Job Discussion Forums

[Malsol]

[gengrant]

only thing I can say is:

"yep."

[Itsme]

Everyone is to be blamed, I think.

My experience is this:

The students think class is play time so I am told to solve the problem.
I solve it, say, by making the problem students stand up for a couple of minutes. It starts to work. The next day I am told that it is against the educational system to make students stand up so I must try something else (even though I see the Chinese teachers doing it all the time.)

So I will try something else. If they get out of hand I make them transcribe phrases and words into their English notebook. Like magic, the students are quiet and they actually improve their English level. Two days later I am told that the parents are complaining and I should stop doing that.

So it really is a problem as you can see. If I do nothing the students do not learn and then I am poorly evaluated. If I do something about it the parents complain...

If the parents are happy with paying for a daycare class then that is fine. I will bring a decibel (spelling?) meter and we can try to break the previous day's record each time.

See this is how it works... Its called diffusion of responsabilty. The foreign teachers are employed by some company that is employed by the school which is in turn employed (in a way) by the parents. All little billybob or lala has to do is complain to mama or baba that English class is no fun. Then mama calls school and school calls the FT's employer. Now the ft employer could care less about anything but the RMB flowing into the bank account so they will do anything to satisfy the school and parents.

This is why you may literally hear them contradicting themselves on a daily basis.
Day one: You cannot make students stand up in China.
Day two: You should not make students write words in their notebook; try something like making them stand up.

Good luck!
I say do what you know is right. If you change your teaching method each time someone complains about it then you will get nothing done.
You are the leader now!! Accomplish your teaching goals.

[Spiderman Too]