Good news and bad news.

These always seem to come in pairs. (This is actually an improvement over how it used to work, so I'm not really complaining. Much.)

On the good news front, I started my 100-hour session with Wuhuan Engineering today. It was a delicious experience (as adult teaching in China always is because the students are highly motivated) and, at the end of the class, several students, independently, approached me to say how much they enjoyed the class. "I loved it!" as one young lady exclaimed.

On the bad news front it appears that I am not continuing to teach at ISSWHU next term. You may have noticed me referring to them as lacking communication skills (and competence, among other things) in my last post. This incident is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. On April 8th I got this in my email (all errors from original):

Secondly, could you let me what's your project about next semester, if you want still teaching in ISS ,please let me know as soon as possible. thanks!
If you want re-sign the contract ,and the Teaching office and students also approve your work, I will prepare the contracts as soon as possible, also , if you intend to leave, I will prepare your Lecommendation Letter for you.

I've highlighted the important part in bold text. This is typical of the way this school communicates. It commits to absolutely nothing until the last seconds. Every second word out of anybody's mouth is "maybe" or some functional equivalent thereof.

I'm not a moron, though. I replied with "sure", but also started my usual low-intensity job search because until I have a contract I consider myself as available. Indeed yesterday I gave a sample lesson/job interview at another school (which if I get the job could mean I won't even have to change apartments) because there was deafening silence from the ISS. Two weeks after they sent that message, in fact, I sent another email saying, basically, "I replied before but haven't heard anything so just in case it didn't make it through..." and again got deafening silence. Then, today, I got this email:

Firstly, many thanks for your hard work in our school these three years. You are a excellent English teacher.
But I am sorry to say that we have enough English teachers for next semester, so I am afraid we can not sign the contract with you. If you find a new school I will prepare the recommendation letter for you.

So what happened? Well this being China any number of things could have happened and nobody will ever bother to tell the truth. Maybe I stepped on some toes and someone behind the scene decided to get revenge. I consider this unlikely, however, since I've been here for three years and my behaviour hasn't really changed in that time. Had I been stepping on toes there would have been two previous opportunities to get rid of me.

The possibility I think likeliest is that the school is in financial trouble. The hints of this I already saw in my second year, second semester. The East Lake ("Sweathogs") campus has always been this school's cash cow. The main campus gives them a sort of legitimacy in that they give out real, recognized degrees there (they're real Wuhan University degrees with the Wuhan University stamp) while the East Lake campus is where the (very wealthy) dregs of China's educational system wind up. The gallows joke doing the rounds among the foreign teachers was that the school had a skill-testing question as its entrance requirement: "Are you willing to pay double the going legitimate rate to get a degree that is worthless? (The correct answer is 'yes'.)"

What happened, however, in year two, semester two of my time here was that half the students vanished. Vanished because the ISSWHU had its accreditation threatened, specifically because of the complete and utter lack of academic standards at the East Lake campus. The school had to divest itself of half (or even more than half) of its students at East Lake or face closure. That had to hurt income!

More clues arise over year three. Suddenly East Lake campus has an Italian guy and a Spanish guy teaching English, something that sounds an awful lot like cost-cutting to me. Also they reneged on a promise to me that I wouldn't have to teach out at East Lake. This sounds like it was a case of mollifying the administrator at that campus (who bizarrely seems to have more power than the Dean) who was probably upset at the difficulty in selling English lessons by non-native speakers. (The irony is that the two guys in question, despite being non-native speakers, are better English teachers than several of the previous native speakers were! Remember, appearances are what counts in any kind of business, not actual performance.) In addition my teaching hours got reduced from the first term (14 hours raised to 16 when one of the foreign teachers went back home to die) to the second (12 hours).

The big clue, however, is that even at the main campus they're losing students. I'm teaching the same four classes this term that I taught last term, but what I've noted is that all of my classes have shrunk. They all had 29 except for one at 36 last term, but this term my largest class has 29 and my smallest 21. Discussing it with other foreign teachers I'm also seeing that my shrinkage is on the lower end of the scale. One teacher reported a drop from 36 to 16 students. (I note here that this isn't students just not showing up to class. This is students who've moved on to another school!) Talking this over with some of my better-informed students I find out that the students in general are very disgruntled with the poor quality of education they perceive the school as providing. The better students stopped studying for their ISS classes and instead studied for a placement exam that would allow them to move to a better school. The rest are increasingly despondent and bitter. Only a few have done the "given lemons, make lemonade thing".

So why was I singled out for not being continued? Well, I'm the most expensive of the foreign teachers. A combination of better credentials, experience and a raise for year three probably made me the one to cut as the accounting death spiral begins.

Thankfully I'm a cynic and didn't put all my eggs in one basket, eh?