Resignation Letter

Dear former colleagues,

My resignation letters is being posted online to explain why I have left and to ensure that the truth comes out about what really happens at Huijia.

Sent 2/13/17 at 8:00 am

To Whom It May Concern,

I am giving you my notice of leaving Beijing Huijia Private School. While I appreciate the opportunity to teach here, there are many different reasons both personally and professionally that have led to my departure. I will be discussing those reasons in detail as follows.

1) Multiple contract violations. During the months of August and September, we were paid a few days late. We were promised our travel allowances during October but just barely got them before Christmas.

2) Student complaints and the manner in which they were handled. The complaints about me that went to the head principal (Ms. Zhao) and then back down through Christine were mishandled, and this upset me a great deal. That lead me to believe that my job was in jeopardy, and I would personally rather leave on my own terms than get fired. I couldn’t help but feel paranoid and nervous that I may meet my replacement teacher face to face at any given moment as many other teachers have experienced at Huijia.

3) The firing of Wendy in October. She was dealt a very bad hand in dealing with her department, and the school chose to side with those who were lying above that of a good and decent teacher. Wendy was a close friend and what the school did to her angered me a great deal.

4) The firing of Simon. I think the school is shooting themselves in the foot in terms of their reputation as an employer. Simon was arrested and heavily fined for working at Huijia School with the wrong visa. Surely this is the schools’ problem for either giving Simon the wrong visa or employing him when he didn’t obtain the correct teaching credentials. One of the main reasons that Tom came to the school was to repair the school’s reputation and prevent many foreign teachers from exiting which I feel the upper echelon is obviously trying to sabotage that effort (this was proven given Tom’s recent departure).

5) Inconsistencies in salaries. I was gravely disappointed at the level of my pay compared to others. As someone with a doctoral degree and many years of teaching experience, I am getting paid less than those with master’s and bachelor’s degrees. This should not be the case.

6) The inability of HR to coordinate with people. I have often had to go two to three times to HR to resolve an issue because I can never find the people who I need to talk to. The HR Department is inefficient and expects you to jump through hoops while they do nothing. Not only this, I know many teachers at Huijia who have been put in very difficult circumstances because of serious mishaps caused by HR. Additionally, I do not understand why it can take so long (over 12 weeks) for HR to organize visas etc. when other schools can do it within a few weeks. In addition, HR has stated they will “investigate” situation where problems occurred and they have not done so.

7) Student behavior. The classroom conduct of students and the abuse that teachers have to endure because of their “issues” is unacceptable for a school that is supposed to be an IB school. Real IB schools have qualified counselors to help students who have emotional and behavioral difficulties. Therefore, because Huijia do not have such type of staff, I can’t help wonder that teaching and learning is not a top priority but exploiting parents to part with more money to pay for fancy looking facilities to improve marketing campaigns is. Additionally, I have never worked in an ‘’IB school’’ where generally, the student’s behavior is so challenging. Huijia has no real system in place to help students or the teachers to face such obstacles and it makes me laugh when you seem really surprised when many teachers find it difficult to control their class. I think it is time you opened your eyes and woke up.

8) The environment of the campus. The pollution, the distance from places to go shopping and to eat, the relative lack of entertainment in Changping, and the general sense of isolation due to the school’s remote location made teaching at Huijia very difficult. The school’s refusal to provide more opportunities to help teachers by arranging buses or vans to certain destinations made it even more difficult. Nevertheless, we have to rely on private taxis who charge us double to go anywhere and who are always late picking us up. This forces me to leave 30 minutes ahead of schedule every time I want to go anywhere. It becomes very frustrating and a pain. The school needs to realize that Huijia is an isolated place and when foreign teachers can’t speak Chinese, it becomes a bigger headache.

9) The quality of the food. The food we are served in the cafeteria is poor and unhealthy. I have noticed that many foreign teachers do not even eat there anymore as the food is beyond disgusting. Many times I am forced to walk 20 minutes to a restaurant in the village because there is no food available that is close by. Furthermore, the people who cook it should be tried for crimes against humanity.

10) Condition of the teacher’s apartments. In my apartment there were several problems from the very beginning. Some of these were fixed and others remained a problem. The biggest problem that remained unsolved was the windows in my apartment were not well insulated and allowed the pollution and cigarette smoke to come into my room. Teachers used the area outside my window for a smoking area and I had to smell that inside my apartment.

11) The noise situation. Motorbikes being used by other foreigners make a lot of noise and sometimes the alarms go off for long periods of time. This is very disturbing to me as I want to have a place I can relax. Also, people smoking down below outside my room were very loud when they were out there and had no courtesy toward others.

12) The new gate situation. It took 3 months to build the gate between the school and the staff housing area. During this time the staff was severely inconvenienced by having to take a longer, alternate route. To make matters worse, we were not informed what was going on in terms of the time schedule of reopening the gate. At one point we were told it would open on a certain date and actually opened over a month later. It shows the lack of communication by the administration.

13) The recent teacher’s and staff meeting.  The bashing of teachers at the meeting on February 9th by the administration, especially Chairman Wang, was appalling. Let me be clear, any teacher who backs the administration after this is a traitor. If you listened at all to the Chairman’s speech then you realize that you are all replaceable.

14)  Tom’s Departure. Tom was made to look like a liar when a high ranking Huijia official said that Tom’s “APPROVED’’ new contract was in discussion and was not actually granted to become the next official teachers contract. This is simply unacceptable to me that you raise some of the teacher’s optimism of giving them better working conditions/pay but soon slam the door into their faces when you realize it will cost you slightly more money in short term. Therefore, if Tom wasn’t able to endure his stay at Huijia, then why should any of the current teachers follow his lead?

15) Suggestions. You always ask foreign staff how Huijia can improve the school. Every time we are asked for feedback we are never listened to. At the February 9^th meeting we were once again asked how the school can improve our lives at Huijia. I think the teachers are sick of telling making suggestions as nothing is ever done about it. We feel you only want to keep teachers because you are very afraid of losing your “IB’’ status, which therefore means you will lose your credibility of fooling parents to pay extortionate amounts of money to study at Huijia School. Instead, I believe foreign teachers may actually stay if you genuinely cared about them but I think the damage has already been done already for so many.

For these reasons, I am not giving you advanced notice of my departure and I have collected my pay for January. I wish the best for all the foreign teachers. I met some great teachers there who I am sure I will miss.

All of my textbooks have been left on a shelf in my classroom. My security badge, school blazer, MacBook Air computer, electricity card, and room key are all in my apartment.

 

Let the bombing commence….

One of my colleagues resigned today. I want to share his letter with you so that you can see that it is not just one or two teachers, but many who are fed up with the lies put out by Huijia.

Letter of Resignation .

Dear Huijia Administration

I would like to inform you that I am resigning from my position as “Homeroom Teacher” I have many reasons and points to make, however I will just list a few below:

1. I am owed money; I have been short changed in the last couple of months by at least 8000 RMB (1160 USD). The HR with some persuasion from Tom Kline (executive director) agreed to pay this money. However, they never honoured their agreement and I have not received it. If I decided to stay with the school, I would lose out on a lot of money per year and no one is able to tell me why.
2. The HR is incompetent: This is a very scary thought that on my first day here I could see that the HR staff are new, had no training and didn’t have a clue on what the visa processes for foreigners were which made me feel weary. Hena (HR operative) almost put the wrong visa number in the online system. If my wife had not seen her at the last minute, I could have been in trouble with the authorities. Lauren (HR operative) does not seem to be an educated person and I feel like I have to lower my intelligence just for her to understand me. She disorganized some papers with some of the foreign staff causing them to take a flight to Hong Kong and apply for another visa. Christina (HR director) is not a very good communicator either, as she will always ignore any messages or emails of great importance and it would be her final decision that I have not received my salary in full in the last 2 payments.
3. Mr Wong’s speech: On the 9^th of February, the entire school had a meeting with Mr Wong (School Chairman) and the entire administration. I found his talk with us very offensive, he took an oppressive and confrontational approach towards his foreign staff members, threatening to fire and getting rid of them as if their hard work and efforts were in vein. He was pointing and shouting at his staff like a true Maoist Dictator. He wants his school to be international but yet he cannot behave or treat his staff with an international mind set and belittling, and lowering their spirits is not the way to go. He said many things in regards to his philosophy and wine making adventure which was completely irrelevant to teaching or the school. When students leave the school to enter into a better one, it infuriates him and he wants someone to blame and will blame his foreign staff for this. If teachers leave would he blame the students? He mentioned many other things such as withholding funds from teachers if they don’t perform well and that 8 working hours a day is not enough. If people like him rich, powerful and influential are running the country, I am sad to say that china has a sad future for itself. His school is failing because he does not want to take in anyone else’s ideas and run things like a dictatorship. He is living in the past and cannot move on to real globalization, he still thinks this is Mao’s “The Great Leap Forward”. Instead of motivating his teachers, he threatens them but another way he gave them the green light to leave as they can see him for what he really is. Ohh and I almost forgot, if you think that a lot of your students are going to attend universities such as Harvard then you must be coming straight out of a comic book when some students can’t even spell their own name.
4. School does not pay my tax: This is a strange dilemma and an illegal one. The only way a foreigner can send money to his home country amongst other things is to have a tax number which the school did provide. However, the cashier at the bank confirmed that the tax has not been paid and because of this by the good grace of the cashier I was only able to send a limited amount. Eric (HR operative) is aware of this as he was a witness. The next time I sent money again I was with Lauren and guess what? She disorganized the paper work for that! She is a true warrior of mishaps.
5. Turnover of teachers is incredibly high: I know that many international schools have turnover of teachers and I’m used to seeing it. Nevertheless, I am not used to seeing more teachers leaving in 1 semester than in a 1-year time frame. When I hear of so and so has left this makes me believe that the school just cannot keep on to its staff nor can they ever compromise with them.
6. Firing staff: Frankly speaking, I do not think the schools is in a position to fire its staff without justification. My good friend from grade 4 “Jason Burns” was fired without justifiable cause not only was he fired but it was the manner they did it in. They brought in his replacement “Mario” and Jason could see his replacement face to face. I knew right there and then that no one is safe and it was from that moment I took it upon myself to make the decision to leave the school. Simon another good teacher was fired horribly and maliciously, the school will try to deny it but I spoke with Simon and he clarified the truth. The secondary principle was fired (Daniel) and even though I did not know him personally it still destroyed the team spirit of not only the high school but the primary department too.
7. The departure of the Executive Director (Tom Kline) When I first heard that he was no longer with us, I was 100% comfortable with my decision to leave the school. This is because if the school can’t keep the very guy who was employed to maintain teachers to stay at the Huijia School, then what hope is there for me and the others to further career opportunities? Tom was a principal who had all the credentials to work at any top tier school in the world and Huijia have missed out on a great opportunity to take advantage of his experience and vision. What school misses out on such an opportunity? I can’t believe I got my hopes up (even though skeptical) when Tom designed an ‘’APPROVED’’ new contract (which was a truly an international contract) and actually lifted a lot of other teacher’s spirits too. Now that Tom has departed, what are the real chances of this contract being implemented next year? I think we all know the answer to that stupid question. Therefore, is very clear to me that the school does not want to change and it never will. When Tom left (and myself and others are not even sure why), I knew that the school itself had become a prison for which the need to escape had never been greater.
8. Living conditions in disarray: When I moved to China for the very first time the school living conditions was unsanitary, unclean, unhygienic it did not pass any standards of living. Centipedes everywhere, the fridge smelled like rotten meat and was emanating a type of gas, shoe prints all over the place, piles of dust, no blankets, no sheets, no pillows, no water, no cups, no pans, no plates, no knives and forks. Gross Gross Gross!!!
9. Singapore: During my interview and in my contract it is not stated that I should be making a trek with my class to Singapore. I declined to go for good reasons and this was excepted. However, I lost a huge chunk of my salary AGAIN!!

What the school has done is incriminating and I won’t rest till something is done about it. I have physical evidence such as photos, emails and messages that I will use on a newly made on-line blog that other teachers and I have recently created together. I will make sure that when a teacher types in Google or Yahoo search engine “Huijia” my articles will come up with the evidence at hand. I do not think that I would be able to destroy the reputation of the school because the school has done that on its own, but I will make sure that real qualified teachers from abroad will run a mile when they read our new compilation of complaints.

Since some of my wages have not been paid to me (8000 RMB $1160), I am keeping the laptop to recover my loses. I will be willing to return the laptop by DHL if the rest of my salary will be paid to my account officially but until then I need some reinsurance (I would rather just have my salary than the laptop).

Susan, you should be worried.

First a little background:

Prior to my losing email access at Huijia, I decided to email a select group of students and let them know that I would not be back and to say goodbye. I asked these students to share the email with other students. I didn’t think that would happen, but it did. Apparently the students shared it so much that the administration went into crisis mode and made the home room teachers check each student’s email and to delete my email.

While I never had anything personally against you Susan, it is all business. The business of making sure that Huijia’s lies are outed so that the students and faculty know exactly what the school is up to. I have to say I’m proud of my students for following directions this time. My hope is that some of them hide the email and spread it again because the students and parents need to know what is happening at the school.

Until next time….

What this blog is about

This blog is about calling out the lies that have been made by Huijia International (IB) School for the purpose of letting other teachers know about the school and why they have such a high turnover. I will be transparent and will answer questions posed to me. Proof will be provided in the form of dates, times, and places where events took place. The letter will be a starting point in showing the lunacy of Huijia and additional information will be provided as I can. I urge anyone with any information to come forward, both past and current teachers. This is where I begin to expose Huijia for what it really is, a zoo.