Classes

On Monday I showed up around 12 to prepare my lessons. I figured 2 hours was pretty generous of me – to give that much of my free time with out being paid.
What I saw when I arrived at the branch were my two co-workers (we'll call them Melissa and Brian) in a frenzy.
Both of them had been there since about 7 am, and were eating lunch at the NST desk. Both of them would stay until 9 or 10 pm every night for the next week. That's 14 and 15 hour days, and they were only getting paid for 6.5 of those hours. I promised myself that I would not make the same mistake. If they wanted me to spend that much time at the school, they would have to pay me for it.

I think the difference between how I handled the situation and how Melissa and Brian handled it could be chalked up to experience.
I had had jobs since I was 12, and had been working full time since I was 17, sometimes holding up to 3 part time jobs at one time. Ya know that insane desire one usually feels to please their boss on their first job?
Yeah, mine was gone. I figured most jobs were lucky to have me, and not the other way around.
Good attitude? no. And definitely not a good attitude for a new teacher to have. Teaching takes preparation. A LOT of preparation. But I hadn't signed up for a salary job and they weren't paying me enough for me to be coming in on my own time.
(In America I had been making more than double the hourly wage for easier work. I realize that cost of living was much lower in Taiwan, but then again that was the whole reason I'd come to Taiwan- to work less and save more.)

Anyways for my first week my Kindy class was great (I had KNOWN I'd be good at Kindy, that's why I had requested it!!!) But my other classes left a little something to be desired. I would show up around 1:30, which was plenty of time to plan for Kindy, but then I'd just kind of wing my other classes.
I figured they had given me classes that I hadn't agreed to in the first place. Yes, the first contract I had signed said "I agree to accept all hours given to me." but I had signed it and scanned it and emailed it to them. I don't think that's legally binding, and I had not signed the real contract in Taipei- after I knew what the classes entailed.
If they didn't like the job I was doing, they'd have to give me the schedule they had promised me, or fire me.
Am I proud of this?
No. Those kids deserved better- and their parents deserved better, for the money they were paying.
And my Chinese co-teachers deserved better- when i fell down on the job, it was the other teachers, the kids, and the parents who lost out- not Hess, who in my mind had caused the problem in the first place.
It was this realization that caused me to donate shocking amounts of my free time to Hess over the coming 10 months.