Gypsy

The World Academy - King Abdullah Economic City Do you like getting ripped off? Is teaching just a hobby for you? Is incompetence and racism your thing? If so, you'll love working at The World Academy. If not, then stay very far away from what barely qualifies as a school. I cannot begin to tell you what a total scam working for this place is. There were no teaching supplies, including books, available for the courses I was supposed to teach. I asked about that and was told to buy them myself and I would be reimbursed. Shockingly, my reimbursement request got “lost” over seven times before I gave up. I was told I'd have free Internet in my apartment. It was never installed, no matter how many times I complained about it. I was also told I'd be reimbursed for my travel expenses to get to the school and for the cost of my visa. That never happened either. My paycheck was always late – it took almost six months just to get my first check – but in some respects I'm considered lucky because I know of at least one teacher who wasn't paid at all. The general purpose of the administration seems to be to bully people until they quit, or act out – so they can be fired without having to pay them. You can expect to work far more than your contracted hours and say goodbye to your planning periods, because every time someone is sick or quits you'll be asked to take over their classes without any extra pay. The only teachers who were treated even remotely decently by The World Academy were Arab. Why they decided to hire many non-Arab teachers even though they hate us is beyond me. I'd try to talk about academic standards, but there simply aren't any to be found. It's a wasteland where I almost got the feeling they'd rather the students simply stopped coming so they could save money by shutting the school down. Which is a shame, because the students and their parents are mostly really great. I've taught at many schools around the world, and never seen a place as poorly administered as The World Academy. Also, there is absolutely nothing near the school for what little free time you do have. Although I guess you can watch Saudis flagrantly break the law in public, just because they can, if you get really bored. The World Academy is like some weird alternative nightmare fantasy created by a Hollywood director who wanted to frighten people away from the teaching profession.