I’ve read a lot of articles recently warning ESL teachers about picking the right schools. In fact for 10-15 years there have been all sorts of posts on the American web telling potential teachers about scams and wannabe thieves that are trolling the ESL sites waiting for potential prey.  And it is definitely true that foreigners are at risk when they go to teach abroad.  Missing pay, illegal work ethics, refused vacation time, sucky housing, NO housing, horrible students, or -the worst- evil watching parents waiting for you to fail.  

Life can be tough as a foreign teacher, but I thought maybe it was time to mention the other side. After sitting in several schools and making many online ESL Teaching friends, listening to the teachers talk and gossip, I thought someone should post a warning for the schools instead.  To those ESL teachers that are going to get all huffy, cool it! You have your chance to air your grievances on other posts, and I’m certainly not saying that you don’t have grievances to share. Heck, I’ve got grievances to share! Late pay/NO pay, skimpy travel reimbursements, the list goes on. But schools deserve to get the warnings too, it’s not all sun and roses on their side in many cases either.

Without further adieu, here are 6 scams that ESL teachers often play on their employers.

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1. Abusing Benefits

Many people talk about how schools/agencies in some foreign countries will tend to short-change you your well-earned, usually required benefits.  But they aren’t the only ones abusing this confusing system, ESL Teachers sometimes do so as well.  I’ve heard of at least two teachers who abused the “medical payout” benefit offered at nearby schools, and I know there are more.  Since the medical/reimbursement/receipt systems are a little more rustic in many foreign countries, it is very easy to either bribe or re-arrange everything to come out on top.

Some raise very unnecessary doctor’s costs and charge it to the school as an emergency medical fee.  They pay a doctor to write the prescription or explanation in English. When the school secretary girl doesn’t know what it says,  they tell her it’s for something serious  (one is simply getting a weekly massage and calling it “therapy”- he freely admits he doesn’t need it, but it’s convenient. Costs the school 80rmb a week).  

Others overcharge the school.  The way it works is that you bring your receipt to the school to ask for money. The teacher’ll either pay the doctor’s office/hospital person to charge a higher fee or erase/white it out and write a higher one anyway. They then pocket the difference.  

2. Double Charging the School

This one is really, really cheeky.  Some schools in foreign countries prefer to pay their teachers in cash.  Sometimes this is because it isn’t all on the up-and-up. They either hire a teacher from a different school for 1-2 hours of work a week or they just don’t want to pay the taxes. Other times, they are in a more rural place and that is just how things work.  Unfortunately, a lot of them don’t take the time to get a receipt. You just get handed an envelope of money.  

This has caused several schools a big problem when teacher’s pull the “Double-Trouble” scam.  The teacher will charge them and get the envelope of money.  They then go to the police and claim that they weren’t paid anything.  The school usually doesn’t have a witness beyond the person who handed over the cash, and there isn’t a receipt.  So the school is sometimes forced to pay the teacher twice.  This may also result in them losing their license to hire foreign teachers or put them under investigation. Such an investigation can destroy the school’s reputation and ruin them.  One nearby school was forced to shut down after they ran into this scam, and other’s are starting to demand a signed receipt in the transaction.  

3. Selling Tests/Grades/Quizzes

This is a kind of obvious scam, but it happens constantly.  Teachers complain all the time about how their students in foreign countries cheat on the exams. It is actually a really, really big problem, even here at my institution (I had to report 3 last semester alone from my class). But they don’t often want to admit that teachers themselves are often a HUGE part of the problem.   Continue reading →

Tags: Cheating, ESL, parents, Scam, students, Teachers, Teaching, Theft, Wrong