ESL Teaching Opportunities in Taiwan at Kang Chiao School

The Kang Chiao Bilingual or Kangchiao International School has been featured in Taiwan’s media several times in the past three years. Once for illegally employing foreign teachers at an unlicensed kindergarten and apparently insisting they not be “dark skinned”, once when a former pupil threatened to commit a massacre at a Philadelphia school (and had made considerable preparations to do so), once when a foreign teacher tragically took their own life and once when linked to a tainted food product scandal.

There have been allegations of illegal drug use within the school community ignored by the school’s senior leadership, of cheating in examinations (some of it teacher assisted) and a police report was filed against former principal for verbally threatening a member of staff, trying to physically threaten said staff member via a proxy member of the school’s general affairs department and force that person to sign a resignation, thus incurring an illegal 30,000 NTD fine. CCTV footage of this incident exists and is apparently not the first time they engaged in such criminal activity.

The institute itself, I have had it on good advice, is still in a state of chaos, with pupils running amok and verbally abusing staff without fear of sanction, thanks to poor leadership and an extraordinarily high staff turnover. Theft of wages still occurs and lax educational standards without any safeguards or oversight persist.

This racism, abuse and fraud is openly condoned by The New Taipei City Department of Labour - who couldn’t be bothered to even investigate serious claims of employee abuse, The New Taipei City Ministry of Education - who couldn’t adequately inspect the school due to a pitiful and lazy culture of excuses, The New Taipei City Foreign Affairs Police - who could not correctly collect witness statements, The International Baccalaureate Organisation - who accredit the school despite repeated violations of their examination regulations and The Western Association of Schools and Colleges - who would in all likelihood give full accreditation to my neighbor’s basement meth lab if I gave them a fat enough fee.

In summary, your children are not safe there. Your teaching staff are not safe there. The school should be properly inspected and measures implemented.

I really enjoyed my time teaching here (International School). The school has recently undergone a big change to salary and benefits. There were great opportunities to collaborate and good professional development opportunities. The faculty are well-qualified and experienced. I learned a lot from my colleagues. One drawback is it's on top of a mountain - bit of a commute, but there are school buses and public transport. Will definitely choose this school again if I ever return to Taiwan :)

I worked at the school for three years. The first year was great. The second year I really tried to make a positive change in the school by being active and starting programs. During this time, there were numerous times when I felt like the administrators were not being truthful. The third year, the true attitudes of the administrators became more apparent.

Like the other reviewer who had a negative experience, I am not here to place blame or be bitter about anything. I learned a lot from this school about how school for profit really works, and for that I am thankful.

The staff here are generally good, but most of the administrators, although some are foreigners, think too locally to be considered international school administrators. By that, I mean that the logic is a bit screwy and backwards. For example, the school isn't technically an international school, like many of the schools in Taiwan. As far as I know, only Taiwan American and Taiwan European schools are truly international, where all of their students hold foreign passports. They use the term "international" because it is more marketable and seems to lend credence to their really high tuition fees that keep increasing each year.

Next, the administrators don't care about the teachers, nor the students and parents -- in my opinion. They want to make as much money from the parents as possible. They want to give as little money as possible to teachers (by creating diminishing returns on raises/bonuses and by practically forcing teachers who stay longer, thus receive higher pay, to leave). Another situation that was frustrating was regarding teachers who pay to park in their garage by "requesting" them to stay 25 minutes, without pay, past their contractual obligations until they are allowed to leave campus (due to the crazy idea of driving on a street while students try to also go to a bus).

The time you spend being a teacher is supposed to naturally spill over into your off time, but this school takes up so much of your time at work, you practically do all prep at home, and a lot of your grading as well. This leaves you having little time to actually explore Taiwan in your down time. Additionally, they require a few times a year where you work on either a Saturday or Sunday, and if it is a professional development workshop -- which is mandatory.

In my opinion, the administration does not respect teachers. This goes along with not caring about them, but the constant threat of losing bonuses is held over your head. There are monthly assemblies, and if you don't attend, you lose part of your monthly AND quarterly bonus. There are poorly designed professional development workshops that occur on Thursdays. If you miss those, you are penalized. If you are sick, you have to show the school a doctor's note to receive a half-day pay. If you don't have a doctor's note, you receive no pay for the day you are sick. They will try to force you to use face recognition AND fingerprint identification clock-in systems, even though they give you an electronic badge that holds this function, too. Without respect, there's no trust, and then the school pretends to be shocked when you cannot return a high level of trust to them.

There is the problem with private schools who are in education for the business only. The parent company is a book publishing company, and guess whose books you have to buy to attend the school? Many of the admin and teachers here drive expensive cars. Now, good for them if they managed to secure some decent investments or have a spouse who earns a lot of money, but it is rather an uncomfortable feeling to see all these expensive cars coming into a private school.

If you are a teacher at heart and care about students, have principles that don't allow you to work for greedy corporations or untrustworthy people, I would say that working here for a year would be ok, but that's it.

Having just read the review from Mr. Wibble (with whom I was acquainted with during his brief time at KCIS), I felt compelled to report of my experience at Kang Chiao. Please note that my review refers to the High School section, and not the elementary school.

I taught in the English department, and my students belonged to both the International Department (the stream that is heading to overseas schools) and the Secondary Department (whose students are destined for local universities). There was a noticeable difference in the abilities of the the two groups of students, as to be expected when one group has 100% of their classes in English, while the other group has only 10 periods of English instruction a week.

In my two years at Kang Chiao, I had initial discipline problems with a few students, which were soon sorted out with effective classroom management. I would suggest that this is something that the previous reviewer perhaps failed to implement in his classes. Having taught in the public school system, I found the behavior of the students to be vastly better than those I had encountered.

The fact that the previous reviewer slanders the true shining light of the school, Anne Ramalho, truly shows his character. Anne always made herself available and was a great source of inspiration to me. I appreciated her always giving-it-to-us-straight way of leadership, and I was happy to hear that she was promoted within the school.

Never once was I asked to falsify my grades, or to give grades higher than the students deserved. As a matter of fact, we had grading sessions during department meetings to discuss whether some teachers were grading their students too generously.

If it weren't for my family situation, I would have remained at Kang Chiao, and am happy with the direction that I see it developing into the future.

I worked at the High/Jr High for two years and absolutely loved it there. The admin are easy to get along, the kids are wonderful, great coworkers, and awesome facilities. I was teaching English, had two separate preps, and had plenty of enough time to get my planning and most grading done in my prep periods. My coworkers were awesome. I genuinely loved going to school nearly every day. A lot of hate here I think is about the elementary and you must know that the High School is a completely separate entity. I found as long as you go into things with a great attitude then you're rewarded with a great experience.

I have taught at Kang Chiao for the past year and have very much enjoyed myself. This is my first experience teaching abroad and it has been wonderful! I taught a great group of junior high school students whom I looked forward to seeing everyday because of how energetic and funny they were. I had an easy schedule with plenty of prep time. The school is located up in the mountains and the view is beautiful! Sometimes you see monkeys on the way up to school. There are many social clubs and sports the school offers for both teachers and students. My head teachers and administrators were amazing and very helpful. The best part about working here is the people. I have made many friends with my colleagues who come from all over the world and local friends as well. The only difficulty I have had here is the language barrier which is a given and the holidays are less than in the west.

I've been teaching at Kang Chiao for the past 4 years and have enjoyed my time there. One thing I notice in these online reviews is that most of the negative feedback relates to the elementary school, which has a different management structure to the high school. A lot of the negative things that have been reported in previous reviews have not been my experience at all. I enjoy my colleagues, everyone is happy to help and offer advice, the administration is supportive and give teachers a lot of freedom in their classroom. I like that my opinion is listened to and is often acted on. The pay is pretty good, however we could do with more paid leave. One of the negatives for the high school is the location - it is on top of a mountain with nothing but local housing communities nearby. I have recommended this school to friends, but always clarify that my experience is based on the high school only, and not the kindergarten or elementary school.

Well, if one has an unpleasant experience one tends to be emotional when describing it.

I’ll try to avoid that and simply give a list of observations. I hope you find this helpful.

This is for the elementary school primarily,though from a few I’ve heard from, similarities exist between the other schools.

1. The curriculum coordinator (English speaking go between) appeared to literally have mental/emotional problems. He was always spaced out in appearance, screamed at kids when he wanted them to do something (loudly), overall a bad person. Maybe he shined on the inside though, who knows? He could not give directions to save his life and liked passing the blame for things not going along with the plan in his head to others. He was and probably still is notorious for incorrect information and being what one would call “two faced” or maybe, “underhanded” in his personal dealings with the staff.

2. The facilities, while appearing like a castle, are only so in face value. It takes a decent picture but unless your senses have been a bit adjusted by living in Taiwan for a while then you will see that the buildings quality is not that good. If you live here and come from a developed country then you know I’m being polite:) This is the least of the issues however. It is also interesting that the elevator is extremely slow, so instead of spending money on fixing it they have signs up saying “Exercise is good for you, children only use the elevator with teacher permission.”. The problem is that adults whether in good shape or not still have to either wait 5 minutes for the lift or climb 5 or more fairly long flights.

3. Everybody talks like they are walking on eggshells. This was the first sign that something was wrong. People also tend to disappear without warning. This was the second. I have heard stories of people getting yelled at, drama, etc while I was there. You only hear about it though because they want to keep a good image. Honestly,it’s a revolving door to a drama factory. Also, nobody cares about teaching anyone anything. The face of the building is just for the parents and as long as they don’t call to complain then everything is fine. In short, you or how good or bad you teach don’t matter. The place is run with a combination of petty, personal politics and tricking the parents into thinking that they are the best school to spend money on.

4.The teachers. Well, maybe it’s the kind of people that Taiwan attracts. I know that in Japan most English teachers look like they had a job at some point before they came over. Here, well, it’s not the same. It’s more like 95 no, I’ll be fair, 90%of their teachers got out of rehab, cleaned up and went shopping for work clothes at Wal-Mart before getting a new start on life. I also saw one man(presumably a man)in very high jean shorts while a small female student was hugging is leg. He was palming her face while gazing longingly into her eyes, then smiling and very warmly saying I love you. I thought “Aww, that is so…um, wait a minute.., oh god! should I report that!?” Well, moving on…

5.To sum it up, it’s a very large "buxiban". It’s not the best and not the friendliest and honestly the people who run things are underhanded and pick favorites. Also,if I had a video camera and made use of it at times the school would have been shut down for child abuse or health concerns on at least 4 or 5 instances(by Canadian, U.S., on England’s standards). Be smart, pass on this place. If I had to do it over again I would not. It is was not worth the money (money x time spent at school and amount of work)time wasted, emotional energy spent, or bother at having to go up a mountain clearly off the beaten path every blessed morning.

I hope this was informative enough to assist you and unbiased enough for you to trust, while being vague enough to hide the identities of the underhanded, protect the innocent, and possibly prevent the arrest of a normal guy who really “looked” a pedophile…..well, I mean he probably wasn’t a pedophile…I hope. Eww.