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Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
People in the PYF poo poo kids say thread have been asking for it, so I thought I'd start a thread about working at a high school in China. I'm hoping the former and present China goons will also be willing to answer some questions. China's a big country and people have tons of different experiences working and living here, so I hope we can get a lot of different perspectives in this thread.

GBS China thread
T&T megathread
China LAN thread

I know of one other goon who used to work at my school, and I have two goons as coworkers. (In fact, goons got me this job).

BACKGROUND:

I work at a dual-diploma program in Sichuan province. Our students take classes in both English and Chinese. In that way, it's much like a bilingual program in Canada, in that subjects are taught in one or the other language without being explicitly a language class. Upon successful completion of each side's courses, our students ideally receive both a diploma from the Chinese school and our partner institution in the USA. (Unfortunately, it doesn't always work out like this.)

The program is small by Western standards and crazy small by Chinese standards; our graduating class this year has only 7 kids- and only six of them are actually graduating, to be honest. To compare, I've taught junior high classes here with more than fifty kids in one room. That is a bit more typical. We also lose a lot of kids throughout the year and over summer breaks; a lot of students sign up for this program because they assume Western education=easy, and find the reality of both behavioral and academic standards we enforce to be too much work. The program costs roughly $16,000 US a year (according to my boss- I have no evidence of this figure other than what she says) and most, if not all of our students are the children of the landowning rich. That means their parents typically have lots of money, but not a lot of education.

A lot of students choose to enter our program not because they love and/or are good at English, but because they want to both avoid the gaokao and study overseas. Most of the kids I teach choose to study in the USA, but we also have kids going to Australia. At the other campus, there are also students attending Canadian schools next year. Students who are less savvy end up in Singapore (or even in the West) at tertiary ESL programs.

Currently, our program has two campuses, one at an elite public school and one at a private school out in the suburbs. They're opening a new program next year in a different suburb. I only work at the private school because I don't like the students at the public school (they'll cuss you out for assigning homework...and that's if they bother showing up at all.) Our bosses refer to the two campuses as the "smart" school and the "dumb" school. I'll take the allegedly dumb kids any day.

We have five foreign teachers this year- four Americans and one Indian guy. We had a Brazilian-Canadian teacher last year who ended up leaving because this job is a lot less cushy than the international schools she'd taught at previously.

I teach the following courses:
Senior English (with a writing focus)
Sophomore ESL (speaking focus)
Junior Biology
Senior Anthropology

I taught an environmental science course last year. I've also had to teach elementary and junior high English classes that were, as far as I can tell, just a way for the school to brag that they have a Caucasian person working at the school, because they were loving pointless busywork.


Any China goons out there, please feel free to answer questions! I am just a very tiny speck in this ginormous place, and would love to have other viewpoints. Will amend the OP as necessary.

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coolusername
Aug 23, 2011

cooltitletext
I have a question! Were you already in China when you got the job offer, or did you migrate?

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.

deathbot posted:

I have a question! Were you already in China when you got the job offer, or did you migrate?

I was teaching in Korea and got the job mid-year. Then when the school year ended in Korea and my contract finished, my husband and I immediately went to China. I was introduced by a friend, sent in my resume, and after two Skype interviews I was offered the job. I had to do a small demonstration lesson, but I don't really think that had anything to do with anything.

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:

Can you use chopsticks?

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.

fart simpson posted:

Can you use chopsticks?

You very handsurm!

P.S. fart is also a Chinagoon.

left_unattended
Apr 13, 2009

"The person who seeks all their applause from outside has their happiness in another's keeping."
Dale Carnegie
How difficult is it to teach English when you don't speak the local language? How do you explain what a word means?

His Divine Shadow
Aug 7, 2000

I'm not a fascist. I'm a priest. Fascists dress up in black and tell people what to do.
So is the chinese educational system as broken as the GBS thread makes it out to be? And if it is, how the heck is the country working still?

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


His Divine Shadow posted:

So is the chinese educational system as broken as the GBS thread makes it out to be? And if it is, how the heck is the country working still?

Most of the GBS China posters who talk about the education are also teachers so it's coming from first-hand experience. I would say that thread is basically accurate. Nothing has made me appreciate American education more than working at schools in East Asia. As for your second question I honestly don't know. It's debatable if the country is working.

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.

left_unattended posted:

How difficult is it to teach English when you don't speak the local language? How do you explain what a word means?

Not difficult at all. There's a reason there's a massive ESL industry in Asia where the majority of teachers are completely untrained/inexperienced.

To teach English to someone who you don't have a common language with, you need the following:

1. Energy
2. Patience
3. Acting skills

I have all these things (well, #2 is strictly for students and children; everyone else can get the gently caress out of my way MAN) and I also have the absolute most important tool: being willing to make an rear end out of myself.

Do my students always understand me? No. Do I try new things until they do? Yes. Do I know when to let something go for the day and come back to it later? Yes.

Also, having a VPN and access to Google images helps.

One of the things I do to help students internalize new concepts/language is to have them experience it as many different ways as possible. Writing, speaking, moving, singing, whatever I can make them do to naturally repeat not only the word but the usage, I'll do it a few different ways.

I would say, though, if you are very shy or don't like being laughed at, it will be a painful and frustrating process for you and your students alike. You have to believe in whatever you're doing, even if you're just faking it really well, or the students will sense it and not be pulled it.


His Divine Shadow posted:

So is the chinese educational system as broken as the GBS thread makes it out to be? And if it is, how the heck is the country working still?


Yes. Yes. A thousand times YES. And there are so many reasons! I don't even know where to start.

First of all, any score reports you see from China are bullshit. They report only the test scores from top institutes in Shanghai or Beijing and pretend they're from the country as a whole. Parents pay bribes to teachers so their students get better grades and sit at the front of the class; everyone else is sleeping, reading manga, drawing, fighting, etc. Learning seems to be done through rote memorization and repetition only. Appearances are everything; a school can't get an A rating without employing a WHITE English teacher. I've been called in to so many random events because "it's a favor, their native teacher is busy" and I always find out later that the real native teacher is black, or not as pretty as me (this means brunette), or an older man. Kids leave school for weeks at a time to get plastic surgery. I've had students literally never come to a single class all year, hand in anything, or even contact me in any way, and our principal would give them a passing grade. Kids from Shanghai and Beijing have lower university entrance standards to meet than kids from other provinces, which is doubly unfair considering people are frequently poorer outside those cities. I've taught in schools with no heat or A/C and the windows are never closed because it's considered unhealthy, which is hilarious on a 700 AQI day. The equipment is always broken. The computers are full of viruses. The conditions in the schools overall are not very good. Students "study" all the time while they and their teachers play phone games silently in the classroom. The SATs can't be taken in China because of all the cheating. Oh, man, I could go on forever; this is all just off the top of my head.

Absolutely nothing here works except the Great Firewall.

That said, people are tenacious and willing to get what they want. Sometimes this is off-putting, but overall I think it's pretty admirable.

Grand Fromage posted:

Most of the GBS China posters who talk about the education are also teachers so it's coming from first-hand experience. I would say that thread is basically accurate. Nothing has made me appreciate American education more than working at schools in East Asia. As for your second question I honestly don't know. It's debatable if the country is working.

I have always said and will always say that everything I've seen in Sichuan is head and shoulders above anything in the Korean system. But, yeah, I never realized how strict my hippie-dippie private school was, with its consequences and emphasis on personal responsibility. I'm so sick of arguing with my coworkers over whether a student "really deserves" a detention. yes, he copied an entire Wikipedia page and handed it in as his final paper, he SHOULD be punished!

Fleta Mcgurn fucked around with this message at 10:15 on Apr 7, 2017

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
And I'm gonna say now that I may come off as negative, but in general I like it here. Like 60-40 most of time, which is pretty good for me 'cause I'm a grumpwagon. But most of my significant moments with students have occurred while I lived here, and that's important to me. Also the food loving rules.

ladron
Sep 15, 2007

eso es lo que es

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

I've taught in schools with no heat or A/C and the windows are never closed because it's considered unhealthy, which is hilarious on a 700 AQI day. The equipment is always broken. The computers are full of viruses. The conditions in the schools overall are not very good. Students "study" all the time while they and their teachers play phone games silently in the classroom. The SATs can't be taken in China because of all the cheating. Oh, man, I could go on forever; this is all just off the top of my head.

I mean, go ahead

Choco1980
Feb 22, 2013

I fell in love with a Video Nasty
Tell us about the student coup.

TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches

Choco1980 posted:

Tell us about the student coup.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Choco1980 posted:

Tell us about the student coup.

Grillfiend
Nov 29, 2015

Belgians ITT
(ie Me)


Choco1980 posted:

Tell us about the student coup.

icantfindaname
Jul 1, 2008


is it true that the asians are a shame culture hivemind in which the nail that sticks up gets hammered down and people pre-emptively conform to the will of their superiors through reading the air?

Ytlaya
Nov 13, 2005

Do you have any pictures around where you live? I like seeing pictures from random non-large city places.

I've been working closely with an ESL Chinese guy at my job for the past 6+ years, and I've developed a habit of constantly gesturing when I talk with him (to the point when I now do it when talking to other people as well). Like, any time I say a number I'll instinctively hold up fingers and stuff. I've also sort of learned "how to talk to ESL people (or at least ESL Chinese people)" which is its own skill of sorts. I think that a lot of native English speakers do not realize how tough it is to understand the way they speak for non-native speakers, especially when they speak fast and use a lot of slang and stuff.

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

Ask me about Forrest Gumping your way into somehow marrying WAY above your league despite not sharing a language or hemisphere with your wife's side of the family.

China goon by marriage counts, right?

ladron
Sep 15, 2007

eso es lo que es

Warbird posted:

Ask me about Forrest Gumping your way into somehow marrying WAY above your league despite not sharing a language or hemisphere with your wife's side of the family.

China goon by marriage counts, right?

I mean, I think we gotta see pics before we decide....

Dabir
Nov 10, 2012

ladron posted:

I mean, I think we gotta see pics before we decide....

Are you still doing this poo poo?

TehRedWheelbarrow
Mar 16, 2011



Fan of Britches

Dabir posted:

Are you still doing this poo poo?

The Great Autismo!
Mar 3, 2007

by Fluffdaddy
哈喽

Dangeresque
Dec 6, 2008
Wow, I remember reading your post about teaching in Korea, way back when I was teaching in Korea, and now I'm teaching in Sichuan and reading your posts about teaching in Sichuan.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, please stop following me.

TIA.

fart simpson
Jul 2, 2005

DEATH TO AMERICA
:xickos:


What's up tga my man

Deceitful Penguin
Feb 16, 2011
fleta tell me about the awkward romances and crushes you've had to suffer from your students

creepy stories ok too I guess, as well as from the rest of you

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
Sorry for the delay; I had my first weekend alone (had houseguests for the past month with no break in between, and the last one was being a super space oval office) so I was grooving on actually getting poo poo done in my house!

ladron posted:

I mean, go ahead

I don't want this to turn into a rant thread, so I'll just share one story in detail:

At the "smart" school, I taught an AP Environmental Science class. Do we have anything in the form of official AP training or are we registered? No, we are not. I was initially really excited about this class because I had been told over and over how smart and nerdy and awesome this group of students was, and I had all sorts of cool labs and stuff planned.

Fast-forward to October. Of the 30 kids registered from that class, maybe five or six showed up. The ones that did show almost never did their homework, were constantly using their phones (it's not sneaky, by the way, when you're apparently staring at your crotch for over ten minutes- I KNOW what you're looking at), and never made up missing work. Four kids from that class I never saw once all year. I gave one midterm and, while students did come, many of them I had never met before and were 1. angry at me because the test was difficult (you never came to class or did any work, ya think?) and 2. angry at me because I didn't know who they were and greet them by name (YOU NEVER CAME TO CLASS).

One girl, in fact, folded her uniform jacket on the desk, took off her glasses, and went to sleep. She had asked me for a college recommendation letter a couple of weeks before and I had turned her down because- say it with me- I HAD NEVER MET HER BEFORE. Two weeks after that, she cornered me in the school store and screamed at me in rage because she had decided to come to class THAT DAY and she found out I was giving a quiz. How dare I? She finished her midterm by literally throwing the crumpled paper at my face.

Nothing was ever done to discipline the kids, either for their rudeness or their absence. No, it is not typical to treat one's teachers this way in China. No, I am not an extremely bad teacher.

So, all but two kids failed the class, mostly due to not handing in work and/or copying what work they did hand in from online sources. Our school has a comparatively strict anti-cheating policy, but the Chinese teachers didn't care and no one listened to the foreigners. The top score in my class was an 82; the next highest was in the high sixties. He literally passed by two points.

How many of these kids were denied their American diploma for failing a required science requirement? Zero, because nobody failed. The principal let them all "write" a "paper" and gave anyone who handed one in a D.


icantfindaname posted:

is it true that the asians are a shame culture hivemind in which the nail that sticks up gets hammered down and people pre-emptively conform to the will of their superiors through reading the air?

Not here.


Ytlaya posted:

Do you have any pictures around where you live? I like seeing pictures from random non-large city places.

I've been working closely with an ESL Chinese guy at my job for the past 6+ years, and I've developed a habit of constantly gesturing when I talk with him (to the point when I now do it when talking to other people as well). Like, any time I say a number I'll instinctively hold up fingers and stuff. I've also sort of learned "how to talk to ESL people (or at least ESL Chinese people)" which is its own skill of sorts. I think that a lot of native English speakers do not realize how tough it is to understand the way they speak for non-native speakers, especially when they speak fast and use a lot of slang and stuff.

I took some pics on Saturday, but a lot of them were crappy, so I'll make them a bit prettier and post them later.

I completely agree with the bolded statement. We warn the kids about this, in fact. Many people who have decent English on paper actually don't speak it very well because they've memorized a set of stock phrases. If I ask my students, "How are you?" they answer readily, but if I say "How's it going?" they freak out. And while I don't speak slowly, I do speak slower than my natural talking speed and I enunciate a bit more. It takes practice to do this and sound natural.

Also, what part of China is your coworker from? They use different finger-counting in different areas. Here it's the same as Western countries until five, after which you have to be some kind of hand contortionist to get your point across.


Warbird posted:

Ask me about Forrest Gumping your way into somehow marrying WAY above your league despite not sharing a language or hemisphere with your wife's side of the family.

China goon by marriage counts, right?

Sure. :)

Dangeresque posted:

Wow, I remember reading your post about teaching in Korea, way back when I was teaching in Korea, and now I'm teaching in Sichuan and reading your posts about teaching in Sichuan.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, please stop following me.

TIA.

YOU WILL BE MINE *heavy breathing*

Where in Sichuan are you???


Deceitful Penguin posted:

fleta tell me about the awkward romances and crushes you've had to suffer from your students

creepy stories ok too I guess, as well as from the rest of you

On me? Nothing. By Chinese standards I am not very cute.

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
The student coup story is really long and I'm typing it in dribs and drabs, but expect it in a few hours.

Proteus Jones
Feb 28, 2013



Fleta Mcgurn posted:

The student coup story is really long and I'm typing it in dribs and drabs, but expect it in a few hours.

:dance:

Ein cooler Typ
Nov 26, 2013

by FactsAreUseless
Are Chinese schoolgirls as sexy as Japanese

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.

Ein cooler Typ posted:

Are Chinese schoolgirls as sexy as Japanese

gently caress off.

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.

Choco1980 posted:

Tell us about the student coup.

OKAY poo poo GOT CRAZY. This is gonna be long. All identifying details have been changed.

The Villains:

Wilma- Wilma is the principal. She's Hong Kong Chinese, but lived in the US most of her life (longer than I did, in fact, and I was born there.) Wilma is better than the principal at the "smart" school, who is her husband, but she has no educational training or experience other than helping in the church nursery. Wilma was really cool last year, but has been a raging thundertwat this year, especially to other women in the office.
Bob-- BoB showed up at the beginning of the year. He was given a desk and a lot of power, but no one had any loving clue what his actual job was. The students immediately identified him as a Party spy. He never spoke to anyone in the office except Wilma and his buddy, Joe.
Joe- Joe also was new this year. He was given a single class period to teach, and was the head instructor for the sophomores. Again, nobody knew what the gently caress Joe was actually doing there, since he never taught his single class. He and Bob were rarely seen apart and the gay rumors flew like crazy.
Tangy- Some kind of liaison between our program and the main school. Does nothing except scream-talk, make personal phone calls, and torpedo any attempts by the foreign staff to discipline students. I hate her, but I like her kid.

The Victims:

Nancy- One of the Chinese TOEFL teachers and the head instructor for the seniors. Nancy is the only one in the office who gets my jokes besides Florp.
Sammy- Another Chinese TOEFL teacher. The best cussing you will ever hear from a non-native speaker. Also sassily wears his Republic of Taiwan t-shirt everywhere.

The Heroes:

Lily- The office manager and basically the person we all rely on for anything and everything because she's the only one who knows what's going on. Lily is basically Wilma's bitch and loathes her, but you would almost never be able to tell.
Rihanna- Rihanna is a student and she is famous.
Fleta- 'sup
Florp- he's this weird guy who sits across from me and makes delicious food and is generally awesome. He mostly teaches science and history. Whenever we have a cooking activity, he has to be the head of it, for which I am forever grateful because I don't want to be in charge of that poo poo.

Please note that all the events in this story are reported as they were told to me; I was not personally present for almost anything that happened and am piecing together the narrative from what The Victims and The Heroes told me.

Prelude: A lovely September

When the school year started, we were introduced to Bob and Joe. They never told us exactly what they did, but Wilma did privately tell me that Bob was slated to be the principal for the new campus opening next year. Fine. I wasn’t sure what Joe did other than gently caress up literally everything he touched and arbitrarily defend the students from being disciplined, but luckily Wilma didn’t listen to him much.

Bob and Joe were being given power over the TOEFL teachers, though. Since this didn’t affect us, Florp and I were pretty much unaware of the issues until two weeks ago. However, we did notice that there seemed to suddenly be meetings every week, and we were never asked to sit in. nor were we informed what the meetings were about. Wilma became impossible to find; she was always out with Bob and Joe, or in a meeting with them.

One of the first things that happened this year was that I was accused of saying negative things about the students’ mandatory military training. This is stupid for several reasons:

1. I have no desire to be fired and/or deported.
2. It’s barely military training; hundreds of lazy-rear end kids lined up doing half-assed jumping jacks and mostly playing on their phones.
3. I had actually told a class who complained about it to be quiet and not whine about something that got them out of classes.

Later that day, Wilma sat Florp and I down and opened with, “Now, I know in the West you like to coddle students—“
HOLD THE gently caress UP. Florp and I are the majority disciplinarians at our school. We’ve had countless disagreements with even the best Chinese coworkers about whether it’s acceptable for students to refuse to hand in their homework, text in class, etc. We assign more detentions and have higher standards for written work than any other teachers. Plus, as the parent of a child born and raised in the US, she had a wealth of knowledge to compare how our students behave and are and treated compared to “the West.” But she was doing some kind of face thing, as far as I can tell. Finally, it came out that “some foreign teacher” had “said the military training ‘sucked.’” Uh, no. I kind of flipped out for a minute, then proved that wasn’t what I had said by having her ask the class in question. Did I receive an apology from her or from Tangy, who had told her this stupid story? No, I did not.
I found out later that Tangy had been fed her lines by Bob. I’d noticed him hovering outside my classroom and listening to the class in question.

So, this didn’t endear Bob and Tangy to me, and I especially hated Bob when he started walking around and telling everyone I was spreading a rumor that he was gay. All my coworkers know that my best friend is a gay man and that I am the one asking students not to use “gay” as a pejorative, but again, Wilma started yelling at me for starting such a crazy rumor. Of course, it started at the head office (and not helped by the fact that Bob and Joe were literally never without each other and they seemed to prefer being alone together, going so far as to stagger their lunchtime so they didn’t have to sit with any of the other teachers, except occasionally Wilma.) In fact, I knew of the rumor because Lily told me, but responded with “Oh, well, none of our business.” To shoot that down, I made a “casual” announcement at the next staff meeting asking everyone to be vigilant about students calling each other gay as an insult. It worked. Also, I spent about three months completely blanking Bob after this because I was so done with his stupid bullshit.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Bob and Joe were already actively campaigning against the TOEFL teachers in a much more organized fashion. They’d apparently announced their intent to oust the entire TOEFL staff and replace it with their people, and from the beginning of the year started trying to make this happen. The details aren’t important or interesting, but their mistake was targeting Sammy and Nancy- coincidentally (?) the two most popular teachers in the school. I am still not clear on what their actual arguments were. They also started forcing the Chinese teachers, even Lily (who doesn’t have any classes) to attend mandatory trainings every Sunday, at which they received no training and were just screamed at for underperforming students. Remember how I said this program has a lot of kids who aren’t very academic? Yeah. Screaming at their teachers wasn’t going to change that, but okay.

After we came back from the New Year break, it seems that Bob and Joe had really ramped up the crazy, despite rarely being in the office. Around this time, Joe was given the class “American Math.” What is that? One Twinkie divided by one bald eagle equals freedom? I have no loving clue. Neither did the kids. The only evidence I have of anything math-related happening in that class is a display Joe put up of Fibonacci coloring sheets. Like these high school sophomores were literally told to sit and color. I’ll post a picture later.

Another thing you need to keep in mind is that our school is loving disgusting. There is a cleaning lady who only does floors, and she dunks her mop in the toilet. I am not making this up. So she mops down all the floors with toilet water and no soap. There wasn’t any soap in the bathrooms until Florp bought some, and even then, he and I are the only ones who use it. Teachers are supposed to be able to get toilet paper from Lily, but there hasn’t been any in months. Last time she had a pack, I stole half of them for Florp and myself because I was so pissed. A lot of the students and teachers don’t seem to use toilet paper for peeing.
Also, Nancy had food in her desk over break and mice found it, absolutely destroying the office with poo poo and piss. We couldn’t turn on the heating units because the stink of urine was too strong (and no one cleaned them for almost a month after the fact). I spent my own money on bleach and Dettol to clean the office, but only Nancy and I bothered to use it- everyone else just threw out what couldn’t be saved and wiped the poo poo away with tissues. Every room was positively destroyed.

About two weeks ago, my student Rihanna mentioned to me that Candance (another TOEFL teacher) might get fired because Bob and Joe didn’t like her. I also do not like Candace because she reported my husband to the “smart” school’s Party rep for some made-up bullshit because she once had to wait fifteen minutes for him to finish class so they could carpool, so I didn’t really respond. She then told me that all the students were upset about the conditions at the school- how dirty it was, how all the equipment was broken, etc. She was completely right, but Wilma had refused to bring in professional cleaning staff or reimburse any of us for our supplies that were destroyed, so I just encouraged her to write a note and give it to the principal, hoping that would spur some changes.
Here is the note Rihanna and her class wrote and signed:

quote:

“Dear Ms. Wilma:

Currently, there is a widely-admitted high-school policy to install advanced technology to promote teaching. We strongly suggest that our international department do the same thing. Because the bad equipment influences negatively on our study and all of us complain about those things. There are some problems we encounter.

1. The shabby computers with the lowest reaction. Some of them always crash.

2. The pungent smell is filling the entire computer room.

3. The different kinds of rats droppings on the keyboard.

4. The noises made by acoustics. We can not hear the sound in the listening class.

5. The poor projector with unusual color and bad contact. We cannot see PPT in Michelle’s class.

6. The small white board. Almost no one can see notes written by teachers.

7. The bad insulation of sound of the classroom. We can hear the voices from senior 3.

8. The clock and the door glass are broken.

9. No windows in the classroom. It is cold outside during winter and hot outside during Summer. We always catch a cold.

10. The dark light in the classroom causes eye-problems.

11. The water leaking of the air conditioner in the classroom.

12. Rats in the classroom. Even in the office.

On the other hand, improving facilities, the school can enhance our competitiveness among so many schools in the fierce competition. Because well-equipped classrooms and beautifully decorated self-study rooms will attract more top students to this school. That is to say, no parents want that they pay high tuition but their children are treated as refugees.

We look forward to receiving your consideration and reform.

Sincerely,

Class Number

They all signed it, too, and placed it on Wilma’s desk.

The next day, Wilma comes in, sits down, and then shouts, “Fleta, did you write this?”

Hold the gently caress up. Are you kidding me? You think a native speaker wrote that? Granted, it’s very good, but why the gently caress would I do that? And why wouldn’t I just sign my own name?

I knew what she was talking about, but acted confused. She then showed it to me and I confirmed that I was aware of it, but did not write it. She then asked me if I had edited the documents, and again, I honestly said no. (I know who did, but I ain’t telling.)
She immediately switched into Caring Mode and started cooing about how open communication was so very important, blah blah blah. I just nodded my head and said “Yeah…” a lot, then pointed to a few of the most pressing issues and reminded her that Florp and I had been complaining about these exact problems.

“Well, they have to write it in Chinese or I can’t give it to the main school.”

“okay, tell them that.”

I knew she thought this was a discouraging tactic, but I also knew it wouldn’t work.


The next two days, I was out sick with a virus. Wednesday afternoon, Florp informed me of the following:

Bob and Joe had come into Rihanna’s class and announced that they would replace Nancy and Sammy, who were being fired. It’s March; Nancy’s students are a month away from graduation, and as I said before, they are the two most popular teachers in the school. None of the kids like Bob or Joe; they find them creepy.

The response to this was to storm the office, refuse to attend class, and scream at Wilma, Bob, Joe, and even the principal of the main campus. Apparently the protest took a couple hours, and ended with Sammy and Nancy keeping their jobs, Bob and Joe being removed from the campus (but not fired), and the kids stealing a bunch of nice chairs from the teacher’s office downstairs.
The next day, I privately congratulated Rihanna on her moxie and getting rid of those two useless walking skin tags. I was really proud and pleased to see that the kids defended their teachers and stood up against the lousy equipment and horrible conditions.
Then my class was interrupted by a surprise visit from the main campus principal, who needed to talk to the students about a field trip that was happening the next day. Rihanna wasn’t going on the field trip and asked to sit with me in the classroom, and I said yes. Then Lily came in, and the two of them told me the following:

1. Sammy and Nancy had actually been fired before the announcement was made.

2. Joe earned more money than any other teacher or staff member, despite only teaching one class period a week and not doing much in said class.

3. Nobody knew what Bob’s actual job title was, not even Lily.

4. Bob and Joe were planning to replace Sammy and Nancy with a single teacher, who had no experience teaching TOEFL and had never even taken the exam.


Nancy later told me:

1. Bob did have a job title- Quality Assurance. If this seems like a weird title for a school employee, IT IS.

2. The head of the company that owns our school had hired Bob after a single interview. The HR manager had asked her to please interview him a second time, as if standard at our company, but she refused. She also hired Joe sight unseen.

3. Bob initially had no job title, but was on the payroll all year and earning a shitload of money. The company head asked Wilma to create a job title for him so everything looked legit.

4. Joe had publicly insulted Nancy on WeChat Moments. This would be equivalent to posting the same nasty screed on our school’s public Facebook page, if we had one. Every student saw this nasty move, and a good number of the teaching and administrative staff.

5. Bob had a huge stable of teachers ready to replace us. He’d forced us to work an eight-hour recruitment session a few weekends ago; we are usually given actual warning, but this time we only found out two days before because it was sooooo last-minute and suuuuch a surprise. Imagine our consternation when we arrived to see several other foreign teachers, all of whom were weirdly nasty to us. We later determined that these were people gunning for our jobs.

6. Wilma’s husband, Fred, is currently the principal of the “smart” school. He is being fired after this year. I would imagine this is due to gross incompetence, as well as his charming habit of screaming for hours at a time at the Indian guy who teaches math. Granted, the Indian guy is a complete dumbfuck, but he’s a good teacher and a nice person. Fred just likes to take out all his frustrations on Indian Guy because he’s an easy target, in my opinion.


I found out some more stuff, but it’s either too identifying or not relevant. Suffice it to say that Nancy was in tears at the end of her retelling, Lily was visibly angry, and I was, as every stdh.txt says, practically shaking because I wasn’t sure I would have a job in the next week or two.


The dust has since settled. Wilma has someone come to sweep out the heating units every month, a lot of the broken equipment has been replaced, and Rihanna told me on Friday that they’re getting Smart Boards AND moving the whiteboards so they are in front of the students, instead of at the side of the classroom where half the kids can’t see. She’s in charge of where everything is being placed.


So, that’s the story as I know it. Wilma of course followed me to lunch one day on the pretense of “spending time together” but immediately launched into a retelling that painted Bob and Joe as innocent victims who cared deeply about the students (despite not knowing any of their names). I don’t really want to talk about that now because it depresses me; Wilma and I had a very good relationship last year and now I know that I can’t trust her at all. Bitch is ruthless when it comes to money.

Anyways, Rihanna rules.

Fleta Mcgurn fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Apr 10, 2017

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
Oh, also:

Wilma had promised Rihanna's class she would talk to them about their protest and their demands (which got to hysterical levels; Nancy was crying and screaming in the office with them.) She then refused to speak to any of the kids, which further pissed them off. They goon-rushed her on Thursday and demanded her attention, refusing to leave until she talked to them. Unfortunately, I don't speak Mandarin, so I can't tell you exactly what was going on, but it was after this that she started replacing the broken stuff and having things cleaned, so I imagine ti was related tot heir original list.

Also, Sammy got pretty salty over text with me and wrote:

"We are able to enjoy our peaceful working condition without those two loving dirty guys or gays."

Sammy is cool.

Warbird
May 23, 2012

America's Favorite Dumbass

Go teach English in China the wife says. It'll be fun and easy money she says...

Jimmy Little Balls
Aug 23, 2009

Warbird posted:

Go teach English in China the wife says. It'll be fun and easy money she says...

You can get a uni teaching job working quarter of the hours for almost the same pay and not have to deal with any of this poo poo.

Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.
I can't speak to that, but most of the ads I've seen for university gigs- while definitely easier- paid less than half of what I'm making now.

e: Probably depends on subject/experience, though.

burial
Sep 13, 2002

actually, that won't be necessary.
There may (or may not?) have been a few cases in there where you used real names instead of the fake ones. Or I could have misread.

Either way, jesus gently caress.

Dangeresque
Dec 6, 2008

Fleta Mcgurn posted:


Where in Sichuan are you???


I'm in Chengdu just outside the second ring road. I'm not sure how cagey to be with the details.

When I hear people talking about their school problems I feel like I've gotten off light with the places that I've taught. The first school that I taught in after coming to China was way out in the country. It was a little isolating to be the only foreigner for miles, but other than that it was a pretty good place to work. They didn't really know what to do with me, and pretty much let me do my own thing. I don't really know what the rest of the classes were like, as I was a little kingdom all of my own and didn't really get to see the whole picture, but from what I saw they seemed to generally want to provide a good education for the students. But this was a school attached to the teacher training college nearby, so it may have been the exception not the rule.

I work at a university now and I really like it, but it's definitely not a way to get rich. I will say this though, it's really nice only teaching 20 hours a week, and the management is all from the UK so there's less of a culture clash between labor (labour?) and management which goes a long way to making things go smoothly. I've had both Chinese bosses and foreign bosses, and, while I wouldn't say that the Chinese bosses are worse per se, they definitely have a style of management that is very different from back in the states. Although like anywhere some bosses are just assholes.

Well my 2 and a half hour lunch is almost up, so I have to get back to work. Enjoy life in the trenches.

Grand Fromage
Jan 30, 2006

L-l-look at you bar-bartender, a-a pa-pathetic creature of meat and bone, un-underestimating my l-l-liver's ability to metab-meTABolize t-toxins. How can you p-poison a perfect, immortal alcohOLIC?


Chengdu university just outside the second ring road sounds like you may be right down the street from me. :captainpop:

Jimmy Little Balls
Aug 23, 2009

Fleta Mcgurn posted:

I can't speak to that, but most of the ads I've seen for university gigs- while definitely easier- paid less than half of what I'm making now.

e: Probably depends on subject/experience, though.

School salaries are around 10k-15k a month in Chengdu right? The low end of uni gigs here is about 6k I think, that's if you have no experience and just a bachelors. If you have some experience and you aren't a pushover with negotiations you can push it a few thousand higher easily. I know a couple of the unis are paying 11k-13k starting for 18 hours I think. Standard uni contracts are 14 or 16 hours but most of the time you don't actually work that much, in 4 years I've had 1 semester where I had a full class load. You also get about 5 months off a year. Generally you'll only work 2 or 3 days a week so lots of time for private tutoring where you can get at least 250 an hour, and if you have basic networking skills 500/600 an hour stuff isn't hard to find.

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Fleta Mcgurn
Oct 5, 2003

Porpoise noise continues.

lemon-lyme disease posted:

There may (or may not?) have been a few cases in there where you used real names instead of the fake ones. Or I could have misread.

Either way, jesus gently caress.

OH gently caress thank you. Fixed.

Jimmy Little Balls posted:

School salaries are around 10k-15k a month in Chengdu right? The low end of uni gigs here is about 6k I think, that's if you have no experience and just a bachelors. If you have some experience and you aren't a pushover with negotiations you can push it a few thousand higher easily. I know a couple of the unis are paying 11k-13k starting for 18 hours I think. Standard uni contracts are 14 or 16 hours but most of the time you don't actually work that much, in 4 years I've had 1 semester where I had a full class load. You also get about 5 months off a year. Generally you'll only work 2 or 3 days a week so lots of time for private tutoring where you can get at least 250 an hour, and if you have basic networking skills 500/600 an hour stuff isn't hard to find.

Heck! Heck and darn, I never saw any ads for jobs that good! Well, thanks for the info- hopefully it will help someone else.

Dangeresque posted:

I'm in Chengdu just outside the second ring road. I'm not sure how cagey to be with the details.

When I hear people talking about their school problems I feel like I've gotten off light with the places that I've taught. The first school that I taught in after coming to China was way out in the country. It was a little isolating to be the only foreigner for miles, but other than that it was a pretty good place to work. They didn't really know what to do with me, and pretty much let me do my own thing. I don't really know what the rest of the classes were like, as I was a little kingdom all of my own and didn't really get to see the whole picture, but from what I saw they seemed to generally want to provide a good education for the students. But this was a school attached to the teacher training college nearby, so it may have been the exception not the rule.

I work at a university now and I really like it, but it's definitely not a way to get rich. I will say this though, it's really nice only teaching 20 hours a week, and the management is all from the UK so there's less of a culture clash between labor (labour?) and management which goes a long way to making things go smoothly. I've had both Chinese bosses and foreign bosses, and, while I wouldn't say that the Chinese bosses are worse per se, they definitely have a style of management that is very different from back in the states. Although like anywhere some bosses are just assholes.

Well my 2 and a half hour lunch is almost up, so I have to get back to work. Enjoy life in the trenches.

Oh, for crying out loud, I live in Wenjiang. Come hang out with us sometime.

I also get two hours for lunch, so there! :P

e; I reread this and it sounded way more aggressive than I meant it to. But seriously, come out with us sometime! I feel like a visit to Meat Factory should be in order soon.

Fleta Mcgurn fucked around with this message at 07:41 on Apr 10, 2017

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