Teach English in Shanghai help needed

Hello everyone.

I'm looking for some help and advice about teaching English in Shanghai. Having graduated university (with little chance of a town planning job) I'm currently studying on a 150hour online Tesol course and learning Mandarin in my spare time. My reasons for choosing China is that it seams to pay very well (in terms of the quality of life one would be able to afford) compared to with teaching other countries. I also have a couple friends who had a great year teaching in China.

I'm just wondering if anyone can recommend some schools/universities in Shanghai as from reading various forums there seams to be a number of unscrupulous employers out there. I've been searching around on the internet and I'm just a bit overwhelmed by all the schools/agencies. I'm looking for a ‘relaxed' working environment where I wont be worked into the ground and receive a fair pay. To speed the process up I was hoping to apply for jobs before completing my course having heard it takes around a month to sort out all the details like visas etc.

It would also be nice to hear of peoples experiences of working in China and any advice that they would like to give.

Thanks.

Hi 1867_owl,

Welcome on Expat-blog! :)

I hope you get replies very soon.

I wish you good luck,
Christine

I know you said you were looking for school and unfortunately, I don't have any... was hanging out here in hopes that someone would answer your question so when the recruiter I'm working with finds schools for me, I'll know which ones to avoid. Don't know how you feel about working with a recruiter, but the one I'm working with is teachingnomad.com/ - so far they seem pretty good, but I'm still in the preliminary stages, so of course I can't say for sure. Still, u might want to check them out. Also, you may be able to get your questions answered more readily at - internations.org/ - I've joined and made a few connections with teachers in China and the people there have been good at answering my questions.
Sorry I don't have more info, but I hope this helps!