Uxuan Education and Technologies
If you have worked in China, much of this will be familiar only worse. If you have never worked in China but have heard all the rumors about how bad it can be, this place proves the rumors correct.
The Good: With the exception of the management, the employees there are great to work with. They are very helpful and a pleasure to be around. Gaoxin Yi Zhong, the middle school, and Gaoxin Er XiaoXue, the elementary school, have good kids for the most part.
Uxuan is actually trying to become an afterschool tutoring program connected to a coffee shop. It is a nice atmosphere with lots of potential.
Xian is a famous city but not as popular with foreign teachers as Beijing or other places. The city is cheap and centrally located in China making travel easy. Most of the schools in Xian pay 8-10,000RMB a month, but I was getting 15,000RMB. The apartment rented by the company was nice and close to the UXuan offices, but not to the schools.
The Bad: I will write these in bullet statements to shorten the list.
Steven: Owner who is dishonest, unprofessional and has little to no education experience.
He makes pirated copies of books to sell to the students in order to make money off them.
Steven refused to address any issues, only wanted to concentrate on positive things because he was using the schools to recruit students for his after school program.
He claimed I threatened other employees and made them scared to work with me which are both lies as most of my coworkers and I got along very well.
Grace: second in charge who is also dishonest, unprofessional and has little to no education experience. I would add incompetent and/or lazy. She is disliked by most of the staff because of how she mistreats everyone.
She sides with local teachers who were causing problems and blamed foreign teachers for everything.
It took her three months to process my work visa which normally takes three weeks at most. I found out later that my visa was illegally obtain using ‘guanxi’ or their connections in the government.
Any requests for work related information was either ignored or took weeks to get an answer.
David: lead foreign teacher who is also dishonest, unprofessional and has little to no education experience. He claims to be knowledgeable and experienced, but he isn’t either.
He admitted lying to me several times during the interview and after I arrived.
Miya: Local teacher who can barely speak English, is not a team player because she takes absolute control over everything and does not listen when mistakes are brought to her attention.
She often taught and tested Oral and Listening tasks which are normally the responsibility of the native speaking teacher. As a result, Miya constantly taught the students mistakes and my attempts to correct those mistakes caused conflict.
Students are not taught English, but rather strategies to pass TOEFL. Native speakers are there for show.
The contract states all intellectual property produced and used while employed remains the property of UXuan, even after you leave. They then take it, repackage it and try to sell it with the UXuan name on it.
I was assigned work days with little or no notice and I was docked several days of pay for not showing up on days I normally was not scheduled.
You have to request vacation time for sick leave and you have to get specific approval from Grace before you can take it. I needed to go to the hospital and I notified Grace who even offered to have a local teacher escort me. Since I did not get specific authorization in writing that said I was allowed to take sick leave, I was not paid for my time off.
Health insurance was provided, but not purchased until four months after I signed the contract.
The health insurance is the lowest possible coverage where the company will determine what is reimbursed. They also refuse to provide you with any insurance information to deter you from using the insurance.
Due to my 10 years teaching experience, I was hired to help train teachers and create a history curriculum. When I tried to help other teachers, I was rejected and told that my observations did not matter because I was the new employee to the company.
Any conflict is blamed on the foreign teachers, even if the problem is caused by the local staff.
All attempts at professional conflict resolution are ignored at best. The punishment for continued attempts to resolve the conflict results in the foreign teacher’s reassignment or termination.
I was denied vacation time was on more than one occasion despite the fact that I had my classes covered and had time to use.
When I decided to leave, I submitted a resignation letter stating July 11 as my final day. This date was moved to June 30 to keep from paying me for the last two weeks.
Before I was allowed to leave, I was given a financial liquidation list which included such ridiculous things as 2000RMB for expert certificate fee, reimbursement for unused insurance even though it started four months late, 300RMB for replacement of school books I was told I could keep, reimbursement for gym membership stipend which was 1000RMB, and docking of my paycheck for the supposed days I missed.
If you are looking for a place where you are mostly ignored unless you kiss up to the bosses, where you are not a teacher but a white face, where you have little to no insurance and don’t expect to be treated with respect, this is the place for you.
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