Unfortunately it seems you are at the mercy of whoever your center manager is. Mine was incompetent, dishonest, hypocritical, lazy, inappropriate, unprofessional and more interested in getting drunk every night then actually doing the job. This resulted in huge staff turnover. I have worked for many companies in the last 10 years and I have never met such an unprofessional person working at a senior level. It baffles my mind how a company would employ such a person.
Throughout my year, I was given little to no support and the lessons that are prepared for you are absolutely atrocious, to the point that you are actually embarrassed to have to teach the students the materials. The 'stock' lessons that are called encounters, are designed for 4 people, yet the company allows 5 students per class. The only way I can describe it is like trying to fit square pegs in round holes. They don't work, yet management refuses to care. As long as their numbers look good, no one cares about the students or the teachers. And this all the while cramped in tiny, hot room resulting in a frustrating experience for everyone.
Teachers are required to teach 30 contact hours a week, yet we often require another 10 hours on top of this for planning due to the awful materials and lesson plans provided as well as the 'social clubs' which are essentially bigger classes where you often have to teach more than 30 students at a time. You are given 2 days off a week but as they are different for every other teacher you essentially have no social life.
If you are sick, you can't be sick. End of story. If another teacher can't cover you, you must come in regardless if you have the flu or contagious disease, you are expected to come in without fail (essentially because the service manager is too lazy to cover for you, due to their busy day of watching youtube videos and recovering from hangovers).
Very often classes are changed at the last minute, without any warning or notice which means you are never quite sure how your day will pan out. Also changes to rules and regulations within the center seem to happen all the time, often making changes just for the sake of making changes. More often than not, the changes always seem to to just add more workload and stress for the teachers. I can't think of a single time when a change had an actual positive impact on the teacher.
However the worrying this about this company is the seemingly headless direction of those further up the chain. This is an English school but the emphasis is purely on sales, sales, sales, sales, sales and turning a profit and always at the detriment of the student and teacher experience.
Quite honestly, my year at WSE was the most unpleasant working experience of my life. There is a reason why WSE only seems to be able to attract new teachers and why there seems to be new staff in and out every other week. I would strongly advise any teacher reading this to save yourself the stress and hassle and look elsewhere.
