Good-day mates.

First, I would recommend you to never work at this school, oops I didn't mean school nor Training center. I met a company, yes a company. It looks like a school, feels like a school. but once you start working there you will soon realize how famous you are, working at Meten is more like an acting job rather then a teaching job, you must teach their way and not really using your own brilliant teaching skills. They want you to act so they can get more students. So good acting attracts new students, its very very clever. So the point is you're not a teacher here, you're an acting recruiter and the funny thing is you never knew until after the first month or so.

Second, Wooo this is when everything changed for the worst, some of us are preparing to go on strike after we ask the PSB about a few things about our visas. Why are we going on strike? Because of the new scoring system. A scoring system that they now use to intimidate teachers. Allow me to share with you the conversation word by word as it was told to us:

Manager: Good afternoon everyone, hope everyone is good. We will start this meeting by talking about the new scoring system for Foreigner teachers and Chinese SA's. All teachers MUST keep an average score of "4.8", if you fall below 4.8 2 months then your contract will be terminated and you'll be released from Meten English with your Resident permit canceled and with 14 days to exit China. Any questions? ( The students will score you after every class.)

A teacher: Ohh, guys did you hear that, we're working in a real life video game now where if the students give us low scores we are terminated after 2 months. How is that fair to any of us? Why would any teacher come all the way to China, spend a lot of money on a new apartment and Z visa just to play a company game that is designed to intimidate teachers to try harder, this won't make teachers try harder, you're making us laugh, and your new scoring system will encourage us to work less rather then harder. No foreign teacher will accept this long term.

After that we all walked out of the meeting and didn't say a thing to the Manager, we never met this guy, only saw him for a few weeks but never was formally introduced, he's been floating around all Meten centers for a while from what I hear. His name is Terry. Chinese guy, short and a little fat.

So there you have it, you are on a scoring system, it's all most like the game Bejeweled, on the timing game option, if you can't find the match then your time is up, same in Meten if your score doesn't go up, then it's going down and your time is running out, that's a lot of pressure and it doesn't do anything good for the students.

Third, Sick leave: No no no you are not allowed to be sick at Meten, you will lose money, a lot, my mate got really sick and took 3 days off, he came back, had a doctors note, but he lost Y1200.00 for being sick, for being human, oh only one sick day off guys, sorry. So those last two days cost him Y1,200 and was deducted from his salary. Well he was pissed off. He is one our hard working guys and he sacrificed so much time and effort for Meten, so I think he's leaving next month, he got a real good offer in a High-school. They will also make you feel guilty by saying hey we had to use a Part-time teacher to make up for your classes.

Forth, This other guy Jason. B (American) is also causing us headaches, we all know he doesn't like his job or working with us, so he takes it out on us, He wants us to love his Meten books M1, M2, M3 and M4. These books will make you laugh, it's the worst set of English teach books you have ever seen, just ask any teacher there. Haha We have Peter Pan and Micheal Jordon having conversations that make no since in these books, the students have no idea that they are being cheated. I feel for them. But we must use the Meten book, remember it's the acting way of Meten that's important, not the teaching method.

Fifth, The training centers are completely outdated, the computers must be at least 6 years old, sometimes we can never prepare a class on time due to the slow internet and slow PC's. Have you ever played hide and seek paper before? no? well you must play this game at Meten, they reduced our use of paper to save money I guess, so we have to sneak around and steal paper from where ever we can find it. It really makes our job a lot harder. We really try to start a class on time, but we can't if we can't find any paper.

Managers to watch out for, Jason B ( American ), Terry (Chinese) and Tina (Chinese) and Stone (Chinese), Flora (Chinese) and last June (Chinese). I've been here for 3 years at Meten, don't let any of these guys fool you. After we finish our plans for the strike we all plan to leave and move on.

So the point is to let you all know that if you want to work at Meten, you MUST keep your score high,there will be days when your tired or sick and just can't get the energy to flow in a class, so if the scores are low, then you're closer to termination, is that fair? No it isn't. You must be the perfect teacher to work here. But none of us are perfect, we have some good skills that make us good teachers, but it's not useful in Meten.

It's a game that is your choice, if you want to play into their Teacher scoring system, then be my guest.

Good Points:

My own desk.
Housing allowance Y2000.
Salary Y12,000.
2 hours to rest.