Teaching at a Chinese public school

 

Teaching in a Chinese public school has both it's advantages and disadvantages. One of the main reasons I decided to go down this route was for the following reasons:

1. The working hours were less than at a regular English training school.  Training schools open the afternoon and run into the evenings. They are costly for the parents, but the classes have only about 6-12 kids in them so the students have more one on one time with the teacher and more exposure to English. I have a couple of students in my classes who attend these and their English is miles ahead of the rest. I also thought as a first time teacher it would be good to ease into work load. I have 17 lessons a week and each run for 35 minutes - so not bad really. Also, I have the benefit of getting all the holidays and any additional days like the school sports day off (this ran over two days).

2. Public schools hours are Monday - Friday and classes are during the day. Training schools are usually Wednesday - Sunday and finish at night. I wasn't too keen on walking home at night. But I soon realised that it is pretty safe here, as there are so many people out and about either eating, exercising, shopping (shops are open late) and walking around.

3. I could plan my lessons and teach whatever I wanted. This has ended up being a double edged sword as even though I thought this would be more up my alley, the preparation time can be long as you prepare all you own PowerPoints, worksheets and games from scratch. Training schools already have a schedule and themes for their classes.You still have to do a bit of prep but I don't think it takes up so much time.

4. The number of kids in each of my classes is a major disadvantage to both me and the students. There is only so much time and attention you can give such big classes (my largest has 54 students) and you are restricted on the types of activities you can do. Some games are out of the question as there can be so many kids squeezed into a class that even moving around can be difficult at times. Like all kids, some are good and really want to learn and some will sit at the back, talk, play cards, read books, throw things around or fight each other. Some kids see the class as a chance to relax and have fun (like some teachers, who wander off to play on their phones). Disciplining them can be tough especially in another language. But last week, I threatened a couple of boys with standing up the front of the class and holding my hand for the rest of the lesson and that worked a treat. No way did they want to look 'uncool' in front of their friends!

 

Anyway, I could keep writing forever on this, so I better sign off here before you all fall asleep. I will probably come back to this topic again in a later post.

My class schedule