The school is now requiring the international teachers to come in at night from 6:30-8:30 for collaborative planning meetings with the local teachers. These meetings are held in Chinese so we cannot understand what is being said. A lot of us stopped going to the meetings because we had no clue what was being said and it was a waste of time.

So in retaliation, the school is requiring the teachers to enter their working hours into an online tracking program. The program only tracks a maximum of 40 hours per week, so if you work beyond 40 there is no record of that. Our contracts say, in accordance with Chinese labor law, that if we work over 40 hours per week, we are entitled to overtime pay for those additional hours. I happen to work over 40 hours every week because the school, in our contract, counts each class we teach as 2 hours, which is why we have a maximum of 20 classes per week. The online tracking program only counts each class as 1 hour so it is different from our contract.

I wrote an email detailing the problems with the online system and why I would not sign on. The other teachers followed and so the whole tracking system was dropped.

Bothered by this school’s policies about tracking hours and evening meetings, I decided to revisit the issue of payment for my overtime hours. I had a meeting with the school admin. Basically I was told that they would not pay me. My last words were that their actions to ignore and breach the terms of my contract were a sign of disrespect to and devaluation of me as a professional and the integrity of my work, and that it would now be my decision to decide whether I wanted to continue this working relationship.

Our final department meeting of the semester started with a local teacher singing three karaoke style pop tunes. Then Mr. Mo the principal (AKA Chairman Mo) made a speech, presented awards to the excellent teachers. The international teachers given the awards were 4 blonde-haired, blue eyed teachers. They were called to the stage and presented their awards. He then continued his speech saying that none of the teachers are important – only the school.

The next day I received an email congratulating me for winning the award for conducting the most excellent demo class. The demo classes are conducted by teachers from every department (PYP – primary, MYP -middle school, and DP – high school). I guess I am too dark to present the award to on stage – the picture would not be good for business.