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| AVOID WSIEA & HANGZHOU BABEL LANGUAGE CTR | ||
| In early 2004, I applied to WSIEA to teach English to public school teachers of English in China. After WSIEA and Anlin Gao received my money, they informed that that program had been cancelled and that I would have to go to Hangzhou to teach young people in a camp setting. After assuring me that I would be in the city of Hangzhou, I signed the contract. Once I got to China, I was totally abandoned by WSIEA; the management of the Hangzhou Babel Center was totally unresponsive to my requests that they honor my contract. We were in Linhai, 4 hours from Hangzhou; had almost no teaching materials, no hot water, none of the promised language/culture lessons and no furniture other than beds in our rooms. The promised day trip to Hangzhou turned out to be nothing more than an overnight stay in a dirty hotel room--using someone else's filthy towels and linen. Complaints to the camp Administration and to the Babel Center officals were a waste of time. The Babel reps on our campus were two college students who had never co-ordinated anything in their lives. They had neither the power or the experience to confront Administration on our behalf. While at the camp, one teacher was spat at by students; a group of unruly students broke into a locked classroom, and another student assaulted a classmate with a chair. In the course of 20 consecutive class days, we had in excess of 100 contact hours with students--sometimes going to class until 8:30 at night. Although this camp was marketed to Chinese parents as a way to improve their children's English by working with native speakers of English, in reality it was just a money making venture for the school---no one can improve his English by attending 4-5 hours of class a day in a class of 30 students without a respite. The on-going discipline problems made the situation worse-so did the Chinese "teacher's aides" who refused to help the English teachers (most of whom did not speak Chinese) discipline the students. WSIEA AND HANGZHOU BABEL LANGUAGE CENTER ARE NOTHING MORE THAN MONEY GRUBBING ENTERPRISES. FOREIGN TEACHERS ARE PART OF THE ENTERTAINMENT; THEY ARE NOT VALUED AS COLLEAGUES. DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME & MONEY TEACHING FOR SUCH PEOPLE. ONCE I GOT BACK TO THE US AND COMPLAINED TO ANLIN GAO, HE THREATENED TO TELL MY EMPLOYER HERE IN THE US (A SMALL LIBERAL ARTS COLLEGE IN TEXAS) THAT I WAS CAUSING HIM TROUBLE. Dr. Jeannette W. Cockroft jcockroft@schreiner.edu |