Hess International Educational Group is racist and deceptive. They destroyed my dreams of teaching students and improving their fluency in English. I wasted five months of my life--from my acceptance by Hess in September, 2018 until they pressured me to sign a "Cancel Contract Agreement" on January 25, 2019--due to their deception and racism.
In fact, per the official policy of Hess, I was not provided with the proper sequence of warnings before I was set up to fail during an assessment. I had not even finished my second week as a teacher (Hess NST Manual, 143). Basically, Hess decided to separate me from employment because I sent a text message to one of my direct supervisors in which I complained that another supervisor had used racist language to describe my possible effect on students.
I had never experienced such derogatory language in any previous job. The person in question, in a baseless fashion (considering my great rapport with students of various ages and backgrounds historically, and my excellent educational and work background) said that I would "intimidate" and scare students due to my phenotype. I was shocked but did not complain until the following day via text message, when I suspected that my hours were getting cut.
In fact, my suspicions were not unfounded, as I later discovered upon discussion with some fellow teachers that the things that I was subjected to were nothing short of violation of my rights as a worker and human being. Hess provided white teachers--the vast majority of native speaking English teachers are white--with the minimum 20 hours of classes while I was grudgingly allowed to only teach 4 hours, during that time. Also, the racist supervisors subjected me to embarrassing and unfair scrutiny by demanding that I do demonstrations and endure premature assessments when none of my white peers had to do the same.
Basically, I am writing this as a warning to anyone who is not white to be aware that Hess is not a good company to work for if you are a person of color, per my experience. I wish that I could have read a testimonial such as this before I applied and journeyed to Taiwan--it would have saved me thousands of US dollars and allowed me to use my time far more wisely.
HESS Reviews
Hess International Educational Group is racist and deceptive. They destroyed my dreams of teaching students and improving their fluency in English. I wasted five months of my life--from my acceptance by Hess in September, 2018 until they pressured me to sign a "Cancel Contract Agreement" on January 25, 2019--due to their deception and racism.
In fact, per the official policy of Hess, I was not provided with the proper sequence of warnings before I was set up to fail during an assessment. I had not even finished my second week as a teacher (Hess NST Manual, 143). Basically, Hess decided to separate me from employment because I sent a text message to one of my direct supervisors in which I complained that another supervisor had used racist language to describe my possible effect on students.
I had never experienced such derogatory language in any previous job. The person in question, in a baseless fashion (considering my great rapport with students of various ages and backgrounds historically, and my excellent educational and work background) said that I would "intimidate" and scare students due to my phenotype. I was shocked but did not complain until the following day via text message, when I suspected that my hours were getting cut.
In fact, my suspicions were not unfounded, as I later discovered upon discussion with some fellow teachers that the things that I was subjected to were nothing short of violation of my rights as a worker and human being. Hess provided white teachers--the vast majority of native speaking English teachers are white--with the minimum 20 hours of classes while I was grudgingly allowed to only teach 4 hours, during that time. Also, the racist supervisors subjected me to embarrassing and unfair scrutiny by demanding that I do demonstrations and endure premature assessments when none of my white peers had to do the same.
Basically, I am writing this as a warning to anyone who is not white to be aware that Hess is not a good company to work for if you are a person of color, per my experience. I wish that I could have read a testimonial such as this before I applied and journeyed to Taiwan--it would have saved me thousands of US dollars and allowed me to use my time far more wisely.