A Lesson in The Life of a Very Stable TEFL Genius

“Okay everyone, sit down.… Can anyone remember what “sit down” means?”

It’s at this point that I realise the little darlings probably aren’t going to listen to me, and most likely will continue to eat crayons and poke each other in the eye for most of the lesson unless drastic action is taken.

I look over at the Chinese teacher, who is supposed to assist me in these moments. She is already several kitty filters deep on WeChat (China’s version of Whatsapp/Facebook/Twitter combined) so clearly I am once again on my own. 

I brace myself.

“Who’s ready for Wheels on The Bus?!?!”

A stampede of little feet rush towards the projector screen in front of which I had stood unnoticed for five blissful minutes. 

Some more excited than others for English class.

Over an hour - and what feels like several hundred renditions of The Wheels on The Bus and Old McDonald - later, I’ve been cuddled, prodded, slapped across the face and kissed multiple times by my class of gorgeous two year old babies. One child won't stop punching whoever stands beside him, one peed themself and another fell over for no apparent reason and started crying. I have one punch-victim on my hip and am bribing the rest of the class to stop running away with stickers. A litter of paper airplanes lie at our feet, a failed attempt at a worksheet involving colouring in/tracing the letter F. Right now I can think of one or two choice words that definitely wouldn't have been appropriate for the phonics portion of this lesson. Judy (the Chinese teacher) is showing no sign of intervening and bringing an end to the class that was only supposed to be half an hour long. Another punch lands. I think it's time to admit defeat and put on Peppa Pig. 

Same.

In China, children as young as two attend school and whilst I am sure this has many educational benefits on down the line, it definitely doesn’t make things easy for the first time TEFL teacher who has no clue what she is doing. They have no real idea what this school gig is about yet and as a result can be very unruly. It also takes an extreme amount of energy to help them with every simple task or exercise. As well as holding English lessons (for which expectations of the students are crazy high) I also usually have to chip in with spoon feeding, clothes changing, wiping up after and wrangling the class during dance and PE lessons. Good job they’re cute. 

“Teacher Laura, what about the homework sheet?” Asks the Chinese teacher, still holding her phone aloft. 

I look at her incredulously. These kids can barely hold a pencil. 

Before learning just how young my class would be I had amassed a selection of activity books and worksheets. I soon realised however, that seeing as they couldn’t yet write in their native language, it was unlikely they would manage full sentences in English. So far we had just been learning the alphabet and simple instructions/vocabulary through songs, games and the occasional colouring-in sheet. 

Front - back: Making a paper airplane with homework. Tracing hand on homework. Eating crayon. Thinking about eating crayon.

I pull out a cut and stick exercise relating to animals. 

“I was thinking maybe they could do a ‘match the sentence’ homework today.”

Haha. You can try that one in your Chinese class Judy. 

“Okay everyone, say thank-you Teacher Laura.”

A chorus of “Than-you teach-ah Lola” rings out. I side-eye Judy, wondering how on Earth she thinks they’re ready for sentences when they can’t even say my name yet.

Safe to say I am exhausted, and it's not even 9am (school starts before 8 o'clock here). But their big beaming faces, looking up at me like I am the coolest teacher ever makes it all feel worthwhile.

Teaching Wan Wan important life skills, like selfies.

JAN 2018 - I know at times my humour is quite deprecatory. Hopefully in future I will have time to compile a post about all of the amazing things there are to do/see/experience in China on your one day off a week. Yes it was tiring, and frustrating at times, but looking back at this time from my current desk job, I can 10/10 confirm that it was much more interesting and rewarding. It was an unforgettable experience that I will always cherish. The kids especially will always hold a special place in my heart. Their energy was really what kept me going. Furthermore, I can muster up a whole lot more sympathy for a crying two year old than I can for most grown-ups who phone into the EA.

Sure slap on some sudo and he'll be fine.

So. Cute.

Not what I had in mind when telling Melody to dream big...

Update: Sandpits and Schedules

  A few weeks ago, my schedule in one of the kindergartens which I went to twice weekly, was extended by two hours each day to include an hour of standing at the gate greeting parents in the morning and extra classes in the afternoon. In China, this kind of thing does not come along with any prior warning or extra pay. You are just told the night before and expected to go along with it. I am not sure, but it looked as though the school had a new principle, who apparently thought she wasn’t getting her money’s worth. Despite every class I did being photographed and filmed she insisted the parents were unhappy that they didn’t get to see more of their children’s English teacher and so I needed to arrive and leave when they would be at the school to see me. They didn’t take much notice, let alone say hello.  

Best teacher ever.

  Last week I arrived one morning to be told not to do any lessons that day but to simply go out to the front of the school and organise some games to play with the children. The whole thing was to be photographed professionally (I had no makeup on, so that was great) and the pictures used to promote the kindergarten. Throughout the afternoon, in an OCD horror story, I was asked to 'play' in a sandpit as the children were lined up and positioned around me class at a time for more PR pictures. The next day they told our company they no longer needed an English teacher.

"It's getting everywhere."

  So this week, I will have a 2.5 hour commute to a new school, instead of a nice little 30 minute journey. And I am still brushing sand off my bed. The joys.

Going to miss these little faces.

  On Fridays I now have another regular school, which is actually pretty great. 8 short classes and 2 playground activities but it’s only 10 stops on the metro so I can go home at lunch for the first time since I arrived here. Playground activities used to be my nemesis, but since discovering a video of the Frozen characters doing The Cha Cha Slide it’s been going a lot smoother.

The school lobby.

  Saturday and Sunday I spend in a training centre. This is easily my favourite teaching location. The owner, Sandy, is absolutely lovely and as the kids are a bit older and of a more advanced level I can actually introduce them to some grammar and do more interesting (read: nerdy) activities. One thing about teaching 2 year olds is that you have to keep everything very simple, and for me it gets just a tad boring. I still have some Early Learning classes but it’s nice to have this balanced out by some classes where the kids are able to respond and discuss instead of repeating the question back at you. I loved learning languages at school and wanted to be able to plan similar lessons to those I had enjoyed so much. With the older students I can do this. With toddlers it’s just a lot of Duck, Duck, Goose and trying not to laugh when they almost swear instead of saying ‘fork’.

Can't say fork. Can't use fork.

  Schools here have a bit of a reputation for not paying for external services so doubtless my schedule will change again before long. Although it can be annoying when you have established a rapport with a class and suddenly are sent somewhere else, I actually like the changes in pace and environment. It keeps it interesting, and I get to see more places, meet more people and collect more stories in this crazy country that is slowly stealing my heart. 

To see more of my experience click here.

Kindergarten Coppola

  The job description asked for a native English speaker with a 2.1 in any discipline. The role was to go out to different kindergartens and teach English to young children through fun activities and play, basically inspiring them to take an interest in learning another language. Although promised several days of training before we started, we were given nothing but a folder full of flashcards and a USB stick with some children’s songs on it. One thing you learn very quickly is that in China what is said is not always meant. So the day after we arrived we were unleashed on an unsuspecting class of infants.

  I’m not sure who cried more, me or the kids. They were unruly, too young to understand that they were supposed to listen and not run out of the room every few minutes. They couldn’t understand a word I said. I had no idea how to structure an hour long lesson for such small and boisterous children. And the Teaching Assistant seemed to think that sitting at the back of the room taking selfies and making phone calls was more important than helping the Foreign Teacher (as they call us) on her first day. After an hour of watching me valiantly singing/shouting nursery rhymes, wrangling two year old butts back in chairs, and trying to play games using only English words as directed, she finally stood up and announced it was time to go outside. However, this did not mean a break for me as apparently I was supposed to now hold a P.E. lesson. Now for a girl who's exercise regime consists solely of laps from the fridge to the sofa that was intense. It transpired that in this particular school, we weren’t English teachers in the extra-curricular sense we had been led to believe, but actually jointly in charge of the same class all day every day. Sometimes even on Saturdays. (Here, if a school has a long weekend and is closed on a Monday, teachers and pupils alike must attend the following Saturday in lieu. This is just one example of some of the rather confusing aspects of Chinese working culture. I’d much rather just have my two weekends.)

Wondering if the crazy lady is going to make him sing again.

  

  That said, after a while, the lessons started to become easier. As the pupils got to know me and I them, it was easier to figure out how to keep them interested and make it fun. One hour was still much longer than they could reasonably pay attention for, only having started school, but once they had learnt some games and songs and I had got hold of some cartoon clips that they were allowed to watch as a reward if they behaved well, things went a lot smoother. They still liked to bite each other. Bite me. Kick each other. Randomly stand up and run from the room (the doors of which were never kept closed because of the heat). And the TA still felt that her time was better spent filtering pictures of herself to look like a kitten (you might think I am being harsh, but she basically used me as an excuse to do very little all day) but in general it was going really well. They were coming on leaps and bounds with their English, picking up all kinds of phrases and some were even able to ask me to read stories with them. The books were in Chinese, but they really seemed to like helping me to come up with a story as we went along. Also, getting paid to receive cuddles from ten ridiculously cute children all day long is a pretty sweet deal.

"I made a twinkle twinkle little star."

  

  The way our job works is that we are hired by a company who send native English speakers out to various schools to hold English classes. So we are lucky to have the ability to change schools, discuss problems with our company etc. and they will negotiate with the kindergartens on our behalf. Upon communicating with my company I realised that I really wasn’t in the right working conditions. I am not a qualified teacher and so I shouldn’t have been left alone so extensively with the class. The TA should have been there to help discipline and care for them. Children of that age group were only supposed to have 15-20 minutes of English class at a time, yet some days I was being asked to do 1.5 hour long lessons at a time. The school was also ridiculously far away from my accommodation meaning around two hours commuting each way by bus. And commuting here is hectic. Those pictures you see of people crammed into buses and metros are very much a reality. With working hours being 8-5 this meant that I was spending over 12 hours a day travelling and working. Other people had a 30 minute taxi ride to work in the mornings. 

   Another weird thing in China is that people in the workplace are very afraid to offend someone and so will dance around an issue in the most ridiculous way, never saying what they actually mean. So if you are not doing exactly what the school wants, they won’t tell you but will leave it for so long that if and when they do hold a meeting about the issue, it is much more serious than it ever needed to be. As if you were supposed to read their minds and know instinctivley about a change to the curriculum or schedule. But on the other hand, when you as a worker try to address a problem head on, very often it will be ignored for a long time. Whether it be in the hopes you just shut up and learn to live with it or simply down to bad organisation or whatever, the only thing you can do is be persistent. Our company asked for meeting after meeting with the school but nothing ever happened. And so it was time to move on.

  It took 3 months but finally I switched. I now teach in another kindergarten 2 days a week and in a training centre for slightly older kids on Sundays. During the other working days I have been in a different school every week. I never know where I will be going or what the schedule is until maybe a day before. Thankfully because I have taught a few different age ranges by now, putting together suitable lesson plans doesn’t take too long. I quite enjoy getting to see different areas and how different schools operate. Some are very strict on discipline, some are not at all. Some teachers really want the kids to learn English, others are just happy to hand them over for half an hour and get back to their mobiles. It's taught me to think on my feet and heightened my OCD x1000 but it has revealed a real passion and love for teaching. I have especially loved working with the SEN students, who aren't really catered for very well here.

My minions. If you look closely you can see the TA on her phone as per.

   In the main kindergarten I have 11 classes each day. It is tiring, but it’s much closer to the set up I had imagined before coming out here. I set up my computer in the Dance Hall. Classes of about 25-30 kids are marched in for a half hour lesson and when I am not teaching I am free to sit in the reception room and read a book. The training centre was my first experience of using a textbook to teach, and instructing students who already had a pretty good grasp of English. Once again, no advice was given as to what I should be doing, but somehow I managed to figure it out. It’s surprising what your brain can come up with whilst in a state of mild panic. The classes are very mixed ability, which means planning lessons is somewhat more difficult. It isn’t a school where the children are all the same age and of roughly the same ability. A training class could have 6 year olds mixed with 9 year olds, and the 6 year old might be of a far higher level. But as the parents are paying for extra lessons for their children, probably hoping in the future they can go abroad and study, it is so important that the kids enjoy and benefit from the lessons. Structuring a class so that a lower level child can grasp what you are teaching but the more advanced students don’t get bored is a difficult balance. To this end, I definitely recommend studying for a TEFL qualification. When we realised no one was going to train us up or explain what was expected/required we decided to take a 150 hour course, and it provided us with some really useful tips and ideas.

Melody giving me a sticker for finally becoming a competent teacher.

  In the new schools the TAs are extremely helpful which makes a world of difference. They are attentive, help to organise the children and even try to participate themselves in the hope of improving their own language skills. Although, for a month or so I thought that one of them really hated me. The expression on her face whilst her class was in with me was terrifying. Then one day she showed up with a new pair of glasses and a huge smile. What I thought was a grimace was instead her squinting really hard to try and see the words and pictures I was showing the children. Oops.  

Even when they cry, they're still cute.

  
  I was surprised to discover that ‘work clothes’ are not really a thing in the kindergartens. Before we came out we were told it would be seen as too formal to show up for school in a suit or dress. Most teachers I have seen wear tracksuits or jeans. Some do wear skirts and so on, but I get the feeling that a dress code is not really enforced. I have only heard of one school that said jeans were not allowed, but it sounded like a pretty pretentious place, probably a new kindergarten where the principle had yet to learn that expensive outfits are not a good idea for finger painting class. At the start I always tried to wear nice-ish clothes, this soon slipped, but there is a certain pressure to always look semi-decent because of the sheer amount of photographs taken of you throughout every working day. At times it can feel more like a PR exercise than a teaching job. Before you’ve even taken your coat off in the morning you can guarantee someone will ask for a photo.  In fact, more often than not the cab driver on the way there will turn around and take some (without asking). Under the guise of ‘showing the parents what the kids are doing’, teachers will snap everything you do, not only in lessons but during break as well, and even ask for selfies after (and occasionally during) class. There is a great idealisation of Western culture here, and so a photo with the foreign teacher is definite profile picture material. We are constantly paraded in front of parents, potential new students, and any visitor to the school. We must arrive early and stand outside by the gate like a lemon waving at kids as they enter, most of them still asleep and in their parents’ arms. People will march into the middle of our classes, phones aloft and totally disrupt the lesson to get photographs. Randomers passing by the gate will point, and start recording you in the playground. Special events are organised where the foreign teachers are placed front and centre, asked to sing and dance onstage. At times it can feel like our main purpose is just to take photos and make the school look good - as though they have a rigidly structured and impressive English programme rather than a previously camera-shy twenty-something holding up flashcards whilst doing the Hokey Pokey.  

So. Many. Parents.

  One thing that does not change no matter the school or even the day of the week is the lunch. During my time here I have been exposed to many wonderful and exotic dishes. In school however, every single day since September the menu has been white rice, a kind of crunchy boiled green veg that I’m ashamed to say I still don’t know the name of, and some form of meat. The culture here is very much waste not, want not: which, in its own way, is great. In Western culture we are spoilt with our chicken breasts, mince, chops and so on. But here, being served up a lump of skin/fat/bone (and I don’t mean a thigh or a wing, I mean small bits of concealed bone waiting to stick into your oesophagus) with barely any visible meat on it day after day is the norm. The kids seem to just eat forkful after forkful, spitting out the splinters of bone, but this is an ability I have yet to acquire. Yep, the diet takes some getting used to. Last week the meat du jour was chicken claws. I mean, how does one even attempt to eat that?

Yum.

  The bathrooms are also something of a culture shock. Squat toilets have their benefits. They just take some getting used to. I don’t mind them, the bigger issue for me is that toilet paper doesn’t seem to be widely used in China, so I definitely recommend stocking up on tissues. Indeed, it is more likely you will see a little silver tray with ‘put mobile here’ in the bathrooms than soap/tissue dispensers. 

  Admittedly, it does occasionally frustrate me that many of the things which TEFL and other resources recommend teachers do are not encouraged here, and the suggestions of what to avoid are almost an expected part of the teaching. For example, I have read several articles which advised against using too many competitive games and getting students used to receiving rewards. In school, many of the teachers want you to have competitions in each lesson. Therefore the children start to care more about who wins than they do about what they are learning. And if every child does not get a sticker or prize whether they participate or not the teacher will bring them up at the end of class to receive one. Generally, if a child is disruptive they are not taken out of class lest the parents be annoyed they do not feature in some of the photographs. Yet all of the other children's learning is being impaired because of one child's behaviour. It doesn't make sense to me, but just as the culture in China is different, so is the working environment, so I just go with it. The important thing is that the kids have fun and take something away from the class.
   

 
   For all of the adjusting and poor communication, I would say that the job is very rewarding. Especially as I am lucky enough to have some regular schools and can see the progress of the children. It would be nice to have a bit more guidance from the schools as to how to help the kids develop as much as possible. But at the end of the day the exposure they are getting to the language will hopefully inspire them to want to learn more as they grow older and consequently have the opportunity to go abroad and experience a different culture. And seeing their faces light up when they come in for English class, and hearing them tell their teachers they want to “stay more” gives me hope that maybe TEFL teachers really do make a difference and aren’t just here for show.

Little Trouble in Big China

  Well, hello. It’s only taken 5 months to get this first post up and running, but given the pace of life here in China, that’s actually pretty efficient. This probably isn’t all that different to any other TEFL/gap year blog you could read, in fact as I have no idea what I am doing or what I'm supposed to write, it will probably be worse. But it seemed a waste not to capture in writing some of the crazy, wondrous and occasionally not so wonderful things that happen here in southern China. So, back to the beginning:

  The journey here was hectic. Having booked a flight package with all the connections planned for us, we had only an hour in both London Heathrow and Beijing International to make it to our next plane. As it turns out, this was incredibly optimistic, leaving barely enough time to make it through security, customs and to the next gate. After racing through both airports, begging to skip queues and reluctantly forgoing the usual airport Burger King we made it to the final flight by the skin of our teeth.

As our plane made its way south from Beijing towards the Guangdong province, the blue, sunny skies changed to a dense, smoggy grey and the heavy clouds beneath us appeared to be raining. “Great,” were the thoughts of two twenty-somethings from Northern Ireland, “more rain - just what we were hoping for.” By the time we landed in Guangzhou the rain had stopped, leaving behind a sweltering, humid heat. It was around 30C despite being 7pm. To make matters worse, our luggage hadn’t arrived onto our connecting flight and so we had to wait some 24 hours before we had access to a pair of shorts.

One of the girls from our company (I say girls because they are all around our age) was there to meet us, thankfully, because I really don’t think we could have navigated our way to the taxi stand without the help of a native speaker. Even if we had been able to find the taxis, we could never have directed the driver in the huge, alien city. Guangzhou and the surrounding towns are home to 10 million people. Even the taxi drivers get lost finding different addresses.

A constantly growing area of China.

  

  After being dropped off at a hotel and told to be ready for 7am the next morning (which, to a university student used to having two classes a week starting at 2pm, seemed rather unnecessarily early) we raced for a cold shower and tried to sleep. But even with windows open, air con on, duvets thrown off and PJS discarded, sleep was impossible. It was warmer in that room than dear little Omagh has managed to be in the past 22 years.

7am rolled around all too early, and bleary eyed, caffeine deprived and absolutely melting in skinny jeans we stumbled out to meet another person from our company. This absolute gem of a woman, Wency (most people here have both a Chinese and English name, with the latter being usually a slight variation of what you would see at home) is the source of one of the best stories I have to tell about working in a kindergarten, but that comes later. The first day was one of medical tests, getting sim cards sorted and going to the company office for our teaching materials. No training required, speaking English is enough apparently. Armed with flashcards, USBs and a rough idea what size our class would be we were told the next day we would start teaching. Daunting or what?

Here, the purpose of teaching English in kindergarten is really just to get them used to the language, interested in learning it and to be honest, spend time with a non-native person. The kids in the so-called International Class pay more to be exposed to an English speaker and hopefully pick up better pronunciation and fluency.

Raising the flag in Zhonghenghui - our first kindergarten. 

  

  It took a bit of getting used to, being in charge instead of being told what to do. But after figuring out how to structure the lessons and keep the kids interested it started to become easier. I was tasked with the youngest class in the school (my students were aged 2-3). They were the most amazing bunch of cuties. Two of the babies (for they really were only two years old and already in school) a boy called Joy (right?) and a girl called Melody captured my heart from day one.  They were cheeky, affectionate and terrible at sticking to the rules. Actually, Joy couldn’t even walk without falling over so I am not sure how he was expected to line up and carry his own chair, but there you go. They have a lot of school rules and routines here. And whilst I see their point it was hard to get it into my mind that two year olds should follow the rules like the other children. They were just babies in my eyes! My class were forever getting into trouble with the Chinese teacher for doing what I told them instead of what she wanted. Oops. But it is just so much cuter to have them fist bump you instead of saying “Present” during registration.

Melody.
P.S. Photographs with kids are permitted here, in fact they are encouraged.

Joy's daily struggle with the chair. 

  On the first day, as I was getting to know my ten students, Wency came into the classroom having shown us how to travel to the school. It was almost lunch time and as the food was delivered into the room (here the students eat out of a little silver bowl and dish – no grimy plastic trays for their school meals) she suggested I “pray with the kids”. Now, to a girl who has grown up in Northern Ireland where some schools typically say Grace before lunch, this seemed a little odd. Wow, I thought, they really do want to recreate Western culture for these kids. A part of my mind was really wondering whether she actually meant it when the TA also suggested I “say a few words before lunch”. Hands clasped, about to launch into it she then piped up “maybe you could teach them ‘Enjoy your meal’”. Ah. Turns out she wanted a typical English phrase to use with the kids. And Wency had meant play.

  The schedule of the teachers in our company varies greatly. Some go to two or three schools in a week to teach short English lessons and lots of them. Some, like us initially, stay in one school with one class all the time. Instead of being just the English teacher you are the ‘main teacher’ along with a native speaker. Some of the younger kids only speak Cantonese or regional dialects though, so even the Teaching Assistants have some trouble getting them to behave. The main teacher role means not only doing long daily English lessons with the same bunch of two year olds, but also teaching P.E. and introducing meals and snacks. In the afternoon the Chinese teacher would take over and give a Chinese lesson but we still had to be present and play with the children until their parents came to pick them up. The kids here are in school from around 7.30am – 5.30pm, very different from home. The working hours for us English teachers are typically 8.30-11.30am and 2.30-5.30pm. This doesn’t sound too bad but when the commute is around 1.5-2 hours it means not being able to go home during your break and relax.

  We worked for around 3 months in that school before opting for a different setup. Now our schedules involve different schools, teaching only English lessons and getting to see a bit more of the Foshan/Guangzhou area. Personally I find teaching class after class a lot more interesting than spending all day in the one room with the one class, but that’s just me. 

So much sass.

  

  The kids are adorable, and really keep you going. Sometimes going over vocabulary only to have them forget it instantly and being asked to sing Wheels on the Bus for the millionth time can be disheartening. But their enthusiasm (from about Monday - Wednesday anyway) and ability to soak up information so quickly is amazing. A few weeks in, Melody started picking up phrases I would use with the class. She would then come to me every morning and say "Teacher Lola." (They struggle a tad with 'r's) "Take your chair." Meaning that it's time I stopped spooning noodles into Joy's mouth and started reading stories. 

  But more about the kids, teaching and life in general later. 

To be continued.