Teaching English in China

*Note: More pictures have been added to the "Around Harbin" album from Steve and I's day off. We went walking down "Walking Street" (aka Center Street), a rather long cobblestone street for strolling and shopping.

OK, if you read my previous post then you should know I have so many things floating around in my head to write about! But I will go with something concrete that everyone is probably curious of anyway... what it looks/feels like to teach English in China!

Before coming we were lured by the "22 hours per week" slogan that our school advertised, as are most people coming to China to teach English (anywhere between 16-25 hrs/week is standard). But once our month long TESOL course was over, we quickly realized that this is easily a 40+ hour per week job! 22 hours refers to the face time we have with students. So add to that the 10 minute break during every class, 'dead' time of sometimes 30 minutes up to 2 hours between classes when you can't really do anything but sit in the office or walk around the block, travel time to various campuses and branches, and [the main time eater of] lesson planning/preparation, and you have somewhere around 40 hours. So many of you are saying, "Well yeah, Jaclyn! I think a 40 hour week is pretty standard. In fact, I work a 40 hour week!" And yes, most of you do. All I'm saying is, we were mentally prepared for something closer to 22 hours and found out that this really is a full time job! I'm not complaining, just trying to let you in on some of what's going on in our lives.

But anyway, these 40 hours are spread across a 6 day week, with Steve and I having Monday off every week. In all, this makes for a really strange schedule! Yesterday I worked a helluva split shift: I had to be up and at a local university by 8:00 AM to teach one 2 hour class, then I had the rest of the day off until I went to teach 3 and 4 year olds at 5:40 PM and a one-on-one with a 16 year old girl from 7:30-8:30. So I left home at 7:30AM and got back at 8:45PM. (Did I fail to mention the 3 hour nap I took in between...?) But that has been a somewhat typical schedule for me this first month, as I am still picking up my own classes and ironing out a more permanent schedule. Steve, on the other hand, is getting close to a firm 22 hour schedule. He already has a typical foreign language school weekend schedule, with 3 classes back-to-back on Saturday and 4 on Sunday.

One side note to make before I continue talking about being a teacher... The one-on-one student that I mentioned is named Sophie. I have a one hour session with her Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays (I know, it sounds like a Jimmy Buffet concert series) from 7:30-8:30PM. She is a 16 year old girl from Harbin. For the past two years she lived in Shanghai with her parents who own a restaurant. She came back to Harbin a few weeks ago to live with her aunt, uncle, and younger cousin (as most Chinese do, she calls her cousin her 'sister' because it's the closest thing to a sister she will ever have) and attend training school for flight attendants. Although she is only 16 years old (she admits she's the youngest in her class at the school) I guess her parents thought it was her best prospect, as you can make a decent living as a flight attendant. Something that I can't really ask outright in China for fear of making her lose face, is whether or not she even had a chance to go on in public school. In China, there are 9 years of compulsory education. When you are 15 or 16 you take the Senior Middle School (equivalent of high school in America) entrance exam. I guess Sophie must not have done well on this exam, so she is destined to vocational school of some type. However, she has a very open and honest relationship with her parents and is pretty mature for a 16 year old Chinese girl, which makes me think that maybe she led a somewhat normal childhood instead of the alternative of being locked in her room to study anytime she wasn't at public school, [insert musical instrument here] lessons, or private language school. So, that is the trade off. Live a happy childhood and one day become a flight attendant, or be a slave to your school books and not enjoy your childhood and one day maybe be a doctor.

One more side note... Because I get done at 8:30 three nights a week, I get to see one of the coolest things about China three nights of the week. No matter the weather, absolutely freezing to mildly comfortable, every night a large group of elderly Chinese people (with the odd teenager or younger couple) can be found in the park/square by our school building dancing the night away! Someone brings a large stereo system and plays various types of music and the couples (or two women together if a husband is missing) waltz around the square. Everyone knows the dances, although you occasionally see a younger person being taught. I can't explain what is so cool about this, but it truly is a bit surreal everytime I see it. I always find myself wanting to just stand and stare at them(and if I was Chinese, I would do just that) but I opt to walk slowly by (alas, I'm Western!) so that I can watch just a little bit longer. Who knows, come summer I might decide to join in.

So, back to teaching. There are many feelings and thoughts that continue to run through Steve and I's minds when it comes to teaching in China. Honestly, it is too difficult to explain many of these thoughts. Interestingly, before coming I thought that Steve would take to teaching much easier than I would and that I might not really like it. However, just the opposite has happened. Steve had expressed to me many of his concerns with this occupation (ESL in China is a completely different thing than teaching in America) and then he found a website that made him feel much better, because it was written by an American psychologist who had taught English in China for several years, and it said all of the same things that Steve had been saying. (The title of this post is a link to that site, but I will also put it here: http://middlekingdomlife.com/guide/index.htm) The site is targeted toward anyone thinking of coming to China to teach English. The picture he paints is wholly accurate, so if you are at all interested in the many, many aspects of teaching in China, this website says it better than I ever could.

In case you don't have time to read that website, I'll go ahead and point out one of the main differences between China and America: the educational system. Of course, we all knew this was true and any American holds certain stereotypes of Chinese students: 1) they study a lot, 2) they are really smart, 3) they are very respectful of their teachers. In reality, these stereotypes are not completely accurate. 1) Yes, they do study, A LOT. This is by no means of their own doing. Their parents make them study and do homework. Parents also make them go to extra lessons everyday after school (before they go home and study). This is because the only thing a child can really do for their parents in this modern Chinese society is succeed in the academic world and get a really great job to support their parents when they are older. Parents are all competing with each other to have the best and brightest student. 2) But that does not mean that all Chinese children are smart! Would that make sense? In ANY setting there will always be a somewhat balanced curve of really smart-->not smart. Just because you are made to study and go to classes all the time does not make you intelligent or particulary bright. And the type of education that is provided in China turns out some of the best linear thinkers around, but lateral thinking ('outside of the box', say) is nil. So to appear smart, Chinese students are made to memorize as much material as they can, encouraged to cheat, and praised for the best rote memorization. And then they come to private school in the evenings... 3) where they experience a whole different way of learning. Foreign language schools usually focus on the listening and speaking skills of English (hence the foreign, native speaking teacher), but these skills are not what any Chinese person really wants/needs. In fact, they just want to pass a written test of grammatical skills, reading, and writing. Once they get to these lessons at a private school, as late as 6:00 or 7:00 in the evening, they are severely uninterested in learning. They look at this time as their 'free time' and would rather be reading a non-educational book or playing computer games. For many reasons (again, read the website!), they are not very respectful of the foreign teacher. We are mainly just monkeys there for their entertainment, to facilitate fun 'learning' games related to English language.

OK, so this post is getting very long. But again, the website I have provided the link for is a MUST read if you find anything in the previous paragraph of interest. Steve and I really love China and being immersed in another culture. However, teaching English has exposed us to one of the not so great facets of the culture: the educational system. It is difficult to teach students day in and day out, knowing that they would rather be anywhere but in your classroom and pitying them because they are your captive for the next 2 hours. As Steve put it, "We live in a city of nearly 10 million people and you NEVER see kids running around or playing. Those old people on the playground equipment? They should be kids. And when you do see kids their parents are two feet away, ready to wipe their hands or mouths as they try to play like a normal kid."

The best way for me to sum all of our feelings up may be like this: Many people are drawn to the teaching profession because they crave the fulfillment of imparting knowledge to and really impacting those few truly great students. But our jobs here bring little of that satisfaction, as we are ill equipped to really "teach" anything due to a number of environmental factors. We like to do things well if we do them at all, and at times it feels like that isn't even possible here.

Whew, this is such a downer post! But I don't mean it to be. The truth is, Steve and I feel incredibly lucky to be here in China. We love the food, the culture, the people, and the feeling of being somewhere that is truly unique. We knew all along that teaching English was just the catalyst to get us here. Our contracts right now do not allow for any vacation days or time off, which makes teaching a bigger part of our lives for these first six months. Come August/September, we will hopefully have signed a contract with another school with lots of vacation days built in so we'll be able to travel and see more of this magnificent country. So, you should certainly not be feeling sorry for us after reading this! That was NOT my intention for this post. I mean, we live in China! That is awesome and way cooler than anything else I could imagine doing right now! Just riding the bus around the city is an adventure here. I just wanted to bring one facet of this unique culture to light and possibly clear up some misconceptions.

And don't forget, I get to see dancing Chinese folks in down parkas every other night. Life is good...