Job Discussion Forums

[hdeth]

So I'm just about to sign my third contract, unless something disastrous happens. Only thing that could derail it is I will talk with one of the teachers there and if they say the place is horrible I'll vamoose. But I can't imagine they would pick someone who would say the school is horrible. Everyone I talked to seemed pretty intelligent and spoke and wrote excellent English. I have a backup offer with very similar terms.

Anyways, this is a little rambling, but hopefully helps someone.

So year 1, uni gig in Qingdao. I had visited Qingdao before and for my first gig I wanted something in a place I at least knew a little about. It was a big move for me. 5k/month I think and 2bdrm apartment, everything else pretty vanilla. It was OK but I was teaching 1st and 2nd year non-english-majors and that was kinda rough/monkey-ish. Basically just doing oral drills and exercises based on the textbook the Chinese teachers used. I also taught an academic course for the marketing department and that was...interesting. The students' English improved markedly by the time the class was done, but it was a slog with around 80 students in each class who were forced to do the class. They tried pretty hard and I was surprised how good some of their finals were. The oral English classes...well what can you do meeting a group of 50 kids for 2 hours a week every other week? They were frustrating because it felt the work I did wasn't going to help them pretty much at all. But they were cheerful and liked having a foreign teacher (most had never had one before) so that could have been worse.

Lessons I learned:
5,000 or 5,500 or whatever they paid me is jack for a university gig.

Teaching non-English-majors can be really frustrating because there's so little progress.

Make sure to know how the school wants the students graded ASAP. I was told they had to do at least some homework after I had finished with one set of students.

Related to that, I'm not sure I'd bother assigning garded homework to university students unless they're really serious students, maybe at some famous university. Much of it was copied and going through 1,000 homework assignments and figuring out which were copied was extremely frustrating.

Also related to that, make sure you explain assignments thoroughly, both orally and in writing, and then ask the students individually to explain the assignment to make sure they understood. It's time consuming, but trust me, it's worth the time. It will get quicker as time goes on.

Don't get hitched too quickly, especially if the guy or girl speaks excellent English. It will impair your desire to learn Chinese. Plus there are lots of options in China and you may regret not understanding your value later (I kinda do sometimes, but then I hear stories...or some guy takes a photo of us hanging out to show he's not with a woman).

Second job: teaching at an expensive private 'international' school in beijing. Started out fine. I started in the end of winter teaching grade 12 and basically all the students who didn't want to be in class didn't come to class (they'd already finished their college application and figured they were done). All the motivated students remained. Same for spring term. The following fall (this semester) I had the middle of the road students of the lowest grade. They were not horrible but some of them had very little motivation to do anything. I have some students who've done 0/6 assignments I've graded and failed the test I gave them around mid-term. About half of one class is failing and doesn't care. Almost all their actual grades that matter come from school-wide exams.

15k/month, nice apartment, airfare reimbursement scheme that was annoying, but otherwise pretty standard.

What I learned:
Higher pay isn't always the best thing. Once you factor taxes in, working evening classes, lots of office hours, BS meetings where the owner rambles on for half an hour about nothing, bosses who want to get into your personal life, etc., etc. I'm not sure it's worth it.

It was frustrating knowing how much was being paid in tuition and the product that was being delivered. Management was incredibly disorganized and this con artist of a "curriculum designer" who every teacher felt was utterly incompetent kept changing what we were supposed to teach from one unsuitable thing to something even more unsuitable.

Living on the outskirts of a major city really is not much fun. I would rather live at the center of a smaller city. Yeah there's Sanlitun which is kind of fun for dinner but I don't want to spend 2 hours each way getting there just to have dinner. Depends how much you're willing to commute I guess. I have co-workers who commute an hour or more to work each day. That's not what I came to China to do.

Public transportation kinda sucks. I didn't have an ebike this year and deeply regret it. There are a couple nice restaurants I've found but they're 15-30+ minutes walking and about the same by bus. In that time I can cook my own food that's just as good. But if I had an ebike some of those places that are 30 minutes away would be more like 10 minutes or less away and I'd go there frequently. I feel like this really dissuaded me from going out as much, which has reduced my Chinese ability to very basic survival Chinese. One of the things I love about China is eating good street food or what have you and getting something great for almost nothing.

Related to that, Beijing is one of the most boring cities I've been in China. It is, imho, a polished turd. They adopt a bunch of perceived western values and then cover it with smog. There's barely any street food and everything I've had is very poor quality. Some really good restaurants but especially the western ones can be very expensive for what they are.

Contract 3:
11k/month, 2bdrm apt, pretty standard airfare/travel, some small side benis. In the central part of one of the smaller cities in Guangdong. Teaching 2nd year+ English majors teaching oral and written English. AC in the classrooms.

I am hoping this job will be a nice balance. The writing classes will be more work than some uni gigs but the pay is pretty decent and I can hopefully block up my work more so I have less wasted time. We'll see I guess. I'm optimistic. We loved the food in Guangzhou and I would think a city a couple hours away would have similar style of food except for western restaurants (which we don't care that much about...we can make pretty much any western food between us). Particularly looking forward to dim sum restaurants and BBQ pork. There's some Chinese mustard that's called the same Chinese word as wasabi I found that would be perfect with the Cantonese style BBQ pork.

Anyways, sure I rambled, but hopefully helped some newbie a bit. Happy to name names by PM but would prefer the general public doesn't know the school's name. Happy to answer any other questions anyone might have publically though.

[guobaoyobro]

Awesome! Good to hear.

I'm sure it's tough to look back on positively, but that year in Beijing sounds like it was a good saving year (hopefully?) and a good lesson in what you do and do not like.

Personally, I hope to do what you did, but skip year 2.

I'm way north, and am aiming for Guangdong for my second year.

Let us know how it all goes!

Also, check out the music venue B10 / Old Heaven books if you're ever near Shenzhen!

[Non Sequitur]

I think all of us with a couple of years exp can slot into one or more of your situations.
Good to see you pointing to the fact that extra dough doesn't always mean extra satisfaction.
If your service in China has been continuous then you 5/5500 pm gig was around 2 years ago.
At least one other poster will be apoplectic at that and tell you so.
Agree about BJ.
Would it be too much of a push to say that your 'low pay, low stress' first gig eased you into the China scene and gave you the personal skills to stand the later ones?

[hdeth]

I'm set to save around 18k USD this year. We went on vacation for about 3 weeks in China in the winter and about 5 weeks in Vietnam during the summer. I don't work during the breaks.

Due to some fairly unique circumstances I had only visited Qingdao in China (and the Qingdao of nearly 10 years ago was a lot wilder than it is today). I was basically thinking I could handle that, but I don't know about the rest of China. There weren't many job offers from Qingdao and the pay is very low there but I took it because it was someplace I knew a little about and thought I could enjoy for a year or two. By the end of the job I was kinda bored out of my mind because the classes weren't intellectually stimulating and I'd had tons of free time to watch all the TV shows, movies, etc., that I'd missed at my regular job in the US.

I would recommend a uni gig to anyone who has something to fill their spare time with. Whether that's losing weight and getting in shape, writing the next great novel, blogging professionally, or whatever. I have started to really get into writing, and especially after reading Stephen King's "On Writing," the uni gig is much more appealing. How someone works full time and writes is a bit beyond me, but hats off to them.

Honestly I'd say working at an 'international' school is about as close as I've gotten to an American lifestyle. I have ~500 co-workers who speak English fluently. We've got some groups set up for people with different interests. People work long hours and often have long commutes. Beijing is so sterile and the school is so remote you don't get much of Chinese culture. Wing night at a local bar, order in pizza...I'd say this would be a good job for someone who wants to teach abroad but stay as close to the American lifestyle as possible. Plenty of people to help you out, give you directions, point you in the right direction, etc. At a uni you're basically on your own.

Emphasis on the last sentence. At a uni, for the most part, you're on your own. There are good and bad aspects to that. It really depends on the person.

[Dan123]

Do you mind if I ask you about your qualifications? And were these jobs in China your first ESL jobs?

[hdeth]

[Blue Skies]

Look to talk to some teachers of your own choosing, not those fed to you. Of course find the foreign teachers to talk with and also google the school name along with the key words of "complaints and scam". Good luck and Happy Holidays!

[Xie Lin]

Thanks, hdeth, for posting such detailed information. It's an excellent, very useful thread.