Job Discussion Forums

[Roger]

Miss Dvla,
the harshness of Chinese education as describedf by TalkDoc is a reality that you will have to accept. Chinese derive endless pride from their "ability" to make everyone believe they are "busy" studying or working - putting in endless hours on their respective jobs - for students: to ingest "knowledge", for adults" to make money. There is no, or very, very little appreciation for life's sunnier apsects, pleasures other than food uptake, sleep and other basic functions. Music, arts, sports - forget these! Students typically put in half a day of sedentary work, poring over books, chorusing after their teacher, thinking and acting in unison -never outside the box, and rarely of their own.
That is why I said you should stick to some rules the Chinese apply themselves. As a former poster routinely said here, "teacher first, friend second" - don't allow discipline to slacken because that would inevitably be interpreted as your weakness!
Suicide rates are indeed very high; I have now been here long enough to have been exposed to situations in which people were directly impacted by such a tragic event - you might see a chair and a desk unoccupied or you might be told that today's classes are cancelled due to some incident beyond the control of the powers-that-be... or there might be a big commotion in your school, and you might catch the gist of the goings-on through some students.

Don't forget, your students are not the same age as TalkDoc's: his students are university students. If I am well-informed he has never taught at a secondary or primary school. You will therefore have larger classes, and your students will want to explore the limits of their freedoms. If you offer a little finger of your hand they will take your whole body! you will also be severally judged by your colleagues and by Chinese parents who all have DIFFERENT expectations on a teacher than you have. You will enjoy less respect as a teacher than a CHinese person because Chinese techers get hired "because they know" everything, or it is thought they do.
And don't be misled by the concept of "interesting topics"; this is not an objective criterion, and pleasing 50 students with an "interesting topic" is well nigh impossible. Give two Chinese a choice between two options they will come up with 3 counter suggestions!

[Magoo]

I agree entirely with the previous posters about taking your classes seriously. I'm a marvel at creating classes out of thin air, purely because I worked for a private school which would spring new classes on teachers, with the most ridiculous, photocopied 'textbooks'. There is, however, no substitute for good preparation (with, of course, room for manoeuvre).
As has been said, being an 'edutainer' just won't wash, even with my current, primary school kids.
In my first school, here (genuinely famous, incredibly difficult to get into), my predecessor had been a laid-back dude who played films in EVERY class. The poorest, least interested classes loved it. The best students despised him for wasting their time. I took my best two classes of 14 year-olds and taught them rudimentary etimology, for which I was roundly scorned. A few months later, their Chinese teachers said that they couldn't believe the eagerness of the students to learn English. I was keen to teach them, so they were keen to learn.
Re TalkDoc: The words 'learn' and 'study' are synonymous in Chinese, which partly explains their crazy attitudes towards education (look for Old Dog's thread on the Off-Topic forum about Pearls of Wisdom. Kindly ignore my rant).