Job Discussion Forums

[wangdaning]

Not putting you all down, but also not seeing anyone going from not leaving their hometown to working in China. I guess if your hometown is a uni town maybe it could happen. I have been to three states in the US and China. That is the extent of my travel. When I first arrived in Guangdong, years ago, a rat running down the ally told me all I needed to know. This will not be good

Not in Guangdong anymore

[Merging Traffic]

[paris1234!]

I am glad that I taught at Phoenix City International School (PCIS) as it expedited my return to Australia. Working at PCIS is great if you only want to teach about 3 hours a day and 5 hours in the office. But if you have a teaching degree you might want to opt to go elsewhere. This is how hard it is to get a job in PCIS, are you white? Congrats you have a job! The school doesn’t need ‘teachers’ they need white people (or close enough to it) to spend time with a class of students to give their parents’ a higher status. You are a trophy, not a teacher. However, it pays well to be a trophy. Just remember that they don’t care about your suggestions. Whether it is hygiene and sanitation, helping teachers to teach or classroom management you are a trophy don’t forget. Coming from Australia I was a little naïve, as teachers are treated well and are supported, what is number 1 priority is the management style. So if you want to do actual teaching or have support, my advice is you find any other school other than PCIS. I will give you an example of the kind of support the school provides. Just before I left the school forced all the Chinese teachers to buy a Mac book for the following semester if a teacher were too poor or refused to buy one they would be fired. The only support they provided was giving the Chinese an extra $200 a year to pay for the MacBook. After five years of being at PCIS they would recoup their costs.

The school is parent-centric and not student-centric, it is in a rich neighbourhood filled with nostalgic parents who want their kids to have the same incompetent education they had. (Not saying that the foreign teachers don’t do a good job, the Chinese teachers are paid around 1600 RMB a month and they are not able to retain any of the good Chinese teachers. One particular Chinese teacher would give 3 hours worth of homework if their homework was not what he classified as adequate). The foreign staff are nice and friendly but don’t talk about the problems at the school or how to fix them with the administration (foreign or Chinese) as most of them don’t care and will get upset if you push for the most basic changes, such as students having access to soap.

This has not been posted maliciously, but to inform other teachers about the school, as if I had known what it was really like, I would have gone elsewhere.

TLDR; find another school if you want to be in a supportive environment that cares about its teachers and students.

P.S. As I know that the staff from PCIS will read this, the staff I met last year, I want to thank you for your support and friendship. I know that some of you are working hard to make the school better but the Chinese management system is not consultive nor collaborative. This is not aimed at the foreign teachers at all, but the overall management and structure of the school.

[Shanghai Noon]

[paris1234!]

I would just like to add that I was misled by the school and the recruitment agency. It stated in my contract that I would be a science teacher, not an ESL teacher, but quickly found out it was the latter.

If you have been an ESL teacher in Asia, you will most likely find the school to be similar to other ESL schools. However, I came from Australia as a trained teacher and expected to teach science in China, but that was not the case.

I stand by what I said, but when I said that the education is incompetent that is because the school is proud that it is one of the first Chinese IB schools (not because the foriegn teachers can't teach). Meaning that the students spend most of their time learning in Mandarin (which is ridiculous as most students will go to Western countries). The teaching styles of the Chinese teachers is definitely inadequate and do not know to cope correctly with classroom managment. However, the school has very limited support for its teachers and due to the low salary most of the good Chinese teachers go to other schools.

TLDR; probably similar to other ESL schools in China.

[Shanghai Noon]