 Hi, hello. Welcome. My name is Linda. Welcome back to another live session by ITTT International Teflentesol Training. And today, we're going to talk about teaching contracts and what to watch out for before you sign. Very important stuff. So a lot to cover today. Also, there will be a lot of time for you guys to ask questions, leave comments, feel free to do so at any time. There will also be a Q&A section at the end after all of this where you can ask any kind of question related to Tefl, TESOL teaching, whatever is on your mind. And there will also be a 30% off discount code today that you can use to get 30% off any Tefl or TESOL course from ITTT. So that's very exciting. And also, please don't forget to like and subscribe. You're already here. Whether you're watching on YouTube or on Facebook, we are actually live on both places. So give us a like, subscribe, follow. We share a lot of interesting content on a daily basis, especially on our Facebook page where we share teaching material that you can use in your classroom. Also, teaching job offers around the world and yeah, a lot of Tefl, TESOL information, whatever interests you, you'll find on this page, I'm sure. And also, I see that there are already some people watching. So please do let me know where are you watching from right now? Where are you at? I'm in South Korea. It is 1030 a.m. on Friday. So very excited about this, very excited about the weekend. The weather is finally nice and warm and it is spring cherry blossom season everywhere in Korea. So I'm very excited about that. But what about you guys? So where are you watching from? What time is it right now? And how are you doing today? I hope you're having a wonderful day. Let me know before we get into today's topic. Do let me know where you are right now. Just put it in the comments so that I can see also that I can see that you can see me and hear me clearly that everything's working well. Oh, wow. How are you doing? Good evening from Receife. I forget how to pronounce it. I'm so sorry. Receife. Receife. Anyway, I know it's an amazing place. Very beautiful. So welcome. So it's evening time for you. I guess Thursday evening. Thank you so much for taking some time to spend it with me tonight. I really appreciate that. Thank you. All right. What about you guys? Everybody else watching? Where are you at? Where are you watching from? What time is it? How are you doing tonight? Today, this morning, whatever time it is where you are. I hope you're doing great. And thank you so much for joining today's live session about teaching contracts and what to watch out for before you sign. So there's a lot of good stuff coming today. I'm going to talk about 10 important things, things to watch out for, for Tefl contracts. And then I'm also going to give you some bonus tips and also a checklist at the end with all the important things on one slide so that you can maybe screen shot this so you can always refer back to it. That's kind of the goal for today. And I want to start off by just introducing myself real quick for people who are watching for the first time. So my name is Linda. I'm a travel writer and content creator under the name Linda goes East because I have a huge passion for Asia. I'm originally from Germany at the US. I was actually born and raised in Germany. My mom is German. My dad is American, but I spent some time in the States as well. But then I moved East. So I spent some time in China teaching English there and also working in online marketing. And then since 2015, I have been permanently living in South Korea where I also have been teaching English, German, and also worked in marketing. So that's where it sort of comes in. And I am a marketing professional at it that stands for international Teflon TESOL training. I know many of you know this already because you are certified. But I know we also get a lot of people watching every week who are new to this. So I just want to introduce real quick. Yeah, it is a leading Teflon TESOL course provider worldwide, excuse me, worldwide. And we offer a wide variety of different courses for all different needs and preferences and essentially goals wherever you want to go, whatever you want to do in terms of teaching English abroad, there will be a course for you. Good. I see Juliana here. Hi, Juliana, watching from Illinois 8.30 p.m. on Thursday. Today we have a cold day again. It is 39 degrees now. Oh, it is really cold. Did you have a lot of snow as well? Is there still snow there or did it all melt away? I had no idea Illinois was so cold actually. That's crazy. Is it usually like this or is it just a very cold spring or is this normal? It is morning in Korea so I need my morning coffee. Don't mind me over here. We are going into today's topic. First, again a reminder that we do have this 30% off opportunity. So what you can do, you can either scan this QR code here with your phone and it will lead you to the application page and you can pick your course and get 30% off or if that does not work for you, scanning the code that is no problem. You can also use the link that you see in the comment section right now which looks like this. It ends in Facebook Live minus Linda. This code will also get you 30% off today. So if you're interested in TEFL, in TESOL, use this code to kick start your career basically. Now is a great time to get started. Many countries around the world are opening up again. Many of them haven't even been close to teachers so TEFL was not really on hold only in a couple of countries but now they're also opening up again. So now is a great time to get started and to move abroad and teach again. All right so Juliana says this is normal for me. Okay normal Illinois weather that's crazy. Okay I see. I really appreciate the spring weather here and especially all the cherry blossoms. So yeah I can't imagine that being that cold right now in Illinois and having snow snowstorms and stuff. Yeah but that's how the world works. So this is it. I'm gonna make myself bigger. 30% off. I'm gonna mention this again at the end for anybody who's joining you know and didn't hear it. I just want to give everybody the opportunity to take advantage of this offer. If you have any questions obviously feel free to leave a comment. You can also always reach out to me at Linda goes east on instagram. I'm always over there and also for any um course related questions ittt questions you can reach out to us via email courses at tso-tefl.com and my team will get back to you with all of your questions. All right so today's topic teaching contracts and what to watch out for before you sign. Yeah um obviously when you want to teach English abroad and you start a new position you will sign a teaching contract right. If the school um if you have an interview and the school offers your job but they do not give you a contract that's a red flag right there right. So with any job back home the same any kind of job you start you will have a employment contract and that's the same for teaching English abroad it's just another employment and you will have a teaching contract but obviously because you are likely going to teach in a different country this contract will maybe look a little bit differently and you also need to watch out for a couple of different things than you would normally would have to watch out for in your own country. So that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to talk about 10 things that you need to watch out for. I'm also going to give you some bonus tips and like I said a checklist at the end detailing again all the different steps and things you need to look out for that you can then screenshot and refer back to for when you are applying. We have Amitava. Hey how are you doing? Oh thank you. How are you? I'm very good. You're looking nice. Thank you so much. I'm watching you live from Kolkata, India. It is Friday morning 7 a.m. Where are you from? South Korea. Yeah I live in a city sort of in the middle of South Korea. Natsul. So it's about an hour and 20 minutes from Seoul really like in the center of the country so it's really easy to get around and visit all the other amazing places around Korea so that's really exciting and I've been here since 2015. How is the weather in Kolkata? That sounds great and it's 7 a.m. Okay interesting. We have Min Min. Hi from Myanmar. How are you doing? Thank you so much for joining this live stream today. I appreciate it. How are you? Oh we have Leturk. Good morning. Greetings from the Philippines. Nice topic for today's live session. Yeah I was hoping you know that today's live session obviously every week I want to provide value and offer you with something to take away and learn something new and I think this is a very very very important topic especially now that more and more people are going abroad again and more and more teachers are getting hired again. Many teaching programs are picking back up and are hiring teachers so you need to know what to look out for before you sign a contract that is what we're going to talk about today. Awesome then without further ado I'm going to jump right into the first thing that you need to watch out for so let's have a look what that is. Oh and I'm going to make myself uh now it's fine but in just a minute I'm going to make myself smaller again so like you can see the examples that I'm showing you. So the first thing that you should look out for is is the contract written in English and easy to understand. So if you are going abroad to a different country to teach English obviously maybe most likely their official language is not English so if you receive a contract that is entirely only in their language and there's no English or another language if you understand on it then that should raise a red flag and you should not sign this contract because you need to understand what you are signing right. So let me show you an example of what it normally looks like. Yeah so this is a example page from a contract for a teaching position in China um and as you can see there is a Chinese part and then there's also a translated part in English so this is what it normally looks like um and what you should also look out for is due to translations of both languages makes sense. Now obviously you probably might not be fluent in this other language like Chinese or wherever you're going so it would be a good thing to either if you have a recruiter obviously have your recruiter have a look over it or if you have a friend already in this country who can look over it or you could also refer to a Facebook group for example there's a lot of Facebook groups like English teachers in Korea English teachers in China and so on and you could hop on there and maybe ask somebody share this contract maybe black out all the personal information and the school name um but maybe post this or contact somebody or ask around if somebody would have a look at your contract so that they can make sure that both translations make sense and are the same but this is really the first thing that you need to look out for hey is this contract written in a language that i also understand so typically it will look like this uh half English and half in the other language and then the next step from there would be to make sure that both translations both parts um are identical and make sense all right uh let me look at this comment Amitava says it is hot and warm in the morning was slightly pleasant with cool winds in the evening night and early morning in Kolkata do you live in Busan great no i do not live in Busan so Busan is all the way in the south actually um at the coast i live in a city called Cheongju which is near the next bigger city is Daejeon even though Cheongju is also the capital city of the province that i live in which is Chungbok Chungbok province so that's where i live okay so this is the first thing remember that um obviously kind of a no-brainer right never sign a contract that you don't understand if it's in a foreign language but sometimes you know we get overwhelmed we really want to take this teaching job and you just trust your employer oh yeah it's i'm sure it's fine and you just sign it um don't do that don't do that um you don't know the school you don't know the employer and um you know you're signing a contract so um really take your time and look over it and make sure you know it um it's up to par basically good so this is the first thing then we have number two is the name of the school the same as the one you were told during interviews and hasn't been spelled correctly um yeah so why should you care about that um a couple of weeks ago we had um the topic was teaching scams so some people or some scammers teffil t-sol scammers um teaching job scammers they will actually use the name of a very well known school and then try to scam you out of money for things like visa fees or flight ticket things um so sometimes they will just use a name of a school and so um usually what will happen in the process right you look for a job offer you contact them you send them your application then you are invited to an interview usually it's a skype interview video interview um and then if all parties agree they will send you the contract right so this is sort of like the third step um so during the interview or already in the job offer you will know the school's name right and then in the interview as well in your email communication they probably have like a logo somewhere so then when you get the contract you want to see you want to check and make sure that the name that they told you the name of the school was is the same on the contract as well so let me show you an example here typically um this is another example of a teacher contract you have the logo at the top so make sure is it the same name and also location if it's a very big chain um they will have schools like all over the country for example or all over the city so is it the same campus that you you know thought you were applying to or are they suddenly switching um you know some people do that too some schools they're like oh you know what actually you applied for the school in in Seoul but um okay and then they give you a contract for a school in Busan and try to place you there because maybe they just need someone now in Busan um and they try to just kind of sneakily do that without telling you because a lot of people they just want to go to Seoul because Seoul is the capital and it's you know it's it's Seoul um so that's one thing um so just you know make sure the logo is the same the name is the same the location of the campus is the same and also the logo does the logo match is it the same logo or is it suddenly a different logo that would raise a red flag um then also here where it says here too in the text where it says and so your name um an address and abc college so is that the same name also in the first paragraph of the school and then also the school's address so does the address match like the city is it the same at the same like area of the city where you initially apply to because sometimes like i said they maybe try to sneakily put you in a different school that you actually originally applied for without telling you um and you actually think oh i'm going there but then you arrive and then it's like oh no actually you're going to work at this campus so we kind of want to avoid these situations sometimes that can happen so again a little bit of a no-brainer but like i said when we get this teacher contract and we're so excited we just want to hop on the plane and go abroad and teach we might not think about these no-brainer super easy things to look out for but just you know take note and in most cases it is fine but you never know and you know just um check and if you spot a difference obviously you let them know you're like hey why is you know the name or the address different than what we initially said and then um they will clear things up hopefully and you can avoid maybe being placed in a place where you don't want to be and avoiding red flags here so that's the second thing the name and the address do they match the logo all of these important things second thing now we're moving on to the third thing which is is your name and passport number on the contract and are they correct so that's also very important that your name obviously full name some of us have a middle name some countries don't do middle names especially in Asia so you need to make sure that your full name is on it and also your nationality most often and passport number this is very important for visa purposes because you need your teaching contract in many many cases to then take this contract to the local embassy to receive your teaching visa or work visa for the country so this information needs to be 100 correct on the contract or you're going to have problems in receiving your visa so let's look at an example again this is for a job for example in korea and as you can see they're clearly sections where it says a citizen off and you need to input the correct country passport number there's a section for this to put this in here again citizenship because especially for korea this is very important information for english teachers because only people from seven recognized english-speaking countries at the moment can receive this teaching visa in korea and that's why that is very important so sometimes maybe an employer if you're not from one of those countries he might the employer really wants to hire you and might put the citizenship in here that's not actually your citizenship and a wrong passport number and try to maybe fool the authorities in giving you that visa mostly not because that doesn't really work at all anyway but just make sure that this information your personal information is correct because otherwise the process just might take longer you have to get another contract with the right information it just delays things they just want to avoid these things as early on as possible if that makes any sense do let me know at any time if there's something something not clear or if you have any additional questions just leave a comment that's totally fine and i'll help you to clear things up or if you had an experience signing a contract before and you want to add something a comment feel free to do so we're all here to learn something you know something new and share our experience that's how we can learn and how we can make better choices so to speak so yeah good so i think this was the third thing if i'm not mistaken so yeah really basic stuff until here right but like i said sometimes we just get overwhelmed and we do not pay attention to these details because we're so excited we just want to go and teach a rot but really sit down take your time looking through the contract and just making sure everything is in order it's very important um do it all right number four now it's getting a little bit more interesting is the salary the same as that promised to you in interviews or and is it written down correctly very important stuff right money you may have spoken about the salary in your interview or it was already mentioned um in the job offer initially so you just want to make sure in the contract that it's the same number not lower if it's higher obviously that would be great but if it's lower then we have a problem here right so make sure that the salary is the same in the contract and there's also some additional things so let's have a look um yeah so here this again is for korea so that's why it says 2.1 million won so that's the currency here so yeah when you work in korea you're actually receiving millions as a salary um so yeah it clearly says a monthly basic salary of 2.1 million won will be paid either for 120 teaching hours per month etc etc so there's a lot of details when it comes to the salary that's one thing and then also what you need to check is an overtime rate stated so as you can see you're working hours and we're actually going to talk about this in a minute your working hours are also mentioned so what if you what happens when you exceed this should you have to work additional hours is there an overtime compensation stated and it is so it should be stated like here the overtime compensation per hour 60 minutes is 26,001 so that's also very important to make sure that something like this is in there because sometimes things happen this actually happened at my school that i worked in sometimes we had to come in we had to stay longer we had to come in earlier we had to come in on the weekend sometimes to clean our classrooms for like teachers open open house or something the parents would come in on monday so we had to come in and clean um so then you would actually get overtime compensation so it's very important that this is in the contract because um yeah you don't want to work for free for anybody so salary stuff very important clearly check also working hours even though i'm going to mention that i may be right after this but um yeah just make sure and then also all these bonuses we're also going to talk about this so i'm not going to touch on that but um just the base salary obviously needs to be stated um along with the working hours overtime rate um yeah and just make sure that this figure the basic salary is the same as what you talked with your future employer previously oh what taryx says who pays taxes so yeah this depends on you know the country that you work in for example many countries in the middle east are actually tax-free so you don't pay any taxes on the salary um here in korea you do pay taxes and i'm sure it's 50 50 you and the employer 50 50 many countries do it like this so it depends on the country who pays the taxes not always the same good next number five are the start and end date written down correctly um teaching contracts are not indefinite they don't um they have like an end date usually it's one year or sometimes also two years or a little bit longer but um they will have an end date so this needs to be written down correctly um for visa purposes and also sometimes in the case of korea you do get a pension you do pay into the national pension scheme and then when you leave when your contract is over and you leave korea you get that money back so that's why start and end date they need to be written in the contract and they need to be correct obviously so you get those benefits so how does that look like for example here clearly period of employment there would be a section period of employment upon mutual agreement may be extended to two years so this information is also there if you want you can extend it to two years but the period of employment is march 1st to february 28th the following year so this really needs to be stated here and then again there's another um section down here again the employment will continue to february 28th unless terminated sooner as provided herein etc etc subject to following conditions we're also going to talk about termination in a bit um but yeah this is very important so if there is no date in your contract you really need to make sure that it's in there it's very important um because there's no date um yeah i mean you don't have really can it really do anything about that if there's no date written in it it doesn't really hold any ground this contract so date needs to be clearly stated and then you also need to make sure count that it's really this that it's really a full year um you know i mean it is here in this case but just make sure that it's really a year or two if you previously agreed on you're going to have a two-year contract make sure that it is a two-year contract and not a one-year contract etc also vice versa if you only want a one-year contract and then they're giving you a two-year contract but you only want to be there a year need to make sure you don't sign that or you know have another discussion about it so yeah good the sixth point here is everything with regards to your package written down and the same as previously agreed upon so package in this case means your benefit package right many countries along with your monthly salary you'll also get certain benefits like housing free housing or a housing state stipend you'll get like free airplane tickets round trip or one way or whatever you agree upon so is that in the contract it needs to be in the contract it doesn't yeah if it's not in the contract it doesn't exist it didn't happen so it needs to be in the contract whatever you talked about during your interview or whatever was stated in the job offer previously needs to be in the contract as well and match obviously what you are expecting so let's have a look here so this varies from contract to contract whatever sort of additional benefits and bonuses you receive right so for example there's a section here on housing where it says the employer shall provide the employee with a single housing chosen by the employer so you will get housing sometimes yeah here uh no not here but sometimes you also get a instead of housing if you don't want that if you want to look for your own apartment there'll be a housing stipend so then this monthly amount should also be stated in the contract a monthly stipend of 300,000 one 300 dollars etc um here other benefits named so the employee shall be entitled to a one time settlement allowance of 300,000 Korean won when he or she first begins the contract um then the employer shall provide 50 percent of the employee's medical insurance so that also needs to be stated in here and I think there's also a section on the pension scheme in Korea again this is an example of Korea um but again this will vary from country to country and whatever contract you are negotiating so in this section when it comes to benefits housing here you have a little bit more room sort of like you can negotiate a little bit during your interview stage of what you are expecting and what they can offer you right so this will vary this might even vary from employee or teacher to teacher in the same school not all teachers actually have the same contract sometimes some teachers have a higher salary a lower salary they get more benefits less benefits so it all depends on also your um your um strategy right your interview strategy and how well you can negotiate basically hey Storen very good advice you're doing thank you thank you i'm trying my best there's more to check um yeah so paid leave this is another important section um paid leave how many vacation days do you have a year very important this is a benefit of your contract also sick leave should be in the contract um and things like paid leave and sick leave they also vary from country to country because labor law is different in um different countries right so one country might have more paid leave than the other it really depends on where you're working and also sick leave and also medical insurance and all these other benefits so it really depends but yeah like i said here on the side check this very carefully right so that you know what you are entitled to what you are getting then whenever you are in the situation where maybe you are sick you need to take a sick day and they're like oh actually no we're gonna have to take some money out of your paycheck for that then you're like um actually no because my contract says this so um just kind of know your contract very well um not only before you sign it but then also after when you're working so that you're just know your rights what you're entitled to right but also your responsibilities obviously so um yeah it's like it goes both ways um but there's just many employers um I just know from experience in China and in Korea many schools who kind of try to loophole their way around and kind of take an advantage of their foreign teachers um well unknowingness of local laws and um they're not very familiar with you know what they're entitled to because it's a foreign country so you trust your employer if your employer tells you oh yeah you don't have any sick leave we have to take something out of your paycheck you're like oh yeah that sucks but I guess that's correct um if you say so um but no check your contract and even if something is in the contract and you're like huh that kind of sounds wrong refer to um there's like in Korea they have this helpline for legal things so foreign teachers not foreign teachers any foreigners they can call and actually get free legal advice so you can actually ask them hey my employer that this is this okay is this legal can he do that can they do that um because you never know so anyway I digress it's not all schools are bad or doing that but many do and try you know it's a business so they try to um obviously make you teach as much as possible and try avoid sick days and vacations and things um that you're actually entitled to so um yeah you just need to know these things all right before we move on to the next point I have a comment here from Amitava I just want to read out real quick since I'm coming from a non-native English speaking country like India and not from any of the seven native English speaking countries am I not eligible to apply for any public or private schools in South Korea please elucidate further in this regard yeah so actually um there is an additional clause for people from India so actually you're in luck this only applies to people from India so if you have if you meet all the other requirements that um the teachers from these seven countries um have if you meet the requirements plus you have a Indian teaching license so a teaching license from India then you also qualify for a e2 visa in South Korea so that's the only way people from not these seven countries can also teach in Korea when you're from India and you have an Indian local teaching license so you can look into that but right now this is the only way there was a case and I'm not up to date on this but there were some people going to court to change this law or this visa requirement for the seven countries in Korea because at the moment only people from Canada America UK Ireland South Africa Australia and New Zealand are able to obtain this e2 teaching visa for South Korea and there was a case from where a school really wanted to hire this amazing teacher but he happened to be from Nigeria so not from one of those seven countries so they actually took this thing to court and they started doing petitions and this is still ongoing right now to change that so that it's no longer a requirement to be from one of those seven countries and schools would be able to hire anyone as an English teacher so that's what they're trying to change at the moment so I'll update you how that goes but since you are from India there is this one way to actually get to Korea with an Indian teaching license hope that helps okay so I think this was the fifth or sixth point I forget um yeah oh six so seven next point you need to check are your work hours stipulated correctly so usually in the job offer already there will be teaching hours so how many hours a week you have to teach how many classes how many teaching teaching time etc it would be clearly stated there and so you want to make sure that in the contract and the actual contract it is the same and they don't give you more hours for example let's have a look at an example here so there should clearly be a section about work hours and it says not only how many hours per day so here in this case eight hours per day for five calendar days per week from Monday to Friday and shall not work on Saturdays Sundays Labor Day May 1st and any national holidays of the Republic of Korea so again this is an example from Korea but will be similar in other countries so yeah not only how many hours a day you need to work but also which days of the week in some schools especially private schools you're also going to find that you have to work on the weekends so I used to work in a school in China that worked yeah I was working Saturday Sunday but I was off Monday and Tuesday because weekends are busy days for private schools because kids don't go to school those days so they go to the private schools so that just depends so maybe you'll need to work five days but it's Wednesday to Sunday depends every school's different or might maybe have two other off days in the middle of the week whatever every contract is different just make sure that the work hours and the days are correct as you expect them and then also there's a section here about employees class instruction hours per week shall not exceed 22 hours and then if they do exceed 22 hours due to supplementary supplementary class instruction the employee shall be entitled to supplementary class instruction pay of $20,001 per hour that's $20 per hour so this is also important that this is in the contract what happens your your class time the actual teaching hours so as a teacher you have teaching hours and then you also have prep time right you also do that at your job you're not doing that at home so yeah that's very important and then what happens when you have more than your maximum teaching hours a week you get extra pay so that's important and then again here mention of overtime pay there should be a section on that too we talked about that previously but make sure that is in there as well good then oh another example oh yeah this is another example that's a little bit more in detail what you might also see in a contract so here you actually have a clear even with the time of the day when you will teach so this is probably a public school where every day is the same so here it says you're from 10 a.m to 7 oh maybe it's a private school 10 a.m to 7 40 p.m free lunch provided Monday to Friday um and from 1 30 to 3 p.m a break okay so break time from 1 30 to 3 p.m also important that that's in there only class from teaching in excess of 120 hours per month approved is to be considered as overtime again mention of overtime all right so sometimes they will also throw in the actual times they should actually have this here they don't um not sure why so your actual working hours the time that you need to be there also should be stated like this 10 a.m to 7 40 p.m and free lunch provided and break time when is the break time okay nice then we have number eight nine and ten so this is all about sort of termination um and how to extend your contract so we have how to terminate the contract early and the penalties for doing so the offenses which may lead to your dismissal and contract termination and how to extend the contract and any benefits for doing so so this also needs to be stated in the contract for example here things about resignation the contract obviously normally it would go until the date that's the end date that we mentioned earlier until then however if something happens and you want to resign early there would be a time you need to give notice of termination that should be stated and then any um yeah any uh yeah if you don't do that so this is for korea the penalties for doing so so if you don't do if you don't give 60 days notice you'll be reported to the immigration service and you might get um your visa might get canceled so it's important to know right if you're like oh i don't like the school but you don't give 60 days notice and you just quit you don't show up you get reported to immigration your visa might get canceled so it's important to know your responsibilities as well or it might lead to problems if you you know quit earlier resign earlier this is on renewal so this also should be in there if you want to renew if both parties agree you can renew for another year and then what do you get for renewal there's usually renewal bonuses they also need to be stated in the contract so this is what you would get yeah and all the things that have to do with renewal and then also the things here in um when the the contract can be terminated uh when it's legal for the employer to terminate the contract when you violate any laws of the country you don't obviously do your job heal you fail to perform your duties as mentioned in the contract all of these things if you don't actually hold the right visa all of these things can lead to termination so you also need to know these things right so that's very important um so you don't do make any mistakes and get kicked out for some reason or something just what i want you to take from this take away from this is understanding your contract is very important you need to know your responsibilities but also your rights and what you what you are entitled to right that's very important and this basically concludes this presentation now or this live but i have some bonus tips for you and that is so when you receive your contract you read through it obviously there might be some parts that you don't really understand but even after going through the contract with the checklist that i'm actually going to give you soon get someone you trust to read through it before you sign it so this could be a friend this could be a parent anyone just have somebody read through it maybe sometimes you overlook something or you know four eyes are better than just two so have somebody look over it and also good to know in most cases this is over here you will actually sign two contracts so one you will sign in many cases before you leave your home country they will send you the contract signed the school signed it already then you sign it and then you take this contract to the embassy to get your visa and then you will usually also sign one more when you arrive at the school sort of like their copy because i think the the first copy the immigration office or depends on like the embassy they actually keep that they don't give it back to you in many cases so then when you arrive you actually sign another contract so make sure that these two contracts are identical that you sign the same two contracts and then that no facts have been changed also very important so those are the two bonus tips i have for you and then let's have a look real quick at the the checklist here so again this is everything we talked about feel free to screenshot this and just keep it for you for reference to refer back on when you have a teaching contract so again first point we talked about was is the contract written in English and easy to understand do not sign a contract in a that's in a language you don't understand right usually teaching contracts they will either be only in English or English and the other language of the country and then you need to make sure if that both versions are the same then the second point was is the name of the school the same as the one you were told during interviews and hasn't been spelled correctly is the logo the same is the location of the school the same or are they trying to send you to different campus all of these things make sure third point was is your name and passport number on the contract and are they correct also your date of birth your home address all of these things are they on the contract and are they correct this is important for your visa so that there are no delays and any problems the next point is is the salary the same as the promise to you in the interviews and is it written down correctly also overtime and the overtime pay stated is very important the start date and the end date are they written down correctly and here it says please note these dates may not be the same as your arrival dates to china or wherever you go because usually you're arriving a little bit earlier right you're arriving earlier before your actual start date so you don't fly to a new country and then start teaching on that day right usually they might be like a two week training or something uh what's the word a forget the word introduction not introduction anyway like a two week training or whatever and then you start something like this that might happen and then also when you contract ends you might not leave right away right maybe you want to do some traveling or you just need to move out you're not leaving on the date at your contract ends right so just make note of that the next point would be go through your package details carefully so your bonuses your benefit package is everything with regards to the benefits written down the same as previously agreed upon so that includes housing medical insurance any kind of bonuses overtime pay as well health insurance all of those things the next point was are your work hours stipulated correctly so what days do you work what time of the day you work overtime pay how many teaching hours a week or a month so all of those things you need to check and then are the following details with regards to the contract stated it needs to state how to terminate the contract early and the penalties for doing so if you want to terminate early how do you do that and yeah what penalties come with it how to extend the contract and any benefits for doing so that needs to be in there and also the offenses which may lead to your dismissal and contract termination so here you have it your checklist of the things that you need to watch out for before you sign a teaching contract i hope that everything makes sense and you feel a little bit better before taking on a new position you feel more confident in this whole process i hope this helped you a little bit so again feel free to screenshot this so that you can refer back to it or whatever you want to do so yeah this is it for today basically and before we go into q and a i just want to say that uh this again was from ittt you can find us at teflucourse.net and here on social media and we do have this 30 off opportunity so you can go ahead and scan this qr code again to get 30 off your teflur t-sol course for today and you can also use our code i'm just going to the link excuse me the link i'm going to share again in the comment box here so you can also click on that and fill out the application and get a 30 person discount so yeah that is it all right let me have a look here leteric says nice contracts matter and we need to fully understand your contract yep i screenshot the checklist thank you for the tips so helpful yay thank you so much i really appreciate that um so yeah i mean it is very important you know a lot of us we just especially young teachers just out of college me included no idea what's going on in a different country you just trust your employer you just sign it whatever but it's really important that you just take some time and think about your contract keep your in mind what you're entitled to throughout your employment so that it can be like hey actually my contract says this um you know what happened uh why is it different now like actually my contract i'm entitled to this so what's going on you know how's answers where is the hairband yeah okay i'll put it on next time i felt like it didn't go with i don't know i actually forgot it could have yeah it could have looked cute too all right i'll put it on next time nice to see you too fauza all right then we are officially officially in the q&a part of this live so i'm still here for a couple more minutes if you have any additional questions either about today's topic or about teflutisal in general teaching english abroad now is your time to ask me this question before i sign off if you have any topic suggestions for upcoming live sessions also feel free to put them on the table um and um yeah that's it that is it so whatever you feel like amitava says thanks a lot linda for your kind suggestion and support you're welcome thank you so much for taking like an hour out of your evening or morning i think it's morning right morning wherever you are taking an hour of your time to spend it with me i really truly appreciate that i'm so thankful for all the people who come back here all the same people and the new people too who come back here every week i really appreciate you guys it's so much fun to see you and see our tefl family grow we're building these connections and we make really good network and everybody's kind of sharing what they're thinking and it's just great so thank you so much for that i really appreciate it i'm always looking forward to friday morning when i do the live sessions i'm like oh who will i see today um because we've just grown to be this cute tefl family now i appreciate it okay detailed explanation about all the visa process with examples would be great linda i think this is a little bit difficult to do because the visa process is different in all the countries and also then for it depends on your own nationality so i think that's a little bit difficult to do um so i'm not sure i'll think about it because it's just different from country to country so i don't know hmm i'll i'll think about it and see what i can do thank you though juliana says thank you for these essential materials today the live session helps me review this information for the second time it becomes much clearer than the first time i heard this information yeah i was like oh is somebody gonna notice we talked about this before but in my defense we talked about this in july last year so everybody you see juliana here juliana is pretty much here every week for over a year already so um very good student here and i did update some information in the slides too though but it's just hard coming up with new things every week and i think we've we've um we have a lot of new viewers over the last couple of months so i thought this is a very important topic so i wanted to do it again and uh a little bit with reviewed and new information so um yeah thanks juliana fazanzas thanks for everything linda thanks for always being so helpful and easygoing you're welcome thank you for always being here you're so sweet i appreciate that me too almost yes you too i know brett hello i was wondering always brett here today haven't seen any comments but okay watching quietly from the corner i see no that's fun i appreciate you guys all right um well i'm just gonna put it out there one more time if anybody has one final question now is your time to ask before i sign off and head into the weekend so what are you guys doing this weekend maybe we can talk about that before i leave what are your plans juliana is probably gonna stay inside since it's so cold i am going to check out more cherry blossom spots this weekend before they're all gone i think one more week maybe and then they're all gone oh physical therapy what happened oh you need to let me know what happened i hope you're doing okay all right well if there are no more questions then we are at the end um maybe if somebody wants to take another screenshot here of the checklist feel free to do so now before i turn this off as always you can um you know watch the replay watch this information again um and then yeah even if you leave any comments in the replay we'll get back to you as well on facebook and youtube hello maiden hi how are you doing oh favizan is playing soccer and volleyball and fasting good back lifting a heavy cabinet oh no brats oh i hope you feel better soon well we're not getting any younger right me too i have problems with my knees i stopped going to therapy physical therapy so i need to go back there i feel yeah i hope you're feeling better i hope everybody took a good screenshot of this and then i hope i'll see you all next week again if you have any suggestions like i said for upcoming lives i took note of what fauzan suggested with the visa so i'm going to look into that but i think it's just going to be a little bit difficult because the process is just different everywhere but i'm going to see what i can do so thank you for that suggestion and then juliana got freezing rain in a couple minutes oh gosh okay whoo stay safe everybody out there stay safe have a wonderful weekend and thank you so much for joining me today i really appreciate that and maiden says i'm now enrolled in the 120-hour tefl course with the additional young learner yay awesome congratulations that's awesome congrats i hope you're having fun so i guess it's what you're going to do this weekend you're going to study take your course work through a couple of units that's a great plan thank you yes i'll be back next week as well i'm looking forward to seeing you yay i love cherry blossoms as well happy weekend to everybody and thank you so much again for spending some time of your day today with me i really appreciate it and then i'll see you all again next week i hope until then uh yeah bye have a good one bye bye