Hi everyone..
so i agreed to a contract 2 weeks ago, and signed it ...and sent most of my other docs for visa too. HR was rubbish , no response...then re-read contract, realised what principal had promised wasnt all in - minor detail actually, so asked for new one. I received new contract last week. In the mean time, i have had another interview in a country i really want.
If i get the location/country I want, how do i get out of the first contract?
Can I? Feel totally sh*t about this already...
Yes I probably can, will probably be your answers... but if I can live with myself ? right?
saying no nicely to a contract signed?
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Mr DepTrai
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
As soon as you know, politely tell the school "a personal issue has come up, and I will not be able to fulfill the contract"
Little you say the better....that way you dont get involved in a bunch of lies.
Little you say the better....that way you dont get involved in a bunch of lies.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
Exactly why people should stop interviewing and notify all relevant schools when they accept a contract.
You know what the right thing to do is. You gave your word, you signed a contract, the school was even decent enough to fix something at your request, you have no reason to skip out except greener grass.
If you can live with yourself, is a personal question. I won't go there.
On a practical level, if the first school hired you through any sort of agency, that agency will be alerted that you are pulling out. This would then have a ripple effect, as the news spreads. It might get to your other school immediately, if they are with the same agency. It might take longer, but it will eventually get to your other school. Remember we are a tiny community, and while we don't all know everyone, anyone who's been in the game for a while is connected in a complex web to people and schools all over the globe. There's a good chance that the head of your first school is buddies with the head of your second school, and they might be commiserating over Skype this week, as the first laments to the second about the sudden and unexpected loss of their latest hire.
If it catches up with you quickly, as in before you fly out to start the new post, you could well be fired before you even begin the job. Yep, it happens. There are grounds for firing in interviewing under false pretenses, which you did.
If it catches up with you later, you likely won't be fired, after all the school will need you, but you could be, it could be a very convenient excuse, or it could be that you will get a lecture and a bad reputation. Which is a real thing. Once word gets out, and it will, good luck next time round on the job hunt carousal.
Next time, avoid the angst and stop interviewing once you've accepted a job offer.
You know what the right thing to do is. You gave your word, you signed a contract, the school was even decent enough to fix something at your request, you have no reason to skip out except greener grass.
If you can live with yourself, is a personal question. I won't go there.
On a practical level, if the first school hired you through any sort of agency, that agency will be alerted that you are pulling out. This would then have a ripple effect, as the news spreads. It might get to your other school immediately, if they are with the same agency. It might take longer, but it will eventually get to your other school. Remember we are a tiny community, and while we don't all know everyone, anyone who's been in the game for a while is connected in a complex web to people and schools all over the globe. There's a good chance that the head of your first school is buddies with the head of your second school, and they might be commiserating over Skype this week, as the first laments to the second about the sudden and unexpected loss of their latest hire.
If it catches up with you quickly, as in before you fly out to start the new post, you could well be fired before you even begin the job. Yep, it happens. There are grounds for firing in interviewing under false pretenses, which you did.
If it catches up with you later, you likely won't be fired, after all the school will need you, but you could be, it could be a very convenient excuse, or it could be that you will get a lecture and a bad reputation. Which is a real thing. Once word gets out, and it will, good luck next time round on the job hunt carousal.
Next time, avoid the angst and stop interviewing once you've accepted a job offer.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
Well, Sid said a lot of what I was thinking, but I would point out that now you're behaving in a rubbishy manner. What sort of post would you be writing if the situation were reversed--you sign a contract with the school in the country you really want, but then they find out the teacher _they_ really wanted is now available, so they hire her and give you a lame excuse??
You'll find, as Sid mentions, that the Six Degrees of Separation are reduced to about three in international teacher circles.
You'll find, as Sid mentions, that the Six Degrees of Separation are reduced to about three in international teacher circles.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
I'm not going to get involved in what is the correct thing to do, but I will confirm that the international teaching world is really small.
I've only been teaching overseas for a little over 5 years, but can normally find a friend of a friend who knows or has worked at a specific school internationally.
As such, most admin types have worked internationally longer than I have and as such can find out even more info than I can. The best way to think about admin is the gossipy teacher in the staff room back in your home country. However - this teacher has better access to information than the gossipy teacher back home that only knows teachers at that current school or in the local district.
So to put it short - many admin people talk. What I said may make admin types sound petty - but many of us teachers (including myself) gossip as well or search for information on potential employers and co-workers.
I've only been teaching overseas for a little over 5 years, but can normally find a friend of a friend who knows or has worked at a specific school internationally.
As such, most admin types have worked internationally longer than I have and as such can find out even more info than I can. The best way to think about admin is the gossipy teacher in the staff room back in your home country. However - this teacher has better access to information than the gossipy teacher back home that only knows teachers at that current school or in the local district.
So to put it short - many admin people talk. What I said may make admin types sound petty - but many of us teachers (including myself) gossip as well or search for information on potential employers and co-workers.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
as always, you have to do what is best for you.
the only problem there could be is if you are hired through an agency. there would likely be penalty fees to pay, and if your school has already paid the fee to the agency, you may be required to pay the agency. the ensuing headache will not make you well-liked!
but again, do what is best for you.
v.
the only problem there could be is if you are hired through an agency. there would likely be penalty fees to pay, and if your school has already paid the fee to the agency, you may be required to pay the agency. the ensuing headache will not make you well-liked!
but again, do what is best for you.
v.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
The chances of being discovered and finding yourself without a job at all are high. I agree with the above posts...it's a small world when it comes to international schools and word gets around. You wouldn't think it possible but it does.
Response
Its not that small of a world (its actually pretty big and very broadly dispersed, and recruiters are not full time investigators), there is no Blacklist, or Red Phones and the closest it gets is a handful of posts/messages on HEAD.net and AISH that say "If anyone is negotiating with "X" please contact me." Of course all the bad things can happen if you dont spin it right or you take the antagonistic approach, or all the stars and planets are aligned against you. Essentially a recruiter/HOS would have to be highly motivated to make your life miserable. The most important factor is are you repped by a premium agency (SA/ISS) in which case the communication gets a lot easier and more likely that bad things will happen.
If you are repped by an agency they will write you about the "word is your Bound" and inquire whats going on, and ask for clarification on the issue. This is all just social correctness, your associate already knows everything, they are just being polite and asking for your side, which in your specific case you have an option. At this point they will drop you as a client an invoice you for the placement fee. You dont have to pay it,a nd there is little benefit to doing so at this point, paying the placement fee of $1500-$2500 isnt going to get you back in, and isnt going to fix anything with the two ISs. At best it will be an advance payment of good will in about 2 years. The reason being that SA/ISS make money off of placing candidates, in 2 years with IE experience, and maybe IB experience and training with a strong reference you will be easy money and not accepting you as a candidate is equivalent to throwing money away. Make it profitable and easy and SA/ISS will take you back.
After being dumped by the agency you ahve the two ISs too deal with and a LOT will depend on the ISs, timing of the year, and your utility to them. ISs do steal/poach ITs it happens, the issue is going to be what happens to the relationship between the recruiters/HOSs and their reputation. Reputation is everything to ISs (after/tied with money). If you left Acme AS a bottom tier poo hole of an IS for an upper third tier IS in the WE many recruiters/admin wouldnt blame you, especially if you spun the story as the IS misrepresented themselves, deceived you, etc, they would believe thats possible. If on the other hand the two ISs are similar ties, nearby regions and have a personal professional relationship you are probably done at both of them.
If they/you are not repped by an agency, it all gets much easier. They key is spinning the story. You approach the first IS with some tale of woe, your sister got cancer, your goldfish died, your very sorry, and they move on, without doing anything else. You then take the second/better offer and no one is the wiser, because their is nothing to follow up with or investigate. There isnt some international clearing house of IT appointments for every IS in the world.
You have a special option, you could go dark, ignore IS one with the story being that the recruiter made an error on the contract said they would fix it (which you have documentation to confirm) and then you never heard back from them despite emailing them (send emails to a slightly wrong email address, which will put the email in your sent folder but will bounce back) and which you interpreted as their intent to not proceed with the contract.
If you are repped by an agency they will write you about the "word is your Bound" and inquire whats going on, and ask for clarification on the issue. This is all just social correctness, your associate already knows everything, they are just being polite and asking for your side, which in your specific case you have an option. At this point they will drop you as a client an invoice you for the placement fee. You dont have to pay it,a nd there is little benefit to doing so at this point, paying the placement fee of $1500-$2500 isnt going to get you back in, and isnt going to fix anything with the two ISs. At best it will be an advance payment of good will in about 2 years. The reason being that SA/ISS make money off of placing candidates, in 2 years with IE experience, and maybe IB experience and training with a strong reference you will be easy money and not accepting you as a candidate is equivalent to throwing money away. Make it profitable and easy and SA/ISS will take you back.
After being dumped by the agency you ahve the two ISs too deal with and a LOT will depend on the ISs, timing of the year, and your utility to them. ISs do steal/poach ITs it happens, the issue is going to be what happens to the relationship between the recruiters/HOSs and their reputation. Reputation is everything to ISs (after/tied with money). If you left Acme AS a bottom tier poo hole of an IS for an upper third tier IS in the WE many recruiters/admin wouldnt blame you, especially if you spun the story as the IS misrepresented themselves, deceived you, etc, they would believe thats possible. If on the other hand the two ISs are similar ties, nearby regions and have a personal professional relationship you are probably done at both of them.
If they/you are not repped by an agency, it all gets much easier. They key is spinning the story. You approach the first IS with some tale of woe, your sister got cancer, your goldfish died, your very sorry, and they move on, without doing anything else. You then take the second/better offer and no one is the wiser, because their is nothing to follow up with or investigate. There isnt some international clearing house of IT appointments for every IS in the world.
You have a special option, you could go dark, ignore IS one with the story being that the recruiter made an error on the contract said they would fix it (which you have documentation to confirm) and then you never heard back from them despite emailing them (send emails to a slightly wrong email address, which will put the email in your sent folder but will bounce back) and which you interpreted as their intent to not proceed with the contract.
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JeremyIrons
- Posts: 16
- Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2015 8:30 am
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
The world of international teaching isn't that small. You have to remember that 99% of people on here seem to be working in 1% of the world. People seem to think that the world is made up of the Middle East and a bit of the Far East. If you came from space and took your geographical knowledge from international teaching forums you would probably assume that Doha was some sort of global epicenter with a population of 3 billion.
Sure, international teachers talk on some scale, and if you're looking at moving to a neighboring country or a huge school in a major one then there's a chance the heads might know each-other and discuss you. However, in the real world it's unlikely that the head of the British International School of Lima has nightly Skype conversations with the Cambridge International School of Bratislava.
That said, the decent thing to do is honor the contract you signed.
Sure, international teachers talk on some scale, and if you're looking at moving to a neighboring country or a huge school in a major one then there's a chance the heads might know each-other and discuss you. However, in the real world it's unlikely that the head of the British International School of Lima has nightly Skype conversations with the Cambridge International School of Bratislava.
That said, the decent thing to do is honor the contract you signed.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
Let me attack this from another angle:
I almost reneged on a contract. I was driving to the airport in mid-August. It was a beautiful summer day, I had money, great times, everything. I did not want to go to this country. I came within a heartbeat of telling the cabbie to turn around and take me back home. I was going to call the school head - no email everywhere back then - and tell him I was not coming.
But I kept going and figured I would just tell the head I would only do 1 year of my contract.
That position turned out to be one of the best I ever had overseas: great friends, great trips, great colleagues, great students, great money, great country, learned a new language. I ended up staying for 7 years.
Sometimes the road we don't want to travel makes all the difference, too - sorry Robert Frost.
I almost reneged on a contract. I was driving to the airport in mid-August. It was a beautiful summer day, I had money, great times, everything. I did not want to go to this country. I came within a heartbeat of telling the cabbie to turn around and take me back home. I was going to call the school head - no email everywhere back then - and tell him I was not coming.
But I kept going and figured I would just tell the head I would only do 1 year of my contract.
That position turned out to be one of the best I ever had overseas: great friends, great trips, great colleagues, great students, great money, great country, learned a new language. I ended up staying for 7 years.
Sometimes the road we don't want to travel makes all the difference, too - sorry Robert Frost.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
It's not that there's a guarantee that a certain head knows another specific head. There's not.
But in the science of 7 degrees of separation (it is a science), there are people called "stars" because in the gigantic map of connectivity, they are connected to so many disparate people around the world. Most people are far from stars. They have many predictable links to people who are very close to them in physical location or specific interests. They connect things which are very naturally connected, and which already have very strong connections. If one "normal" person drops out, there is no loss to the greater map of connectivity.
But the stars, ah the stars. They are the links between places and things and people that would never ever be connected otherwise.
And people of the ISR, WE are the stars. We are the Kevin Bacons of the greater world. International educators connect all sorts of things, with our seemingly random, odd moves. We allow an elderly grandmother in Poughkeepsie NY to be connected to a Nepalese sherpa or a Kenyan farmer, because we went out and met their cousins while teaching in different countries and on our various travels.
So while heads also have predictable connections, like probably knowing, at least loosely, all the heads in the local countries (or even just the city or country if there are enough schools there to create a network), they also have the same very varied, unpredictable connections that all ITs have. And the longer they are on the circuit, the more "odd" and unpredictable connections they have, to the point that those connections are no longer unpredictable. They went to a few PTC courses with administrators from 20 different countries in each one, cut their teeth teaching Primary school in the same school with someone who is now a head 5,000 miles away, they attended an ECIS leadership conference with a couple hundred administrators from across the globe, they went to a recruiting fair with another hundred or two. You can't know exactly who they had lunch with at those events, who was in their reflection group at the PTC, who they did a joint paper with on a course for one of the few MEd programs that specialize in international education. But you can safely predict that they know A LOT of administrators, from A LOT of schools, from around the world.
I've been in this game for over 20 years, with a predictable amount of switching schools and attending PD and recruiting and accreditation visits. Personally, I can't predict who I will know at any given event, but I can safely predict, and this has been borne out repeatedly, that at any decent event gathering international educators, I will a) know at least some people directly and well enough to know details about their jobs, schools, families, etc, and b) be able to sit at any lunch table with 8 people and quickly find links to at least 2 of them. If we don't know each other directly, at least we have a common friend or colleague or school.
If you object to calling our community "small", perhaps we could call it "extremely connected".
I wouldn't want to take the risk.
But in the science of 7 degrees of separation (it is a science), there are people called "stars" because in the gigantic map of connectivity, they are connected to so many disparate people around the world. Most people are far from stars. They have many predictable links to people who are very close to them in physical location or specific interests. They connect things which are very naturally connected, and which already have very strong connections. If one "normal" person drops out, there is no loss to the greater map of connectivity.
But the stars, ah the stars. They are the links between places and things and people that would never ever be connected otherwise.
And people of the ISR, WE are the stars. We are the Kevin Bacons of the greater world. International educators connect all sorts of things, with our seemingly random, odd moves. We allow an elderly grandmother in Poughkeepsie NY to be connected to a Nepalese sherpa or a Kenyan farmer, because we went out and met their cousins while teaching in different countries and on our various travels.
So while heads also have predictable connections, like probably knowing, at least loosely, all the heads in the local countries (or even just the city or country if there are enough schools there to create a network), they also have the same very varied, unpredictable connections that all ITs have. And the longer they are on the circuit, the more "odd" and unpredictable connections they have, to the point that those connections are no longer unpredictable. They went to a few PTC courses with administrators from 20 different countries in each one, cut their teeth teaching Primary school in the same school with someone who is now a head 5,000 miles away, they attended an ECIS leadership conference with a couple hundred administrators from across the globe, they went to a recruiting fair with another hundred or two. You can't know exactly who they had lunch with at those events, who was in their reflection group at the PTC, who they did a joint paper with on a course for one of the few MEd programs that specialize in international education. But you can safely predict that they know A LOT of administrators, from A LOT of schools, from around the world.
I've been in this game for over 20 years, with a predictable amount of switching schools and attending PD and recruiting and accreditation visits. Personally, I can't predict who I will know at any given event, but I can safely predict, and this has been borne out repeatedly, that at any decent event gathering international educators, I will a) know at least some people directly and well enough to know details about their jobs, schools, families, etc, and b) be able to sit at any lunch table with 8 people and quickly find links to at least 2 of them. If we don't know each other directly, at least we have a common friend or colleague or school.
If you object to calling our community "small", perhaps we could call it "extremely connected".
I wouldn't want to take the risk.
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JeremyIrons
- Posts: 16
- Joined: Thu Apr 23, 2015 8:30 am
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
Even if they did all know of each other from teaching conferences it's unlikely that they contact each other every day to discuss the Maths teacher that reneged on their contract last week.
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
True.
But I'm on Skype multiple times a week with people I've met through the circuit, plus e-mails and face to face. Basically it's a crap shoot.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
But I'm on Skype multiple times a week with people I've met through the circuit, plus e-mails and face to face. Basically it's a crap shoot.
May the odds be ever in your favor.
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higgsboson
- Posts: 150
- Joined: Mon Jun 14, 2010 1:13 am
Re: saying no nicely to a contract signed?
I've been here but the soul-less ISR admin have been deleting my posts. I've kept up on every idiotic thing you've written HeyTeach so don't worry.
You've called me a troll several times and I'm not sure what you mean. I though trolls just made shit up? Everything I say here is true. I make nothing up! I've been doing runners for 30 years. On average, I sign 3 contracts per year. I still get multiple job offers per year. I may be a tourist teacher but I'm not a troll.
This year, for example, I started in St. Thomas and stayed there for 10 weeks. I loved it! I was living in Red Hook and hung out on Coki Beach with the Rasta men. Then I did a runner to Kuwait to get some cash; I was there about 2 months and did a runner to Thailand where I worked at a 3rd tier school and had some fun. I'm finishing the year in Florida, visiting family.
For next year, so far, I signed on at schools in China, Thailand and Malaysia but its still early - maybe I'll sign a 4th contract.
So how am I a troll?
You've called me a troll several times and I'm not sure what you mean. I though trolls just made shit up? Everything I say here is true. I make nothing up! I've been doing runners for 30 years. On average, I sign 3 contracts per year. I still get multiple job offers per year. I may be a tourist teacher but I'm not a troll.
This year, for example, I started in St. Thomas and stayed there for 10 weeks. I loved it! I was living in Red Hook and hung out on Coki Beach with the Rasta men. Then I did a runner to Kuwait to get some cash; I was there about 2 months and did a runner to Thailand where I worked at a 3rd tier school and had some fun. I'm finishing the year in Florida, visiting family.
For next year, so far, I signed on at schools in China, Thailand and Malaysia but its still early - maybe I'll sign a 4th contract.
So how am I a troll?