Program Reviews

I applied with New Life in March for a position with an international school position but only just got here in August. I had plenty of time to go through the interview process, secure my Visa, and take care of everything I needed to do back home. Brendan and I talked very frequently. Almost everyday either on Skype, Facebook, email, or WeChat. He answered all my questions and helped me get mentally prepared for my new career in China.

Almost 3 months here and everything has been great! I work at an excellent public school in Guangzhou with a great staff. My kids are great. The food is great. I've made so many new friends from everywhere and I'm even learning Mandarin!

I will recommend New Life ESL to anyone that wants to work with a legit American company going through this process. They still stay in contact with me to this day and I'm thrilled to be part of the team. Thanks New Life!

I've only been here for a little over a month. So far, I've had the opportunity to visit some really nice restaurants, shopping centers, and enjoy the city's greenery. I love being outdoors and the walking to and from the metro (and literally everywhere) is forcing me to finally be able to meet those health goals I kept putting off back home.

None of this would not have been possible without the help of New Life (Thanks Monica!), who helped me to cut corners trying to get here. I'm glad I took the initiative to attempt something I have been wanting to do for some time, but did not know exactly how to make it happen. :o)

Grateful,
~g~

A friend of mine has been working in China for the past few years and she told me about Teach English in China New Life (TECNL). I applied through the company and quickly heard back from them. They wanted to get to know me and what I was looking for first. After that they put my in touch with Sea Dragon who asked me for an interview. Sea Dragon were great, a little slow, but they have had sixty new teachers join the company all within 2/3 weeks its not going to be perfect. TECNL have stayed in contact with me through the whole process and once I arrived in China have messaged me a few times to make sure everything is going well.
I would defiantly recommend both TECNL and Sea Dragon for anyone wishing to come out to China to teach.

If you are applying for a teaching position in China, do yourself a favor and have New Life help find you a job. If you're like me, you are probably doing all your research online - finding positions, reading about what it's like to live overseas and how best to make it all happen. I didn't know anything about the ESL industry and it's difficult to wade through all the garbage on the internet. One website tells you one thing and another will tell you the complete opposite, it's hard to know who and what to rely on.
Because New Life is a small company created by expats who taught overseas, they know the ropes. They will pay attention to you and your needs, and place you with a school they have already vetted. This is very important! Most recruiters in China just want to fill positions, the quality of the schools is not necessarily a high priority.
I worked with Derrick, so friendly and he was consistently available to answer all the questions I had. And I had tons of questions! The transparency of our interactions was refreshing. I landed in an awesome school that cares very much about their employees. I wouldn't work with any other recruiter and highly recommend New Life.

Hello guys,
I'd seriously recommend this agency. I was recruited by Brendan. All the way through the recruitment process it felt like I was the only person he was dealing with. He always had time for me, he was there when I had even the simplest of questions and he listened. He asked me what I wanted from a job and matched these criteria perfectly with the school I am working in now. When unluckily all my documents got lost in the post (visa+ passport) and I was panicking, he was there, consoling me and presenting my misfortune to the school. I felt like he was completely on my side. I managed to sort out the documentation in due time in the end.
Also, he went out of his way to connect me with the teachers who had already worked in the location of my destination prior to my arrival; in order to erase any doubts I had. Well, I had doubts. The job sounded too good to be true. Having dealt with quite a few agencies and read many horror stories about China I was sceptical at best.
I am here now. I’ve been here for nearly 6 months and I’m still living a dream. My job is perfectly tailored to my needs and wants. Let me tell you a bit about it. I hate waking up in the morning; so he got me a job with afternoon starts. I prefer smaller groups; none of my groups is bigger than 16 kids. I travel to work by a taxi and the school reimburses me. I am treated with an utmost respect. The kids are sweet and loving. I have a lot of free time so I can plan my lessons and create materials for them. My imagination, not time, is my limit. Not once have I been stressed or angry at work. And for that all I get paid a really decent money as for China. Every month, despite having literally lavish meals in the restaurants and getting whatever I fancy, I still manage to save more than I ever could on a bigger salary and a serious budget in the UK.
I consider myself very lucky to have found Brendan. My life is amazing because he took time to listen. Even now, after having found me the job, he periodically checks if everything is OK. He collects reviews about schools from the people he got jobs. This way he can eliminate the dodgy ones. The guy would never put you up with a dishonest employer, he himself warned me about certain malpractices concerning tourist visas.Also,he suggested installing VPN prior to my arrival and even got me a good deal on one. Without that it would have been much more difficult to survive here.
Take it from me; a person who rarely leaves good reviews. Hope to see you here soon. It is a New Life indeed.

Firstly, let's be clear. Going to teach overseas, particularly going somewhere with stark cultural differences to your home country, is always going to be a 'roll of the dice' to a certain extent. You need to do your research and choose carefully the people or organisations that are going to be in your corner long after contracts have been signed.

I've had a fair amount of experience with recruiters, both positive and negative (mostly the latter), and I sympathise with those who are keen to just bypass the process completely and go for the direct hire positions. However, if you had the experience I did with New Life, you wouldn't ever consider going it alone again. Good recruiters are rare, but they do exist. You've just found one.

Now, I want to stress that I'm not some fresh-faced graduate straight out of university. I'm a well-qualified linguist. I'm also a skeptic, if not a cynic. My standards are high and I like to give credit when they are met so comprehensively. Believe me, if the opposite was the case, I'd be equally vocal.

Brendan did a great job of tailoring the opportunities he provided to my needs. He didn't try and railroad me down a particular path that was convenient for his workload at the time of my application. This is something you'll develop a sixth sense for when dealing with most other recruiters. Unfortunately, you often have to expect not to be treated as an individual. Let's be frank - in a market as vast as this, you're likely seen as just another warm body with a degree (maybe just a warm body.. maybe just a body, who know?). Not so with New Life. Not in my experience, at least. They listened and applied zero pressure. I honestly got the impression that if they had nothing on their books that they felt was suitable for me as a candidate, they'd have told me so.

They were also able to put me directly in touch with an experienced teacher currently working at the school I am now at, a teacher who was nothing but honest and generous with his time when it came to answering my many questions. This was a teacher who had trod the same path I was about to, not a shill employed to promote the school. All of this I found very encouraging. In hindsight I was right to feel that way.

My accommodation is absolutely fine. Not much more to say. It's not a flat/block owned by the school that all foreign teachers are shoehorned into. It was rented for the purpose, and we (me+girlfriend) had some input into what was being arranged. It's paid for by my employers and is both quiet and spacious. I live less that five minutes walk from my school. My work/life balance and overall quality of life is pretty high in the grand scheme of things.

Our branch principal handles much of our day-to-day needs/requests/queries/confusions. She has been beyond excellent. If all such schools had someone like her at the helm, English teaching would be a lot more popular. Problems, sometimes quite serious ones, were sorted within a matter hours. Pay is never late. Our teaching schedules are generally not messed around with with little or no notice. Perhaps most importantly (for me, anyway), we're allowed to plan our classes off the premises and office hours are absolutely minimal. I'm waiting for some sort of sting in the tail, but it's been many months now, so I can only assume it's not coming.

So, I've no hesitation in recommending New Life. I can't vouch for their work across the board, but I can tell you that my experience has been an overwhelmingly positive one. If we do choose to move on at the end of our contracts, it won't be due to any deficiencies in the school or the recruiters. I can say, however, that New Life will be a likely first port-of-call as and when we next seek employment. If you're in that boat right now, whether just starting out or having been 'around the block' a few times, give these guys a try.

Whoever you go with, I hope you have the best time. Good luck!

From the get-go, Brendan was on hand a responsive in helping to place me in a teaching job I'm Beijing for the summer.

He listened to what I really wanted and was attentive and conscientious in putting me in touch with a school of my choice.

I cannot reccommend ESL enough, the notorious email spam I got from other recruiters paled in comparison. You get the impression that Brendan really cares where you go and about your experience in China.

I have always dreamt about teaching abroad and this company made my dream a reality. I wanted something different then teaching English in a traditional classroom with 25-30 students. I was looking for an organization that I could bring my experiences in teaching and help grow the organization. Brandon knew of a school that would be a perfect fit for me! He fascinated introducing me to the company and was there throughout the whole process to help and offer guidance. When I arrived in Beijing, he met me at the airport and brought me to my hotel which to me was above and beyond! He even spent his eveing showing me around Beijing and helping me get acclimated to my new surroundings. I would highly recommend this company for anyone interested in teaching abroad!

I went through Monica at New Life ESL when my partner and I found our first jobs overseas in China this past fall. We had spoken with recruiters before, and it turned out that some of them were difficult to reach, questionably organized, and willing to say just about anything to secure a deal and move on to the next candidate.
Monica is very experienced and well-informed about what it means to be a teacher in China. She was happy to answer any questions we had throughout the entire process, and worked very diligently to find the best possible match for us in terms of working hours, type of school, and location in China.

Apart from helping kick-start communication with potential employers in China, Monica is also able to advise new travelers to China about bureaucracy, culture, living situations, food, and the Internet.

As an American organization, New Life ESL is especially well-suited to assisting Americans through the particulars of making a long-term stay in China a reality, and I'd recommend them to any westerner ready to trade hemispheres while teaching cool students and learning more about the world first-hand than they ever imagined possible.

Final note: much to its credit, New Life carefully selects its partner schools to ensure certain essential factors (a legal working status - "Z visa," opportunities to speak with current or former teachers prior to making a decision about a school, etc.) are in place and being provided to potential foreign candidates.

New Life personnel are easily reachable through their website, and I recommend that you begin a conversation immediately, if you've ever thought about teaching abroad.

My name is Anastasia and I am currently (December 2015) 28 years old.

I had been teaching English as a foreign language for the last five years in my home country, Greece before I came to China. I was a private tutor and my schedule usually consisted of more than six hours per day (including Saturday) of constant teaching in the students' houses. The pay was nothing extraordinary for a country that has the Euro. Add to that the economical crisis that came to Red Alert in the summer of 2015 and leaving was a one-way route in life for me.

Now, I must be honest: my life in Greece was far more comfortable for me than for most of the people in my age. Where they had no future and job hunting was limited to government programs that never paid on time and rarely the total amount, I was sure to have an income which would allow me to pay for my own social life... because I was still living with my parents. And I had no social security, because paying for it would swallow more than 50% of my income.

When the capital controls were imposed during the summer of 2015, I was already in the talks of leaving Greece and going to China to teach. The idea came to be from a friend, who had managed to find a job a year previously. Having already had agreed to teach many students that year, I didn't grab the opportunity immediately; the year was already scheduled for me. But, for the whole school year 2014-2015, I was thinking about it. It was my fifth year of going from house to house with no breaks and no guarantee that my students would even be there when I arrived, because the ballet schedule had changed and the family had forgotten to notify me. Five years of the same routine can take a toll on you. And take a toll on me they did. I longed for something different, even for a little while. The capital controls was the last push and my parents agreed to support me in this decision, even if China was "too far away from home" as they said. It was the ideal time, the golden opportunity that might not appear a second time.

I arrived in Beijing not knowing any Chinese and with a suitcase. Looking back, I don't want to live through the first month again, but also, I know it was worth it. I'm on my fourth month here and I feel secure and comfortable. I have made friends and I have become better in my classes. The totally different educational system of China is gradually being ingrained in my mind and I know that next year I will be a better teacher.

Because I am definitely going to stay for at least another year in China. Maybe even two.

And I know that no matter, I can get a good opportunity because the people in New Life Esl are searching for me. When they first told me "this would be perfect for you!" the cynic in me just shrugged and applied the words to them being what agents usually are: supportive and enthusiastic, so that they will get the money when the job will be done. I went for it out of desperation and longing for something new.

I know now that they know what they are doing and really, they are doing this for me. I haven't paid them anything from my pocket and I would trust them with my future, for their most important qualifications are the ones that should be for any agent worth their salt: knowledge and honesty. They told me that it would be the perfect beginning for me and it was. They told me that the school would get me the working visa and it did.

To the rest of the school year and for many years to come, New Life Esl. I hope we'll continue working together.

~ Anastasia