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anonymous
Q: Office Hours and Repetitive Training
Hi again.I am working in an training school. Sometimes I feel really tired. I have two days off per week on Monday and Tuesday. I should work up to 18 hours per week but I am also forced to repeat training demos for teaching assistants, doing office hours like preparing classes when i have already done it at home when in my contract it says no office hours and they give me repeat game training every week same material and sometimes keep me in the office waiting around only to cancel it . I would like to ask if you have the same feeling and how can i tell my school or go about telling them to cancel those office hours and training as not go from wednesday to friday morning doing the same thing over and over again wasting unecessary time without them getting angry about it.
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10 years 24 weeks ago in Teaching & Learning - China
look at your contract. This should specify the number of teaching hours and the number of office hours. it is normal for your office hours to be used for 'marketing' or other purposes. 18 hours and you are tired ??? 
forced to work 18hrs 
tell that to my mom or my former teachers, and try runaway as fast as you can :D
The 18 hours may consist of regular teaching hours during the weekends. And besides those, this person 'is also forced to (....) do office hours' from Wed to Fri. Wasting time on useless projects is not unheard of in China. They sometimes organize things only to be able to state they've organized something. Probably gives them face. Doesn't matter whether it's fruitful or not. Usually it isn't. Clear thinking is a rare thing here, as are organizational skills. Don't prepare your classes at home anymore. Do it at the office and use it as an excuse not to attend senseless training sessions any longer.
Contracts in China are very 'tricky'! Let say, because of the 'differences in languages'.
Chinese (mostly) consider '18 teaching hours' as 'hours spent in the Classroom with students'. One must always clear meaning of 'hour(s)' before signing the Contract: 'How long is an hour?'
It can be 40', 45', 50' or 60'. It is always good to ask about required additional 'office' hours at the School.
Schools will add/consider, you will spend time at the School for lesson prep, or anything else.
Especially, in Public Schools.
My School offered me Contract with 10 (60') teaching hours per week. When I asked about office hours, School replied 'FT must be present at the School from 8:30 - 13:40 and 16:00 - 18:30, Mon - Fri, same as Chinese teachers'.
I told them, salary offer is not high enough for so many 'working hours' (more than 37 hours/week), and School dropped 'office hours'.
There is Australian FT in the same city, who works at diff. Public School, but same hours as Chinese teachers, for no different salary than mine. He asked them to drop the office hours (after he signed Contract), but School refused.
so what do you do if you have to sit 27h a week in the teachers office without a computer?
Rin:
It happens. I'm supposed to do 4 office hours a week. No computer, nothing to do.
icnif77:
I am working with grades 3 - 6, however I see each grade every two weeks.
Headmaster: 'You must write 'lesson plans'!'
Me: 'OK! One lesson plan per grade, it comes to two different lessons per week.' (That's less than half an hour of 'writing' per week.)
And other FT with office hours, he doesn't have Internet in his home. He can access Internet only at the School.
