Job Discussion Forums

[Scribble]

HI all,

-I've recently been offered a post in Changchun (by an EF franchise). As an inexperianced teacher I've drawn a bit of a blank when trying to find out about the place. It seems very ..heavy industry. But frankly I'm not sure how bad a thing that is.

Does anyone know any more?

[lf_aristotle69]

[Malsol]

Changchun is just another rust belt dirty city. Nothing special. Food is heavily influenced by Korea.

[Voldermort]

I agree with malsol here. Changchun is a dirty place, cold (very very cold) in the winter, far too many mosquitos, and even more profit minded Chinese. Changchun holds far too many bad memories for me so I won't go into details about all the negative things as they would be a little biased.

On the plus side, there are lots of bars so the night life is do-able. There are a few western food shops, but don't get your hopes up as their stock is quite limited. There are many foreigners there including, Germans, Koreans, Philipinos and Russians.

I spent a few months working for EF in Changchun, though it may I have changed in recent times I doubt it very much. The other FT's were great, always willing to give support and ideas. They were well stocked on teaching materials, including past lesson plans. The TA's were just as useless as anywhere else in China. But the one killer for me, they terminated my contract with as little as 3 hours notice, and expected me to teach during that period. They also refused to pay the final salary. Their excuse was visa related. So be weary.

[7969]

[Roger]

Changchun is indeed in CHina's "rustbelt" Manchurian NE; this is the territory the Japanese industrialised and colonised, leaving behind an impressive infrastructure that has been allowed to quietly rust to its useless state of today; most businesses were SOEs, and only foreign-CHinese cooperative ones such as VW Changchun thrived and still thrive.
BUt the city isn't that dirty - or so many tell me. Maybe those SOEs that have gone out of functioning can no longer pollute the air and the water. BUt it surely must be depressing for locals who can't find new jobs.

[Voldermort]

[Malsol]

Roger this is one time I must, no - am compelled to ask you to keep your second hand smoke to yourself.

You may have heard - but, I have lived there as has another poster. I think our first hand experience trumps your hearsay second hand hot air.

Roger you are not an expert on everything!

[vikdk]

[Roger]

Of course, the Japanese industrialised and colonised it. They laid most railway tracks while others were laid by the Russians. That's not from the LP, Vikkie lassie. That's history pure!

[vikdk]

hey Rog when pondering the meaning of - impressive infrastructure - you could also look up the definition of - scorched-earth - and then consider how that and the many other destructive results of war rather erode away at that term - impressive
Hey don't worry lad, English (maybe like history) is surely a difficult subject for the Swiss - keep on practising by reading that Lonely Planet

[Scribble]

Many thanks for your help all, greatly aprechiated.

[lf_aristotle69]

[Malsol]

Changchun, like many Chinese cities, is "under construction."


Terribly dirty right now.

[sttwo]

I have missed Changchun since leaving there. I live in Shanghai now. Changchun has some sort of heating system in most dwellings. In Shanghai you have to buy electric space heaters and have a balooning winter heating bill.

I miss the dry climate in changchun;although, It's very windy. I have found Shanghai to be a very windy, city, too.

While in changchun I worked for what is now Changchun Normal University that was then Changchun Teachers' College, Raffles-LaSalle Branch at Changchun University, and at Columbia College Language Institute or something like that.

Changchun Normal University operates two programs. I worked in the English education program which once had 7 visiting teachers. The program has been scaled back effective to no more than 3 visiting teachers due to an English teacher surplus in the province. The facilities were adequate and the students better than those I've encountered thus far in less than a year in Shanghai. I didn't think so at the time. I miss those students.

The second program is something that is a joint operation between Kings College in Sydney and Changchun normal University. There is a supervisors of it who comes in from Singapore occasionally. It's only in its' second year now effective June 2006. It's some sort of cooperative plan to send people in various majors but none English to Kings' College to finish their degrees. it doesn't include any IELTS training to my knowledge and i suspect the students probably will spend a year in Sydney doing that in order to get English test scores high enough to enroll in the university. There are up to ten teachers working in that program now. This program pays better than does the English education program.

The problems at Changchun Normal University revolve the Visiting Affairs department and the assistant department head of the English department. The visiting affairs department is easily overwhelmed and would prefer that visiting teachers call on stuidents for assistance rather than call on them. Theyh do pay on time and they do reimburse airfare promptly. They pay people for both programs and they pay in cash so that you have to find the pay reprpesentative in his office in order to be paid monthly. The visiting affairs department is very slow about housing repairs. Normally they try to house everyone on campus and there is suppsed to be a new housing unit that might now be in use. They come to assess the situation and then later some working peole come to assess the situation. Then, the working people return later to try to do the repairs. being there during these three or four iterations is a bit much. They were exceptionally weak on electrical repairs. I moved out with six dead ceiling fixtures in a one bedroom apartment.

The assistant department head in the English education department means well but she is an obdurate woman who will not take suggestions. She does not divide the workload evenly. Visiting teachers teach writing, NOrth American and European culture/history/customs, and converstaion classes. Those teaching writing are overworked with homework if they actually try to teach the students to improve their writing and they need a GREAT DEAL of improvement. There are ethical questions about the culture/customs/history courses. The texts the unviersity insists on using are woefully inadequate and poorly written. They are riddle with propaganda. The teacher faces the ethical question of propagating this tripe or in teaching fact which is much more work. What's worse is that the students are expected to know the texts when they write exams to get into graduate school or for some other purpose. There is also some sort of topics in the news course that they teach sometimes for senior students.

The assistant department head refuses to divide this workload so that each of the visiting teachrs would be teaching some writing classes. She refuses to communicate with the visiting affairs department in cooperative efforts to make matters smoother for the visiting teachers and the visiting affairs department apparently refuses to communicate with her also. As a result the teachers are the last to know of anything going on to include exam schedules, sp-orts day absences, starts and ends of school vacations, often even the starts and end dates of semesters, etc. It is very difficult to plan a personal life there and the campus uses some type of security system that often makes it difficult to get filtered water delivered for your personal use. IN her defense, she has a full teaching load along with having to try to coordinate the visiting staff and their schedules and problems.

Changchun Normal University is on the edge of the city and although there are many busses they suspend service not later than 9 p.m. so going into the city is a cab trip that ranges from 25 to 100 depending on where you want to go. The bus takes 30 to 45 minutes depending on where you want to go and what time of day it is.

The Changchun Normal University Campus is very large, has at least one branch campus, has quite a range of shopping places on campus which sell things in small sizes, lots of beauty shops, and a few restaurants. I found the dining facility contractor to run a filthy operation. Most students had no choice but to eat there, but I forewent it on most occasions. This necessitated busses and cabs into stores in the city to get meat, pasta, and specialty cooking items at Walmart of Hymall or some place like that.

Raffles_LaSalle paid well but I taught a single term there becuase the students were so very weak. They appeared to be those who couldn't get into any other college or university but had enough cash to cough up for this place that is a Singaporean venture. They have gone through 'several" directors of studies since March 2004 when IO first heard of them. They pay well, pay on time, and have a nice facility. the student contact time seems odd to me. You spend four hours with a group one day and two more hours with the same group later in the weak. That is six contact hours with each student each week. The classes are normally small. They claim they prepare for IELTS level 4 but students need IELTS level 6 to enroll in an Australian university in cooperation to complete their business or graphic arts degrees. I could see that the following term I would have the same weak students I had in the level I put up with them for 3 months and I said "no thanks".

Raffles-La_Salle requires full time people to use a time clock and clock in for 43 hours a weak. This is a much hated requriement by the teaching staff and their teachers turn over as a result.ALl of the classes are supposedly conducted in English but some of the teaching staff are ethnically chinese and the English skills that the students would have to have absorbed were all of their classes actually in English do NOT indicate that all-English instruction is, in fact, occurring.

Since I left Changchun in August, Columbia College Language institute has changed location. Full time teachers had housing provided and shared it with another teacher. They run a kindergarten program I didn't work in at a different location from their older children's and older students site. They have summer and winter programs on intensive schedules, too. I worked for them on and off over the course of nearly a year. the full time teachers complained of pay disputes with them and reimbursement disputes but i neverhad any problem.

The problem that I did have from the very beginning was the "program" they use. They post this schedule a week at a time which is simple to follow It gives you a class number and the objecivbe for theclass for that day. It might be vocabulary building, writing, reading, etc. You're supposed to come up with something that fosters that and it rotate sduring the course of each day so that they see more than one teacher in one visit. The thing is that you dont' know what materials have been used by others so that you just choose htings randomly and hope that that group of students hasn't gone through that sort of thing previously with some other teacher. there is no records keeping system where anything is recorded. they seem to have an open enrollment policy so that students come and go a month at a time and it goes on until the enrollment drops to a point that they declare the class is "over".

A few teachers there have tired to put resources together and did the palce a favor. In many cases they left their own materials behind and their own books. There isn't enough though and it isn't well enough organized to find anything easily with the time that you have available to you.

Columbia has had high turnover. Several have bailed out of their contracts by disappearing. Hopefully their new loation is immediatley accessible to the housing they secure for visiting teachers because teh van ride home was inordinate and I imagine a pain for the school to maintain. Columbia did try to have teachers teach morning and afternoon or afternoon and evening so that a single trip would be required though. When your session was finished for the day you waited on teh cub for the van and they took students and you home.

I think that the availability of western goods and western specaility items is nearly as good in changchun as it is in Shanghai. I didn't find that the case when I worked in Lanzhou in Gansu. I had to buy yak butter there because there was no margarine anywhere and Australian butter was too expensive in what few outlets had western food items.

I very much enjoyed the fabric markets and the tailoring services for such reasonable prices in Changchun. Those things are at least double the price in Shanghai.

I didn't find learning to use the bus system in Changchun difficutl but one had to be "assertive" in order to get a seat. I always felt that most westerners there wasted loads in cabs needlessly. I can see saving the tiem but the gross difference in fares usually ddidn'tmake it worth it except for very heavy shopping trips or late night "excursions".