Prime One School (Medan)

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• 
  supry (tamu)

  kontol buat kau

  14 tahun yang lalu | balasan | hide comment
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  willy (tamu)

  Introductions first, I have been teaching in Indonesia for almost 15 years now. I have taught at universities, private schools and public schools and I have a Master’s Degree in Education and Administration. I have held the position of academic coordinator several times, been a centre manager and am now currently Head of English at a private school here in Medan (I also enjoy reading and dislike shrimps.) A few years ago I found out through a friend that this school was looking for a native English speaker/academic coordinator for their senior high school department, and that they paid quite well, so I sent off my CV and covering letter. After 2 weeks or so, I had a face to face with the School Director and everything seemed to be going well… Right up until I saw the contract. I wasn’t allowed to hold it, but I was allowed to peer at the SDs monitor, which had been slightly turned round to make it easier for me to read. Alarms bells did indeed ring, and some of the hidden nasties waiting for me later down the road rustled forebodingly from a yet unseen place. I did also notice that they would insist on holding my passport, kitas, blue book and certificates, but was assured that should I ever need them that they would be swiftly returned to me. Now to the contract itself… It looked like something Goebbels could have written, penalties here, there and everywhere. It was quite frankly the nastiest contract I had ever seen, even in business I hadn’t seen anything quite like this before. You may be surprised to hear that despite all this … I signed it. Having read the terms and conditions I knew that they had absolutely no chance of ever pursuing me successfully under the law and that the worst that could happen to me was a hard kick out the door with a possible deportation threat and loss of my paperwork. Having been around here for a while, I have a few numbers of my own in my phone so this wasn’t really an issue for me. OK, so I got in the door and took up my new position. I have to say I was very impressed by the school. Fantastic facilities, computers and projectors in every room and a very well maintained building. In short simply the best school I have ever worked in (in terms of facilities and environment etc.) They made me feel very comfortable, and couldn’t have been nicer to me. It was great. Things went very smoothly for a while, and then one day I asked for my passport to have an exit permit put in it so that I could go to Penang over the holidays. I offered to pay all the fees for this exit visa, and cover the expenses of their agent for doing it. What follows is a brief transcript of what was said: No. Excuse me? No. We don’t let our new teachers go out of the country for at least 6 months from their start date. Why? It’s our school policy. This wasn’t made clear to me at any time, nor is it stated in the contract of employment. Well, it is final. I beg your pardon? We don’t agree that you can go out of the country! Oh, really… Well, the conversation took a rather heated turn, eventually resulting in me getting my passport, visa and grudging permission to go for a holiday at Christmas. It also resulted, unbelievably, in my first ever career warning. I got a verbal warning, in writing, saying that I must respect the rules and regulations of the school and not speak argumentatively with the leaders. After this incident, things were never really the same and my relationship with the school deteriorated, a year later after I forced the school to allow me to resign from my position as academic coordinator (I won’t go into details as to why I did this but it was done to preserve some modicum of professional integrity on my part) I was later given a letter from them stating that I was unsuitable to be a coordinator and had been removed from the position rather than had resigned from it. I tried to end my contract by giving 3 months’ notice, but they got pretty nasty and intimidating with me so I finished my contract as a regular, albeit slightly overqualified subject teacher. I also received an official warning letter, I presume for having the audacity to want to give notice. I was there for a number of years (yes I did sign a long contract God help me.) I was dealt with in a staggeringly unprofessional way for most of the time I was there. It was quite frankly the most challenging post I have ever held. I received 2 more warning letters for various made up reasons when I challenged them over academic matters, but I think the fact that I was capable of protecting myself legally gave them pause for thought about trying to directly fire me. I finally finished my contract, and it was with a joyful heart that I skipped out the door for the last time. What kind of person can last and thrive in this school? If you are a cringing sycophant with a highly developed ebully muscle, you may do quite well at this school. If however you have a moderately developed sense of self-worth and integrity, you could well find this school to be an absolute living nightmare to work in. Now let me be fair for a minute. It’s not all bad. Salaries are paid for the most part on time, a lot of people work there, and many of them get on well. The senior managers are on personal level at least in the most part friendly, if slightly duplicitous, but as group their mentality changes to something akin to a wolf pack. You simply have to be willing to say YES! to everything, EVERYTHING, they say, become a loyal and dedicated follower, nay a devotee of the school, a disciple of the great vision, a cup holder of the all-knowing board of directors. “All hail the LEADERS, we your acolytes adore you.” Well… you get the idea. Do everything they want, and never EVER challenge the school leadership. Follow their sagely advice about giving up any form of social life to focus completely on your students’ needs, receive their wisdom humbly and with grace and mold yourself into their idea of a perfect teacher. Allow them to change your working conditions and contract at their slightest whim, and thank them for doing it. By doing this, IF you keep on their good side, and can ignore some of the more ludicrous decisions they make, and the very shaky academic schemes they come up with to ‘support’ their students, you may well have a very positive experience there. Assuming your manager likes you that is. The problem is, other than the misguided gentleman trying to support them in this thread, I don’t really know many western people that can blindly accept being treated badly without speaking up and fighting for their rights and for the terms of their contract to be upheld. If you do get on the school management’s bad side, everything goes to hell in a hand basket. Extremely vindictive, shaping the truth to best fit their needs, manipulative, unprofessional, in some cases blatantly deceitful in order to achieve their aims. These are things I have heard them be accused of. Not that I would ever dream of making these accusations myself (consults with lawyer, ok let’s move on) I could not in good conscience recommend any westerner work there, unless they have a very, very passive nature. Local teachers get on ok generally but complain about being severely over-worked, the Filipino teachers seem to thrive there. I suspect the problem really is one of arrogance or fear. They over-control and micromanage every aspect of the school, and are utterly incapable of self-reflection, taking any form of professional conflict as criticism and any challenge to their decisions as a personal attack. The board of directors essentially needs to realize that the way they want to run the school will always make us white faces (no racism implied or intended) uncomfortable and they should simply avoid hiring us. I know Mr Donkk personally, and while I think that there probably was an element of truth in some of the school’s complaints about him, I also believe that they were ENTIRELY unprofessional in their handling of both their contractual obligations towards him and in how they dismissed him. As a fellow survivor of this school, I wish him well and hope he has better luck in his next job.

  11 tahun yang lalu | balasan | hide comment
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  John Butchart

  Hi there my friend,would just like to thank you for taking your time to warn folk of this awful place,I do this because I just received a strange job offer of these people!! Strange? I didn't apply or ever even knew about this place until minutes ago!( I did however have a resume on the TEFL site but I take that off until july and NovemberAnd the actual job offer itself has come with no info about the school,salary,requirements etc etc) nothing at all basicly we want to interview tommorow morning and I must have a picture of myself ready for this interview !!! So there were alarm bells ringing straight away!! I may have a bit of fun with them in another name and just wind them up at the Skype interview then at the end tell them someone called Ken hom told me there were rats in the kitchen !! Anyways thanks bud,do you know of any decently run centres? Kind regards Jamie.

  11 tahun yang lalu | balasan | hide comment