First Future Reviews

-FF missed 1st AND 2nd on-boarding training (I would be fired for that as would most others in any other similar scenario). -Employees on their Skype refused to give their names to know who was typing messages -Next to zero communication between departments -spoke with over 7 employees in the interview, training, and on-boarding processes with little accountability and (again) little communication between them -Promised a contract which never happened. -Promised a 2nd contract with less hours which also never happened. -After almost 2 months between salary negotiation and my ultimate departure from teaching, less than 15 hours of teaching were logged. -Usually newly hired teachers pretty much wait in a candidate pool of teachers using the Flexible Scheduling system but this can be a 1-6 month process of getting a teaching or booked out contract. -Once in the pool, other teachers openly talk about anything and everything. Some of the ones stressing "professionalism" were also ones talking about how many beers they'd have when they were off work. -Some teachers were criticizing one of the clients, CanTalk, and CanTalk pulled the contract (the slides were bad). Not sure who was more at fault, but that was supposed to be my 2nd contract which subsequently “fell through.” -Hiring documents are filled with typographical and grammar errors while bragging about employing hundreds of teachers, 700 partner schools and reaching over 1 million students. -At least 6 different software platforms are used, and each teacher has to be taught 1 on 1 on how to use said platforms. After the training, however, -one can expect to be returned into "Flexi" schedule for pickups while a contract is created and executed. This could be weeks to months, but the training for the software is simply for "pick up" or substitutions only, at least initially. -Highlighting these and other blunders results in other teachers PM messaging the new hire to name call rather than be supportive or silent. -All in all, this company will lie their rear-ends off to get a teacher to sign but then not deliver. 2 months prior I was told peak teaching times are 6-9 pm Beijing Time. A newly hired teacher instead of teaching those hours x 4 or 5 days a week can expect maybe 1-2 twenty-five-minute classes per week until they decide to partner with another company/school and employ you for the "peak hours" on a weekly or contractual (set) basis. -Salary negotiation is a nightmare if you are an experienced teacher. -Bonuses are often deducted for trivial things such as scratching a facial itch once in a 25-minute class. The company doesn't explicitly state this, but they want you dead center, face about 13-16" inches from the camera, dead centered the entire time and no moment essentially for either 25 or 50 minute increments, while smiling CONSTANTLY. Any motions otherwise will result in lost bonus opportunities. Imagine teaching in a classroom and not being able to move a loose hair or look down even for a split second because doing so will ruin chances of getting their otherwise lucrative bonus. -Lessons with errors and controversial material. I had slides that were inappropriate for children. For instance, one slide showed a U.S. based militarized police officer with a semi-automatic rifle. The instructions for my 6-year-old student were for him to finger shoot 6 bank robbers after saying the 6 words. My 6-year-old students did not understand what-so-ever. When shared, other teachers agreed that it was inappropriate and experienced teachers said, "I would never ever teach that slide in a classroom setting because it is offensive." She was based in Australia and I in the USA. Neither of us appreciate that and if the parents saw the slide, I suspect they would not either. However, when teachers criticized other slides, one partner school withdrew their contract resulting in lost opportunity for this teacher now typing this. For a company who brags in their hiring documents how many teachers they employ, they clearly don't seem to employ experienced teachers in lesson creation. -The lessons seem to be created by someone who had English as a second or other language and not an experienced ESL/ESOL teacher. -The overall layout of the few classes I taught was rather brief. A 25-minute lesson could have as few as 5-6 teaching slides. Since children acquire language faster than adults usually, I spent 20-40% of my time teaching children via "winging it." It is essential to do this because for all my children, we finished the slides earlier than the 25-minute allotment. This required me to expand the lesson almost 100% of the time for children. -When teaching in a group classroom, the toolbar doesn't work. If I clicked "add text" it wouldn't do anything if I had 2 or more students in the room. -Text font is extremely small to point students request if it can be enlarged. No, it can not be enlarged. -They talk a good game on the job ads and in their (often grammatically incorrect) words on the hiring documents; however, they deliver on almost none of it. As far as I can tell this company is among the worst based in China for the accumulation of the aforementioned reasons. -Training managers do not advocate for the teacher and stress the time differential. One client/partner school only does demos between 1-5 pm which is midnight to 4 a.m. E.S.T. Despite being in office before their lunch break, they do not offer earlier demo times.

Their base pay are not good. When I started working, I thought the pay rate is lower than other companies. But in fixed hour, my working hour will be guaranteed. I found it's better than in companies only have flexi hour. In those companies, I waited for long times and no classes.