Trouble in the middle of HESS initial training: and my weapon against evil- DENIAL!!!

A couple of days into the training, we each called or were called by our HNST (head native speaking teacher, basically your western manager) from our branch.
We'll call my HNST James. My first impression of him over the phone was that he sounded mild-mannered and kind. A couple of minutes into our conversation he said we should discuss my schedule.
My schedule? Two kindergarten classes, I already know.
Noooo he said. You don't have two kindergarten classes.

?

"Fortunately," said James
(I soon learned that if James begins a sentence with 'fortunately', you ought to head screaming for the hills, because what follows will be anything but fortunate)

"fortunately you do have a kindergarten class in the morning. Then on Mondays, wednesdays and Friday's you'll have a class called Treehouse, and on Tuesdays and Thursdays you'll have a class that's just like kindy called jump. Then you'll have HLS classes on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday."

My mind was already racing. There must be a mistake. For the entire training so far I'd been looking at my fellow trainees during the non-kindy sections and thinking 'you shmucks, those classes are going to suck! Thank god I did my research and am only teaching kindergarten.'
I also knew that kindergarten is a morning class, and the buxiban (older children) classes run from 6:30-8:30pm- and have homework and tests to grade, not to mention baffling lesson plans.

Also the schedule he was talking about would be about 32 or 33 hours a week- not exactly the 15 I had dreamed about.

(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I actually had thought that I would only be working 33 hours HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA!!! The truth was I would be PAID for 33 hours- I'd be working MUCH much MUCH more.)

But the part that killed me was the 8:30 am start and the 8:30 pm finish...I didn't know when treehouse and jump were, but I wasn't pleased that I was already being forced into a split shift schedule.

I told James that there was a mistake and that I had agreed to a Contract C full time kindy schedule. He replied that Jump class was for kindy aged kids, so it would be almost like a contract C! Wasn't that great?

He told me I could talk to the main office staff and see if there was something else that could be done.

I got off the phone and immediately my mind went into some sort of denying reality survival mode. I just decided that squeaky wheels get the grease and that I'd be a squeaky wheel.


At the end of training, nearly 40 trainees happily lined up to sign their contract. I refused. What an awkward moment. Here I am in a foreign country, my visa is tied to the company I'm working for, I don't have enough money for a flight home, and I'm refusing to sign their contract.
I was told that less kindergarten children had signed up at my branch than expected- that was why my schedule had changed. I was told to go, try it, see if I liked it, and if I didn't, we'd figure something out.

Now I understand that it must be a logistical nightmare to do what Hess does- hundreds of new teachers, thousands of students, crazy scheduling, many unkown variables (will the new teacher pass training, what kids will sign up for which classes, will we have too many or not enough teachers, etc.) and to be fair to Hess they are honest that you may not get the schedule/location that you want. And they did give me exactly the location i wanted. 1 out of two, considering what they're up against, isn't bad.
But I wasn't going for not bad, I was going for good, so this new development sucked.
They must have understood the kindergarten situation long before I boarded the plane to Taiwan. They just didn't tell me until it was convenient- meaning, I was in Taiwan, tied to their visa, with half of their unpaid training behind me.

The surfboard

During the last couple of days of the training, I was becoming increasingly alarmed about my surfboard. At nine feet long it is difficult to transport, and the town that I was moving to was about an hour away from Taipei. Though the people at Hess had reassured me that they would help me take it down to Luodong, I had the strangest feeling that it wasn't going to happen.
So, for the last 3 days of training, I asked several people about my surfboard- never getting a straight answer from anyone but being reassured over and over again. I asked about the mini-bus that would take me to the branch, and they told me I would not take a mini bus but would be on the train. Well...were you allowed to put a long surfboard on the train? I doubted it, but I was willing to try.

All I wanted was a straight answer, and they got annoyed at me for asking questions.

Was it Hess's responsibility to transport my surfboard? Absolutely not.

To be honest, when I had first asked them if they could help me with my surfboard, and they said yes, I kind of felt like I was getting away with something. I figured they would tell me to transport my own damn surfboard. But when they said yes, I figured that maybe they said yes because it would be easy. Maybe they had vans going back and forth between branches all the time. I was just relieved that they said they would help me.
I think this is just Hess's MO with new recruits- “Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah! Sure sure sure! Of course! Whatever you want! Just get your ass to Taipei!”

The morning of our departure from the hotel, I lugged my nine foot board downstairs and waited for our ride to the train station.

“If my board doesn't go,” I remarked to one of the trainers, “I don't go.”

The trainer just rolled his eyes and looked at me like I was incredibly immature- which sure maybe an obsession with surfing CAN be seen as immature- that's fine, he's entitled to his opinions- but if I was repeatedly reassured that I would arrive in Luodong WITH my surfboard, was it immature to believe what they told me?

(besides if you're a surfer, you understand my fear- you don't just want any brute who knows nothing about a surfboard lugging it around. They could bang it against something which could cause a ding which I wasn't sure if I could even fix in Taiwan...seriously if you're a surfer you understand.)

Taxi after taxi rolled up to the hotel entrance and took group after group of happy trainees away. My turn came and you guessed it----- just a regular taxi, incapable of taking my surfboard.

Why the fuck didn't they just TELL me they weren't planning to take it? Then at least I could have attempted, through a translator, to make my own arrangements!!!!

I didn't make good on my promise- I left my surfboard in the care of the hotel and was assured that they would hold it for me at Hess main office. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr! I still get mad thinking about it 10 months later.

I tried to shake it off on the train ride so I would be in a good mood when I met my new co-workers. But the foundation was laid. Obnoxious information over load training, changing my schedule with out telling me before I arrived, and lying to me about my surfboard. I seriously hated Hess.

Schedule change

When I arrived in my branch, it was actually pretty sweet- they had a little pizza party for us, and I really liked my new co-workers. I decided to put Hess main office behind me and focus on loving my branch.

I believe I arrived on a Thursday. Two of my co-workers (a Canadian and an American) had graduated from initial training a week before me and had been 'observing' more experienced teachers for a week. I was told that I unfortunately wouldn't get to observe much because I was late (which was ironic because I'd actually asked if I could come to the earlier training group and they said no.)

So on the following Friday, I watched my new co-worker teach her first kindergarten class, and on Saturday, I watched a more experienced teacher give an oral test to his students.
(an oral test is comprised of asking about 20 different students the same 7 or 8 questions individually- not exactly a real example of teaching)

I met my kindergarten class on the Friday before I began work, and fell instantly in love with them.
“Ask them 'what's your name'” said the exhausted looking teacher I was taking over for.
“What's your name?” I asked one little girl as she came toward me. She stared into my eyes and then ran off screaming. This little game was repeated by several of the students. They couldn't seem to stop staring at my eyes- I later found out because they're blue. I was so stoked to meet these little kids. I loved teaching kindergarten.

Anyways, I was then shown my schedule. Teach kindy 8:30 am til 11:30 Monday through Friday. Then on Monday Wednesday and Friday, teach TreeHouse from 4:30 till 6:30. On Tuesday and Thursday, Jump from 4:20 till 6. Then, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday nights, a different class every night from 6:40 till 8:30.

“This is going to need to change,” I said to James. If he sensed that I would be trouble then, he had no idea how much.
“It can't be changed.” he told me.
“I need it to be changed. Kindy can be from 2 till 4, can't it?”
“No.”
“Yes it can. That would have been one of my classes if I had contract C.”
“Maybe we can change it in a few months.”
“If it changes in a few months, I won't be here to see it change.”

yeah, I wasn't making any friends. I did, however, get a phone call over the weekend telling me that my schedule could indeed be changed and I could start Kindy at 2 pm. That was actually really cool of the branch and I'm still grateful that they were flexible on it.

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.