200thb Left & International School Holds Paycheck Hostage

[TeacherKenAyutthaya]

9 hours ago, Andrew108 said:

So you don’t like your home country and you have chosen Thailand as a place to live and work. And yet.... you don’t have money; you don’t have fluency in the Thai language; you don’t understand the culture (just have a rosey fantasty about Thailand being buddhist); you don’t have a long-term visa; you are not qualified to teach. 

I lived in Thailand for 5 years and met a suprising number of foreigners who kind of talked like you do. They all left Thailand within a year or two. And all of them became bitter about Thailand and Thai people. And importantly ALL of them wanted to be loved. Yep. They were all looking to have their souls mended. To be loved and to make a difference in the world they felt alienated from. 

But it doesn’t work. So you have to mend yourself. You can’t rely on other people. 

Look at the root cause of your situation and get yourself back to the U.S. Love yourself. Get properly qualified. Then you can make a difference. Right now you lack authenticity. 

Thank you for your life advice. I’m confused… are you annoyed or angry? Why do you give me life advice?

Did I say that I don’t like my home country? Where are you from?

I didn’t choose Thailand. My American girlfriend came here to learn Thai massage, and I followed her. Why did you come to Thailand?  

I don’t have money… yes. But being broke is different than being poor. I’m just broke and seeing justice for a dishonest school. Are you poor? How much money do you make? Do you have assets?

I’ve lived in Thailand for 7 years, but that doesn’t mean I know more than you… What makes you an authority on thai culture and language? How have you lived your life in  Thailand for the past 5 years? Have you done anything for Thailand or have you been on a 5 year holiday? If so, what have you done to contribute to Thai society?

Sorry to hear about those people who were here for 1-2 years.

I agree that we need to mend ourselves and that we cannot depend on others. That’s strong American thinking. Have I asked anyone to take care of my situation? I believe I’m just asking for directions in life… but from you I just get lectured. Not very helpful.

Root cause of my situation? I worked for a private school, quit after two months due to their violation of my contract, I finished all required tasks during my final 30 days and they refuse to give me my paycheck. So… are you saying I’m to blame for this? Did you even read this forum to understand my situation?

How old are you and why did you come to Thailand?

[TeacherKenAyutthaya]

4 hours ago, Andrew108 said:

Hold on.....

#1 So your salary was 35,000 baht per month working for an 'International' school?

#2 You have 18 classes a week and you had to design a different syllabus for each of your classes? Why? This makes no sense.

#3 You were asked for brief lesson plans. Why couldn't you provide them?

#4 What do you mean when you say "And the school won't give me my money because the head teacher wants to have a mini lesson plan for each of the 18 core syllabuses.." What 18 core syllabuses? What is this? 

 

I mean lets say you were teaching grades 1 through 6 (which is a tough ask) and you were teaching 18 lessons a week this means you would need to develop 6 different courses. Each lesson would have some reading and some listening and some speaking etc. 

Hey There!

1)      Yes… but it was supposed to be only 20,000THB like everyone else. They pay white NES the same as African, Filipino and Indian teachers. Did I mention they take 10% our of everyones pay check? They do that to prevent people from quitting. The sum total deducted is given back and the end of the year which is totally illegal. The westerner from last year quit because of it. This school is sleezy and known for underpaying and overworking their teachers. They expect NES to work the same as Thai for almost the same pay. I understand why Thai teachers complain about the typically farang 30k/month in Thailand! haha

2)      Because the school is millions in debt! To save money, they gave me the work for three teachers. So that means each week, I had to teach…

a.       Reading and Writing: p1/1, 2/1, 3/1, 4/1, 5/1 and 6/1 – six different textbooks, homework, exams, everything.

b.       Grammar: the same as above

c.       Speaking and Listening: the same as above.

3)      There wasn’t any time. It took 2 hours to make each 3 page lesson plan that they wanted. 2 hours X 18 classes = 36 hours of work! That was during 11 – 42 Dec when I was training students for the regional academic competition, teaching 18 different classes (12 of which I didn’t know how to teach) and preparing 1^st and 2^nd grade for English-language Christmas show. There isn’t enough time in a day to do that high quantity of time consuming work. There’s a reason why this school is bankrupt.

4)      See a,b,c in #2 above.

5)      No. I had 18 different courses every week. It was brutally boring. I taught straight from the book and it was so boring I couldn’t continue teaching there. I was originally supposed to be hired for marketing, managing and creating a new curriculum. The school like to me and use me as their trophy to make parents happy. The other American isn’t white, so they gave him easy classes and kept him behind the scenes.

 

Any advice? I'm thinking about telling the parents about how poorly the school is managed my only talking about my teaching. That way I'm not directly discrediting the school. To be honest, thailand NEEDS an IRS or something to audit private schools. What's to keep them from providing students with a half-assed education? profit over education is no way to run a school.

[TeacherKenAyutthaya]

5 hours ago, Sydebolle said:

Based on what do you want to sue then? 

 

Did you read this forum?

[TeacherKenAyutthaya]

5 hours ago, Sydebolle said:

Dont want to be sarcastic but with a remaining start-up capital of THB 200 it might be slightly challenging. Environmental issues are affordable only if the country is rich (which applies to Thais but not to Thailand) and pollution has no borders (boarders means something slightly different, if I - as a non-native English speaker - my add. 

You worked illegally for a long time, did not pay taxes and now got creamed - welcome to the club. Write all this off as experience and start new again; environmental consulting might not be the easiest way though. 

Not true at all, fortunately. I don't want to write a blog, but there's a lot of positive change rapidly happening. Did you hear about the 13year old girls who got bali to ban plastics? We don't need to be rich to make change. We just need to get a lot of people to make change. People power is more powerful than money. Why do you think the movers and shakers of the world spend so much money to control us? We've always had the power ???? Also, I only worked illegally for 2 months. Is that a long time? I've been paying taxes in Thailand for the past 7 years. What is your occupation in Thailand? Why did you come here?

[Andrew108]

This thread is turning into a train wreck. You mentioned you have 200 baht to your name - you need life advice.

Seems like you got caught up in a crazy situation. You should just walk away. Talk of getting a lawyer is absolute nonsense. And you've been in Thailand for seven years?

I've never had the kind of problems you are having because I would never let myself get into that situation.

Are you a teacher? You said you joined the school as a marketing guy. 

Anyway.......there is nothing you can do except work on yourself. Get some proper teacher training if you intend to continue teaching in Thailand. If you want to be an environmental activist then the U.S needs you more than Thailand does and of course you are American so you know......

You are drifting into dangerous waters and that's why I'm replying to you. You have 200 baht to your name man! Get a grip! 

[Andrew108]

Actually I think this is the thing that I get triggered by - you only have 200 baht to your name. And you live in a foreign country.

I guess there are quite a few teachers in Thailand living from pay check to pay check. Why do they do this?

I can't imagine how stressful this is. You absolutely have my sympathy, but come on Thailand isn't working out for you. 

Why not go gack to the States and if you want to continue teaching get some training and look at China for example where salaries and students are much better than Thailand.

I left Thailand in 2002 and decided I would never work there again. I love the country but only to visit. I speak and read Thai and have Thai friends in my home country. So I know some things and I know that in the Thai context you wont have any success. 

Apologies for being so brutal. Just hope you can suck it up and make some plans to get home. Best wishes.

[TeacherKenAyutthaya]

On 1/6/2019 at 7:17 PM, Andrew108 said:

I think you said you couldn't teach a grammar course. Why do you think you know about teaching? 

Remember that you are a guest in Thailand. It isn't your country. Do we westerners have a superiority complex where we over estimate our actual worth and potential? Perhaps.

My advice is to get properly qualified. Make a change in your own country. Expect that 'for profit' educational establishments will want their pound of flesh and need you to deliver.

 

 Wow... you guys keep saying this and I wonder if you really live in Thailand. This is how teaching goes in Thailand - students learn Grammar with a Thai teacher. There is no native speaker that knows grammar better than a Thai teacher. In addition, Thai students usually speak little to no English. So they need a tie to explain grammar to them in Thai language. The only reason why foreigners have a job in Thailand is to give students speaking situations, speaking activities and speaking games that allow them to practice what they learn from there Thai teachers grammar class with a native speaker. Being a teacher in Thailand is more about entertaining than it is actual teaching. It's about listening to the students and correcting their English. Being a teacher and Thailand is more about entertaining than it is actual teaching. It's about listening to the students... It's about having activities that allow them to hear the voice of native speakers and to interact with the native speaker. At government schools that is what teaching in Thailand is all about. Finally, the grammar approach to learning language is only one approach. There are actually four approaches to learning language. Did anybody here know that? The communication/talking way is the natural way of learning... and knowing grammar is not required for that. That's the way that babies learn. That's the way that Thai boat men in South Thailand learn English. I speak tie at a lower intermediate level and I don't know anything about I grammar. I just figured it out by speaking it a lot with local people. That is being natural way of learning. Just because an individual did not specialized their tesol or tefl certification in grammar, that does not mean they are not a real English teacher.  I specialize in teaching vocabulary and phonics to adolescents.  Does that mean I am an illegitimate teacher because my 120 an hour tesol certification  is in  speaking and focused on a communicative approach to learning language? However, at international schools in private schools, it is probably expected for foreign teachers to know how to teach grammar. And I told the international school that I worked for that I did not specialize in grammar and that I did not want to teach it. They agreed with me  but they violated our agreement by forcing me to teach grammar. That's not my fault. I'm guessing most guys and the store I'm are from the Bangkok area. But once you get outside of Bangkok you would be shocked with how students speak little to no English. So it would be stupid for any foreigner to try to teach grammar in the English language to countryside Thai kids who have absolutely no motivation to learn grammar. Surely we can agree on that. And finally, grammar cannot explain everything about a language. That's the reason why Indians sound so weird when they speak English. Indians speak the English language grammatical perfectly and need of speakers don't speak it that perfect. So when were teaching about language were teaching about how to speak in contact and in various cultures and a grammar approach doesn't teach that.

[TeacherKenAyutthaya]

18 hours ago, Andrew108 said:

Actually I think this is the thing that I get triggered by - you only have 200 baht to your name. And you live in a foreign country.

I guess there are quite a few teachers in Thailand living from pay check to pay check. Why do they do this?

I can't imagine how stressful this is. You absolutely have my sympathy, but come on Thailand isn't working out for you. 

Why not go gack to the States and if you want to continue teaching get some training and look at China for example where salaries and students are much better than Thailand.

I left Thailand in 2002 and decided I would never work there again. I love the country but only to visit. I speak and read Thai and have Thai friends in my home country. So I know some things and I know that in the Thai context you wont have any success. 

Apologies for being so brutal. Just hope you can suck it up and make some plans to get home. Best wishes.

Haha in the west when people have financial troubles some people say the quick fixes to just teach English in a Asian country and it'll be okay. And then when people get into financial trouble and an Asian country they said to go back to the list where they initially had financial problems. Perhaps the grass isn't greener in any country?  there are a lot of successful teachers and business owners from the West living in Thailand right now. So what are they doing right that the rest of us are doing wrong?

 

 

I really appreciate this post. Thank you for your sincere post and I don't think that you're being mean or rude or blunt or anything.  Below is my full and sincere reply.

 

Robert Kiyosaki learned from his Rich father in his book Rich Dad Poor Dad that there's a difference between being poor and being broke. The rich will sometimes be broke in their life. That comes with the financial mistakes and risk of owning a business and putting money on the stock market. I'm not poor, I'm broke. This is a very temporary situation and it's only happened to me once in the whole seven years that I've been in Thailand.

 

Teaching English is not any sort of long term career and that's why I spend as much of my time outside of teaching English to work on my business. Many western people say to just quit and move back home. I find that disappointing. Maybe it's because I'm American but I was taught to never quit. Quitters are losers. What do you think about Steve Jobs when he got fired from his own company and the 1980s? Did he give up and work at Radio Shack? No!  He thought of ways to get back up on top again. 

 

Success is a mindset, it's not about what country you're in or what country pays the most money for English teaching jobs. moving back to the West will incur a lot of debt because housing is extremely expensive, it's impossible to not own a car in the USA and owning a car means law enforced car insurance in addition to the expenses of buying gasoline and having the car fixed up when it breaks down. Living in the USA equates to living in poverty. And everybody in the USA has a master's degree in the PhD. The problem is that nobody wants to give graduates entry level positions into the careers that they went to college for because employers have been requiring three to five years of professional experience just for an internal position. Unlike the job market in the 1970s When anybody could get an apprenticeship and a career, the job market place is current Lee  oversupplied with people that have University degrees. It's simple supply and demand. There's too much supply of  Highly Educated  people in the USA. That's why there's so much employment and that's why there are people with phds selling shoes at Macy's.

 

So most college graduates in America are caught up in this catch-22: You need an education to get a career but to get The career you need to have the experience that employers do not want to give college graduates.  I don't want to hear anybody talk about how I am a lazy Millennial or anything like that. Nobody knows me. I hustled hard for 3 years after I graduated and nobody wanted to give me the chance for a paid position even after I interned or volunteered  while working full-time as a valet. And it's not just me, this is happening too most people who go to college in the west. They are fed these false promises of a career after education and even after you aggressively go after these jobs in the US, they're all requiring professional experience which is not possible to get while going to college. Because college is expensive and you got to work to afford that. Living in Thailand is the best thing to do because when I'm not teaching English I have the free time and the funding to be able to volunteer for myself and to create my own business opportunities. Most people who go back to the US or to the West, they end up working a job but they never wanted to work just so that they can have their Western convenience is in family. Personally I think that's a pretty shity way to live. Why settle to be a cell phone salesman or a bartender  and having your only free time to be drinking alcohol with friends at night when you could be living in Southeast Asia and building a career for yourself on the side like myself or like the many others who have made a career online doing blogs, travel Pages or anything like that. Thailand isn't perfect but neither is the list. It's kind of like breaking up with a girlfriend and then getting a new girl. Your ex girlfriend had her faults and she had good things about her too. But the grass isn't greener on the other side with your new girl. She has her own problems and she has great stuff about her too. I have found that is what living in various countries is like. There's stuff we like and don't like about every country. But I see Thailand as a better option than living with a lifetime of credit card debt in the USA.

 

Think about it! I have no debt. I'm just broke and I have 200 baht in my pocket. I'm doing a lot better than over fifty percent of Americans right now. I'm very interested to now. How old are you and what job do you currently have? Is the job you have your dream job? Is it something that you're excited about when you wake up in the morning? Finally, do you plan to have that job 10 years from now?

 

 I firmly believe that I firmly believe that the American dream is in Thailand. Not America. America has too many laws and they're too organized. Thailand has a few lies, most of which are not enforced and as long as they pay off the police and the mafia you can practically do whatever you want  as long as you don't step on any Toes or get too rich. Nobody wants to end up like Jim Thompson. I see a lot more business opportunity in Thailand and America because of that.

[Scott]

Off-topic, troll posts have been removed along with replies.  

 

Criticism of grammar and syntax will earn a suspension.   This is an internet discussion forum.   No one is writing their Ph.D. thesis.  

[Sydebolle]

On 1/6/2019 at 11:41 PM, TeacherKenAyutthaya said:

Did you read this forum?

Yes indeed; somewhere you refer to the fact, that there was no valid work permit issued - hence my question. 

[Sydebolle]

On 1/6/2019 at 11:46 PM, TeacherKenAyutthaya said:

Not true at all, fortunately. I don't want to write a blog, but there's a lot of positive change rapidly happening. Did you hear about the 13year old girls who got bali to ban plastics? We don't need to be rich to make change. We just need to get a lot of people to make change. People power is more powerful than money. Why do you think the movers and shakers of the world spend so much money to control us? We've always had the power ???? Also, I only worked illegally for 2 months. Is that a long time? I've been paying taxes in Thailand for the past 7 years. What is your occupation in Thailand? Why did you come here?

 

Yes, and if you pull my left leg it might ring "jingle bells".

Lived here almost all my adult life (came in 1985) - my possibly sarcastic comments are based on nothing but experience.

Your "do gooder" comments might work in the Western hemisphere; here it's a blank cheque for failure - still. I'm not saying that you're wrong; I'm saying that you're following (for the time being at least) a lost cause! 

[simon43]

It's good to be an idealist.  But even that requires money.

 

Listen, I was once in your shoes.  I too, had only a few baht to my name, (after a bad divorce from a mentally ill Thai woman).  I was doing voluntary English teaching of Burmese kids at the time and had great ideas about supporting thousands of Burmese school kids in their school studies by donating school-books etc to them

 

I realised that my dreams would go nowhere without a solid, regular income, and without some teaching qualifications.  (I already had a couple of non-related degrees).

 

So I left Thailand in order to 'pull myself up' to a stable lifestyle.  I found teaching work in Burma for a comparatively good salary.  I was then able to self-fund to obtain several teaching certificates (TEFL, Phonics, Teaching SEN students, IELTS etc).

 

I slowly turned my life around, but always aware that without $, I would never be successful in achieving my goals.  I also learnt to trust absolutely no-one!

 

Now, years later, I have a stable income and I support more than 3,000 students in Burma with their studies by buying school books from my salary.

 

So.... stop fretting about your old school.  Put your environmental dreams on hold. Sort out your own life first by going wherever you need to in order to obtain a stable income.  Use some of your salary to obtain relevant qualifications.

 

Only after you've sorted your own life out can you think about helping others with their lives....

[Scott]

An off-topic, inflammatory post removed.