time, was able to give more attention to each student, and overall students and teachers were happy with the extra attention given. An example is once I had a student who knew how to say “Hello, how are you. I am fine, thank you" and nothing else. By the end of the school year, he could have conversations at the first grade level. That was a huge improvement for him.

Pros

Daytime hours and plenty of them, pay is good, some limited paid vacation, science, history and stem taught here so potentially more interesting than the usual bottom of the barrel buxibans. The school has embraced information technology.

Cons

You need to be willing to spend a lot of time marking books. Some teachers try to get kids to correct each others books but they do a poor job leading to poor quality. Coteachers are hit and miss. Horrendous meetings every Wednesday afternoon. Difficult to get some students to behave. One or two classes certifiably insane.

Advice to Management

Pointless because any advice would affect the bottom line e.g. have smaller class sizes