Job Discussion Forums

[chinasyndrome]

What ho, chaps!

On the 'Why stay teaching in China' thread Roger made a comment about the topic posted above. Hamish also had a few things to say on this, and I think it could be an interesting one to explore. Of course, let's look at both sides of the issue. Gotta go now and will come back later, but maybe one of you can get the ball rolling.

[Minhang Oz]

OK Les, as you're busy trying to fix my avatar, I'll begin.
In the teaching culture I come from, stability is an important feature. We all begin again when we move to a new school - find out how things work, get the respect of our colleagues and students and so on. It's a trying time, and nobody wants to do it too often. Years two and onward tend to be highly productive.
The situation here is different though. Neither party knows what they're getting, and often one or both are disappointed, in which case a one year contract is plenty. For some FT's that was all they intended; a year to "do" China, then back home, or on to fresh fields.
But a number of us, on this site at least, are career teachers. We just happen to be in a country we've chosen, for a myriad of reasons, and we'd like the security, career structure [that's another issue] and challenge we'd get at "home".
I really think sensible administrators in Chinese schools are beginning to realise this. Maybe we're a relatively new breed they haven't encountered before. I've only been in two schools, and each has offered me an extended [2 or 3 year] contract after the first year. And that's not big-noting myself as a super teacher, rather just one willing to make a longer term commitment than most.
Hamish commented on this on another thread. Who's next?

[Jed]

On the 'Why stay teaching in China' thread, Roger wrote:-

[ESL Guru]

May I stop swinging in the trees and eating bananas just long enough to remind you monkeys (that is said with great love and affection) that the current law of China (that is at the National level which is controlling on the Provinces) restricts FE contracts to one year.

My school hired me mid-semester for various reasons that are not germane to the issue. However, to avoid my contract expiring mid-semester, they wrote it for more than one year.

As the contract end (that is the one year end) approached, I advised of my intent to depart. That caused a little stir. They learned that I was right and then came the bonus offer if I would finish the semester.

One school offered a 10 year contract. When I asked them about the current law, they had no idea. Then they checked and no 10 year contract!

[Roger]

Thank you, chinasyndrome, for your PM! Now I see what the discussion is all about! It is an interesting topic!

We all are agreed then that one year is the normal thing. And, most of us would love to stay longer, preferably with the same school.
Few manage to secure themselves a second term with the same employer. In my first college in China, they had a seven-year veteran who was able to keep his job mainly because his brother was a big cheese at an US university that maintained scholarly exchange with that Chinese college. When he tried to get his eleventh one-year contract, the PSB turned him down (maybe it was his tenth), saying that only Chinese nationals can work at the same school for such a long time!
He got a new job somewhere else. But this shows what someone else pointed out: There is a legal restriction. Back in the early 1990's, I often heard from peers how counterproductive this restriction was, and that schools lost a lot of resources recruiting newcomers that had first to be broken in, so to speak! Many of them left after a short while (of course!).
These days, this complaint is weaker but the restriction has not gone away. Informally I have heard that some people have managed to get a multi-year contract (hard to believe, but changes are afoot in China!). To begin with, Shanghai is set to be the first jurisdiction in China to offer so-called 'green cards" which make the applying for a work visa superfluous. They will be as good as multiple-entry, multi-year visas.
The advantages are obvious: More job security, perhaps the beginning of some upward mobility, and long-lasting effects on the local teaching culture for the benefit of students!

Meanwhile, I still have to apply for a work visa (through my employer, of course) every year. Even marriage with a local does not do away with this! It is crazy that you can have a Chinese partner for life (and she can join you in your home country for good), but you can forfeit your residency rights by dint of having an unsympathetic employer and a little bad luck with the law!

Recently I saw an advert offering two-year tourist visas in Hong Kong. The price is lower than the price for a one-year, multiple-entry Z visa!

[chinasyndrome]

Thanks, guys. I don't want to get bogged down in the 'my contract says' stuff (but support your right to do it if you want). In terms of the '1 year only law' I was told some time ago by a Law Professor in the local university here that it is not set in stone but was issued as a guideline, as most things seem to be. He seemed to be quite clear on the topic as he's the guy who wrote the contracts for FTs at that uni and a few others up north.

It seems that there are several ways to approach this, and one favoured way is to write an extension option into the original contract, where future pay rises etc can also be noted. This would, ideally, mean that there is little or no need to renegotiate after 1 year. Even long service bonuses can be put into the original document. The idea suggests something like a commercial property lease in the 1 x 1 x 1 sense.

Back to the original and broader subject. On face value, the biggest benefits of longer term contracts are stability and continuity. There's always a danger of staleness creeping in, but that can happen after a month and isn't time-specific. Hamish made some excellent points in his other post and I hope he'll expand on them here. Roger will be joining us later.

Interestingly, it generally tends to be the older applicant with a clearer life picture who is looking at staying and making a longer-term contribution to education and potentially, the school at which they crash-land. That's not to say that younger blood seeking new experiences should be discounted or discouraged. I think there could be an excellent mix of both.

It would be interesting to note the Chinese take on this idea, too. Last year I had a chat with an Education Bureau director along similar lines, and he felt it was the FTs themselves who were controlling the issue. That is, FTs don't want to stay in one place; they want to travel. We all know the broad generalizations we make about them and they make about us. What's true for their local FT must be true for all FTs. I'll see if I can check into this further, and maybe a few of you who are on speaking terms with your bosses could do the same.

If you're interested we might also talk about strategies to get yourself more involved in the decision-making process at the school. Not always possible, I know, but not impossible either.

Cheers!

[ESL Guru]

Roger:

After one year of marriage you qualify for a "D" visa that will eliminate the problem.

[Hamish]

[arioch36]

If I stay in China for many more years I would not be disheartened. I would like to stay at one school, for personal and academic reasons.


Social stability, getting to know your co-workers, having a home instead of a room. I feel by the time I truly get organized it is time to pack and leave. I justb start knowing the srudents. The students always ask you stay. I don't know how much of this is sincere, but too some / amny of them, they barely know their parent, they spent all day at school in high school, and some stability would be good for them too.

Every school has been slightly different goals , methods, ways of doing (or not doing ) things. Right now, if I sayed at my current school, I have a very good idea of what I would teach, how I would teach, what I think should be done, etc. So much wasted time. I am just coming to know what resources are available, how best to use them. Just last month the school agred that the language lab should be allowed to go on the world wide web (until then, China only)

I now have my computer set up, my home office set up. I know the local buses. I know the local officials. There are civic possibilities I am working on. I have a side private school, four hours a week, real classes, I would like to continue.

Contstant changes of school is one of the main reason I would stop teaching in China

[chinasyndrome]

Thanks guys. We generally seem to be agreeing that longer-term jobs offer a lot more depth for all concerned. Jed made some good points and I hope he comes back and gives some more.

This afternoon I asked the 2 head honcho's here if I could have a very casual non-business meeting with them to talk about this. They wholeheartedly agreed. At least where I am it seems that everyone wants the same things but no one's talking about it. It surprised our school no end that so far 4 of the team have stuck their hands up to keep going long term. That hasn't been the school's experience in the past, so I guess they just quietly figured that a year is all we have in us. If you've got the relationship with your leaders, this might be a good 'social' topic to bring up. Do they really know what you think?

Might also be a good opportunity to 'think out loud' about how you can work with them more closely. I'm not trying to direct the traffic on this one, but I've noticed that we and others often post about unresponsive management, etc, and maybe that's only partially true. We know they're basically not good planners, so maybe they don't really have a long term vision or a clear understanding of how to achieve it if they do.

A month or so ago I wrote a serious/fun document called 'How to host a meeting', after another interminable one were we did the 'fly with one wing' routine. I kept it lighthearted but honest, and now just about every manager in the school has a translated copy. They genuinely think it's manna from heaven. Until then I just thought they were clueless, but after that I realized I'd assumed they knew how to do it but were resisting it. Meetings now take place with a copy of the document on the table, and they refer to it often.

There's more to it than this, but I don't want to do a 50,000 word Canuklehead thesis, so can someone else put an oar in please?

[Wolf]

[
Retired people are good for schools…

First, because they, at their advanced age, understand that three years ain’t no time at all. In fact, three years is over in a blink. Young people are wrapped up in their social life and their PLANS for the future and all too often see their Chinese experience as a something to get through as they go where they think they really want to be. I have lost count of how many times, in my brief experience thus far in China, I have heard a young teacher say, “this job will look good on my resume when I apply for a job in _________.” We need more people here who have come to contribute to this place rather than being focused on what they expect to take away. As an aside, I have seen too many young teachers who can’t seem to understand that, as teachers, a sexual relationship with their student is unprofessional, at least. (Clearly a related, but different, subject.)

As a young teacher, I would have to agree. I'll be frank. I don't think I'll stay much longer than my contract. Why? A word of advice: don't move to rural China and THEN sign up for a distance learning MA from England that will eat up all your salry and leave you 1000 rmb a month to live on. I can afford to sit in my appartment and survive this summer. I have no way out of it. I don't want to do it again if I can help it. I'll NEED a higher paying job (likely in another coutnry) if I plan to do anything other than work or study between now and the end of my MA which is, interestingly enough, about 3 years from now. I like China and I LOVE my job, but I truly am schizophrenic. One day I'm happy another, well I'm not. An older, more exprienced person, especially one with something resembling financial secrurity might be able to each with more impunity.

Second, because they actually have some experience with life, hopefully, they can be taught to empathize with the extraordinarily difficult conditions most, if not all, of the students they encounter in class have lived through. For most Americans, life in a Chinese rural town or village is unimaginable. It is important that the teacher have the opportunity to visit students in their homes so that this reality can be grasped. In my experience, none of the teachers I have met have taken time to go home with their students during a break in classes, or even for a weekend. The idea that this is an important lesson is more easily communicated to a person who has some experience with life. The young teachers I have met here show no interest in doing much with their spare time beyond heading to the big city, and jumping from bar to bar.

I don't know. I've been to co worker's homes (not my boss the run of th mill Chinese teachers.) I don't think sympathy for those who cannot enjoy the standard of life many of us know/knew is limited to the old. The younger you are when you learn of this first hand, the better I say. I know MANY baby boomers whose "conern" over China's lower stardard of living is little better than distain, and more than one teenager who is truly interested/concened (Canadians.)

A long-term commitment from the school is good for teachers…

Teachers benefit because they can establish a home and are viewed differently by their colleagues. There is a profound qualitative difference between coming to China, living out of one’s suitcase, eating at KFC and MacDonald’s, and counting the days until the departing flight home leaves, on the one hand, and planning to be here for an extended period on the other. The difference is not one of quantity of time spent so much as it is a difference in worldview. I think schools, both public and private, NEED teachers to stay here for extended periods so that they begin to feel that the place is theirs. Both parties to the contract will benefit when foreign teachers are around a school long enough to be recognized as individuals and contributing members of the community.

I agree. Except with the eating at KFC bit. WHO CAN AFFORD TO EAT THERE?! HAVE YOU SEEN THEIR PRICES?! I'm not going there. Ever. Not in the PRC. If you don't feel stable in your life, you won't teach as well. If you have a long term commitment, then there is much more of a motive to do your job well.

[ESL Guru]

It is really great to see serious thought given to this issue.

Maybe the most important thing said so far is that we assume they know but in fact they are clueless.

This applies to so many things we take for granted.

[Roger]

I do not know, but I have a strong feeling that few Chinese schools would like to keep their expat staff for several years. Considering the intra-social dynamics in a CHinese school - which often is more than a mere school, it may be a social unit, a village unto itself - we might be unwelcome yeast.
In my first three or four years, I often heard from other expats they thought they were not welcome to stay because they might question the wisdom of long-held practices, habits, rules and decisions.

Besides, our Chinese colleagues have to put in a lot more time - a lot of it totally unremunerated - in teacher meetings and evening class supervision work. We also get a nominally-higher salary, which might make some of our local colleagues justifiably jealous.
We have travelled a long way in CHina over the last few years, and in many schools it is difficult to see vestiges of socialism and of the all-mighty Party's power. Yet, our colleagues probably still know who is calling the shots in this country. We might just be unwelcome witnesses...

[ESL Guru]

Roger, as usual, has a valid point.

However, in addition to your Expert Certificate, Resident Card, Marriage Book and "D" visa, things change when you also receive your "Working Unit I.D. Card."

[chinasyndrome]

[quote="Roger"]