Toshuō

I guess I’ve always organized and remembered my experiences based upon who was around me at least as much as upon what I was doing. My first couple of years in Taiwan were difficult in several ways. That time ended when I started working at Modawei, though. More than anything else, I valued that experience for the people I met. At the time I considered pretty much every teacher at the school a friend, and Mike, Nathan and Martin were very good friends. After moving to Guishan, I lost touch with Mike. Nathan became an even better friend that year, but he eventually left Taiwan and became a philosophy teacher at a community college back in Michigan. And now I’ve recently learned that, Martin, my best friend in Taiwan, will be leaving very soon.
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Issue No. 3 of the new magazine, Taiwanese, I was pleased to see an article about the “hardcore” buxibans I’ve written so much about. Considering that these schools provide far better than average results for their students, pay far better than average salaries to their teachers, and are exploding at a time when the rest of the market is not, it’s about time we see something in the print media about them.
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Last night, after work, I caught a bus back into Táibĕi and met up with a bunch of my old Mòdàwèi buddies for dinner. Martin, his girlfriend Rika, Ariel, and Mike W. were all there. Originally, we were going to eat at Alley Cats, but it was full. That kinda bummed me out since there’s nowhere in Guīshān I can get decent pizzas, calzones, or that sort of food. It turned out alright, though. We ate next door at an awesome Sìchuān restaurant. Sadly, I can’t get that kind of food in Guīshān, either.

After that, we went to a movie theater (another amenity Guīshān lacks), and met up with James, Jesse and Emily. We saw Inside Man, with Denzel Washington. It was pretty good! After that, James and I managed to get into Deluxe with out cover, and met up with Caskey, Sharon and her Polish buddy who’s a grad student in Taiwan. All in all, good times were had by all. I’ve got to say, I’ve never had a cooler group of co-workers anywhere. MDW guys rock.

Back when I was working at Modawei, they wrote up this little summary about me. That way potential clients could learn something about me before seeing me in action. They framed it nicely on the wall, and then put it up on a snazzy (over-snazzy, one might say), website. I’ll get back to this in a couple paragraphs.

Lot’s of things at Modawei were snazzy. People there commonly wore full suits to teach ESL to 3rd graders. During training, management continually stressed the importance of presentation. Most of the teachers were taller and good-looking. When the students did oral tests in class, they came to the front of the class and lined up in fours. It looked slick. First Step isn’t like that. We don’t dress like slobs, but lets just say I don’t wear a tie to work anymore. When our students do oral tests in class, they stand up where they are and start asking and answering questions. Ron doesn’t want to waste the 30 seconds it would take each group to get to the front of the class. That would waste class time that could have been spent listening to and speaking English. A bit fanatical? Yes. His heart’s in the right place, though. Unlike every single other school at which I’ve worked, none of the questions they ask are memorized. That means the kids look bad sometimes. But it’s also good for their English to learn how to understand new sentences they’ve never heard before instead of leaning on memorization at the low levels.

Remember that website where I said Modawei has snazzy teacher introductions? Well, at my current school, I’ve got a couple of paragraphs printed out on a yellow piece of paper and tacked on the wall. Very minimalist. And yet, somehow, my classes have filled far faster here than they ever did at Modawei. Could it be that substance sometimes wins out over style, even in marketing? Or, could it just be that I’m not competing against all of those taller good-looking co-workers for my students anymore?

At the end of 2004, I wasn’t happy with my progress in terms of job skills, saving money, or learning Chinese. I’d been wasting my time trying to study part time at Shida, while working at a boring and unfulfilling big chain English school. It was time for a change.

Since I couldn’t manage to save up enough money to go to a better Chinese school, I decided to quit taking classes at Shida, and work full time at a better English school. After a short time at Tomcat, I was recruited by Modawei on January 1st, 2005. Tomcat and Modawei are not at all like most other bŭxíbāns. Both are hard-core programs. All the teachers are native English speakers who can speak at least a fair amount of Chinese. They make the students talk, and talk loudly enough to correct their pronunciation mistakes. Unlike other bŭxíbāns, the kids have to do their homework. Also unlike other bŭxíbāns, students who don’t pass their exams fail the semester and have to repeat it. It’s a demanding system for the students and the teachers, but the students make progress at about 2-3 times the speed of students at the big chains and end up with much better pronunciation, too. The teachers have to grade a lot of books and listen to a lot of tapes, but they get paid $900/class hour + $600/training hour starting. As soon as I started at Modawei, I was making $70,000/month. I learned a few finer points of English grammar, and I also learned a lot about dealing with parents. Also, I had some really awesome co-workers there. I hung out after work with pretty much all the guys in my office. Mike, Martin, Caskey, my trainer Adam, and especially Nathan all became decent friends. Even the managers at my branch were pretty cool to hang out with, when they had the time to go out. All in all it was pretty good… until the boss decided that to make me sign a new contract saying that all intellectual property I created at work or otherwise, was his. He also revealed that unlike the hiring manager had told me during the recruitment process, Modawei won’t let successful teachers franchise. One of my co-workers said he got yelled at for asking about the bonus system, which turned out to be different than we were told during recruitment. It was time to go.

At the end of June, I started working at First Step, a school run by a former Modawei teacher. I’m making $1100/hour, with $50/hour raises every six months. As any reader of my blog will know, I’m absolutely psyched about this school. I’ve never seen any other school get such good results in my life. There are just too many ways to describe how much better our curriculum is than any of the other hard-core schools such as Tomcat, Cortland, or Modawei. The curriculum is based more strongly on word frequency. We cover nearly the same amount of grammar in three semesters as they cover in five. My boss Ron, came up with a series of phonics and spelling rules and drills which not only help the students learn how to spell words they’ve never heard before, but also greatly improve their accents. Starting towards the end of the third semester, we make extensive use of graded readers such as the Oxford Bookworms collection. I don’t know of any other bŭxíbān in Tawian that does this. Most children are incapable of reading actual books even after studying for four years at places like Hess, Joy, or even Tomcat or Cortland. There’s far too much to write about here, so suffice to say my work is very rewarding. I feel like I’m actually changing lives for the better.

In terms of Chinese, I didn’t make too much progress. I’ve been half-heartedly trying to study on my own, but I’m usually pretty drained after work. Obviously working at Tomcat, Modawei, and First Step has greatly improved my ability to speak Chinese to large audiences, talk about English grammar, and phonics. Talking with parents has helped me learn a few thing about how laziness, frustration, motivation and other behavioral issues are spoken of. I’ve picked up a few more Chinese characters I can read. All in all, though, it’s been a wash. I’ve probably forgotten how to write enough characters and regressed enough in terms of pronunciation to make up for all of what I did acquire. Oh, well. It’s a lot better than my Chinese would be if I’d gone home for a year.

One nice thing about 2005 was that my mom came to visit me. It was really great to see her. I’m really happy she was able to spare the time from her busy schedule and find some one to fill in for her. She lives in a tiny, tiny town; and I think she’s the only doctor living there. She lived in Africa before, when she was doing some research, but she’d never been to Asia. It really was neat to take her around and show her stuff. She wasn’t too thrilled with 台北, but once we got outside the main city, she liked it a lot more. I guess it’s kind of hard to impress an American with stuff like Sogo or Warner Village. She’d been to malls that were pretty much identical, which sold the same stuff for way less money in Chicago.

All in all, 2005 was a good year. I broke out of the rut I was in in 2004 and started to make progress, albeit indirectly, towards my long-term goals. I made some friends, saved some money, started blogging, and had a chance to see my mom. I think 2006 will be even better!

In Taibei there are quite a few schools of this type. There are also a few in Taoyuan; I don’t know of any in the south, though. Almost all of these schools are about the same. The first one was Mòdàwèi 莫大衛, started in the heart of Taibei, near Sogo, about 20 years ago by an Australian guy named David. He paid well, and was able to attract foreigners who could speak Chinese, could control a large class, would work hard, and would stay for a long time. As a result of having good teachers who stay from day one until graduation day 3 and a half years later, the students learned well. Studying at Mòdàwèi for one year was nearly as good as putting in three at a big chain school. Amazingly, with no marketing, Mòdàwèi grew into a large branch through word of mouth alone. However, David wasn’t interested in letting other teachers open franchises or other branches. One of the best and brightest of his teachers, a guy named Tom, eventually got tired of making a fortune for somebody else. So, Tom opened his own school, called Tomcat (湯姆貓), across the street. Nearly all of his students came with him. Naturally, being a bilingual foreigner with a great deal of teaching experience, and 200 loyal students, it wasn’t too hard to make a success of it. In fact, Tom later let his most experienced teacher, Rich, take over a branch. Around the same time, an American guy named James, a VERY good example of a black man who has made it as a teacher in Taiwan, was opening another Mòdàwèi clone called Cortland (科特蘭). As of now there are 8 Cortland branches and over a dozen Tomcat franchises. In addition, there have been at least 4 other schools started by former Mòdàwèi employees since Cortland that I know of. Mòdàwèi hasn’t grown much, but it’s still around. More importantly the HFRB (Hard-core Foreign Run Bŭxíbāns) style of teaching is here to stay.

Curriculum & Teaching Methods

These schools have a simple no non-sense curriculum structured around sentence patterns, core-vocabulary, and constant pronunciation coaching. The meat and potatoes of their classes is the Question Around the Room. In this exercise, first all of the students must stand up, then one student makes a question based on a certain grammar pattern. The student the asks another student who must answer and in turn make another question which will be answered by another student. It continues until all of the students have asked and answered a question based on whatever sentence pattern being practiced.

Unlike the big chains, these schools require correct pronunciation and have teachers who can tell the children how to correct their pronunciation. For example, if a kid is saying “How ahh you?”, the teacher will say, “Every time you see an ‘r’, you have to curl your tongue.” And he will say it in Chinese. Also unlike the big chains, KK isn’t taught at HFRBs. Instead phonics is taught the way we learned it back home: i.e. They learn about long and short vowels, basic phonics rules like “when two vowels go walking the first one does the talking”, and so forth.

One other major difference between HFRBs and other schools is that at HFRBs, the kids have to do their homework. If they don’t do it, they fail. Yes, kids actually can fail at these schools. Also, the teacher has to grade books and listen to tapes after class to ensure that the students are doing their work correctly. All of this work is unpaid.

Compensation

If you are in Taiwan to make money and you are a teacher, there is NO other place to be than bŭxíbāns of this type. At the time of this writing, Modawei, Cortland, and most of the Tomcat schools (but not all franchises) pay new teachers $600/hour during training, and $900/hour for teaching. $50 raises are given every six months up to a maximum of $1100 or $1200. After 2 years at Cortland, or 3 at Modawei, profit sharing bonuses are awarded every 6 months. Tomcat has pretty inconsistent rules about this. Bonuses can range from about $100,000 to $300,000 depending on a variety of factors.

Be warned that unlike lesser schools, these schools usually entail a significant amount of training. In the most extreme case, at Modawei some teachers have spent a full 6 months in training before opening their own classes. While training you can expect to put in a significant amount of time, and only make $65,000 to 70,000 per month. Once you have a full schedule you’ll make $100,000 per month and once you’re receiving the bonus you’ll likely make over $150,000 per month. If you become a branch manager or, better yet, open a franchise, you’ll make even more.

Requirements

It is only natural that a school that delivers superior education despite large class sizes and pays its staff well will also have high requirements. Unlike big chain schools who will basically hire any living & breathing young westerner they can get regardless of skills, HFRBs are quite a bit more selective. If you want to work at this kind of school you need some teaching experience, the confidence to control a class of up to 30 kids, and enough Chinese ability to teach them well and communicate with their parents. The most difficult requirement of all is that you must be willing to stay for at least 2 or 3 years. Not many foreigners in Taiwan want to do this, but having one stable teacher who can lead the students from ABCs to essay writing is perhaps the strongest point of all for HFRBs

A Word for the Wise

Naturally, businesses don’t tend to speak fondly of their competitors. However the level of animosity some HFRBs hold for each other is downright malevolent. Much of this is rooted in the fact that all of these schools were formed by rouge teachers who, feeling severely underpaid, left their original school and started their own schools nearby with their own kids. As a result, don’t be surprised if you see a non-compete agreement in the employment contract if you interview at one of these schools. I myself ran into a particularly egregious contract problem at a HFRB. My boss brought me into a room with 2 other managers, sat me down, and told me to sign a contract stipulating that ALL creations I make (at work AND on my own time) would belong to his school… OR ELSE! I have done a fair number of personal programming projects (Quake III mods, video editing, etc…) as well as essays, some of which relate to L2 acquisition. Signing this contract would have given them claim over any further works or, in other words, the whole creative output of my brain would have belonged to them. It would have also made it pretty much impossible to open my own school later on since they would claim that any curriculum I wrote was written during my employment there and was therefore theirs. Sometimes it doesn’t matter who is right if you don’t have money to defend a lawsuit. I didn’t sign the contract. About a week later I had an even better paying job at a school started by a former teacher of the school I’d just left.