Dropped the Ball

Looking over reviews of Teaching Nomad on here, it seemed like this company knew what they were doing, yay!

However, my personal experience wasn't so great. A job I was placed at backed out of our contract last minute, and my consultant at TN was suddenly unresponsive. After multiple emails, I finally got a response from the owners, and they picked up the ball again. I was able to secure another position at a different location.

Once I arrived to China, though, TN didn't seem to care that the school-provided housing was much different from the pictures and website they'd sent. It was atrocious-- urine and mold and cockroaches and pungent smoke for the first two weeks. Then the "free accommodation" that was in my contract turned out to be untrue: I had to pay about $1200 USD per month, though the school reimbursed about half of this each month later, and I had to take out a loan from the school for the housing deposit (about $3,000 USD)-- another unexpected and unpleasant surprise.

I had a more serious issue as well, which I won't go into detail here, but was shocked at the lack of compassion in the reply from my TN contact: "I am sorry to hear that it seems you are in a bad situation." Then never followed up.

After this experience, I realized why professional educators pay other (reputable) companies. It's because they vet the schools and work for you. TN works for the school to place you and then they're done. If you've never taught before and aren't a career educator, maybe it won't be as bad, but, especially if you're a woman, I would not recommend this company.