After a couple of long email conversations with two main contributors to the TEFL China Teahouse Mentors Program regarding the potentials and pitfalls of an open review forum, I thought I'd post a little bit of fair warning for anyone reading this site or any similar one.

Due to the open nature of the site, as the number of reviews grow, chances are that we'll have at least some reviews that are, to say the least, less than truthful. Review sites have experienced both disgruntled ex-teachers unjustly slamming schools as well as slimy recruiters telling potential teachers how great a school is only to have the teacher show up to the job and find that the recruiter was lying through their teeth.

It is also important to note that the qualities of a school are not static. Schools can be held back by one bad official and can change overnight. The opposite can also be true.

Thus, what you read in the reviews on this site and others may not always be an accurate reflection of the situation on the ground.

There are a couple of things we can do to try and avoid and/or minimize these risks. They all boil down to making sure that you talk to as many people as possible before making a decision to teach or not teach at any given school. This means requesting contact information from your potential employer of former teachers at the school, so that you can ask them what they thought about their experiences at the school. It means visiting the links page and checking out other sites to see if anyone there knows anything about a particular school. And it means that those who know better need to post questions and responses to reviews that don't make sense, seem misleading, or contain outright falsifications.

I think this site has the potential to be great. The open post and response format allows people to contribute in a much more dynamic way than is available in a traditional review site. Even with the content available now, there is already a wealth of information that posters can use to help them find out about teaching in China. This will only grow as time goes on. Even so, I thought I'd let everyone know about the potential problems such a system may have, and what we might be able to do to ensure that they cause as little damage and destruction as possible. Thanks for your time, and enjoy the site.

Nathan Mittelstaedt
Administrator
China School Review