Settling In (Work Edition)

As most of my day is work right now, I’m spending a lot of my time awake at my schools, getting used to the way they do things and what I need to do every day to make things go smoothly, or at least better than yesterday.

At my training center, I don’t have a full schedule of classes yet. I’ve been teaching a lot of make-up classes and a few demo classes in my “free” time, both of which are a short 60 minutes, instead of a normal class’s 90 twice a week.

I do have a few actual classes, 2 of which I’m teaching the very beginning class. We started with “What’s your name?” And are going from there. It’s not what I was hoping to teach as I prefer students that I can have a conversation with, but they aren’t bad kids. Just young.

One class, a student came in with so much energy that he couldn’t sit still or even form actual words! Did he OD on sugar, or meth, before coming to class? I highly doubt that he was just that excited to be in my English class again.

I’ve been getting lots of help and advice from my Chinese teacher. She’s helped me with learning and understanding some methods of getting the students attention and how to get them to behave. She is also working with them to understand the classroom rules.

We’ve also discussed what I could be doing better in the classroom and how the students might see my behavior. It’s helped a lot! She’s also my go-to source of games, props, and lesson plans that I use. All of which I am encouraged to modify to fit my teaching style.

And I get a class of older students that is only once a week for twice the usual length with a different Chinese teacher.

However, there are still long stretches of time where I don’t have a class or a class to prep for. I don’t like prepping for a class too far in advance as I won’t remember what I wanted to do, why I wanted to do it, and, sometimes, plans will change in between. But, not having class is boring!

And, to help keep life interesting, the computer they gave me at work, speaks Chinese, which, I guess is understandable, being as we’re in China and all, but the other foreign teachers’ computers speak English. I’m just a little jealous. And a lot confused. Thankfully there are translation apps.

But, that’s not all! My computer is also refusing to download anything. I can save files I create, but I can’t get anything from the internet, which is also mostly in Chinese. So, my Chinese teacher messaged someone and my computer got possessed by a repair man. It was possessed on and off for most of an evening. So, I could do even less work than normal. I spent most of the day playing on my phone.

The next day, it was still, unfortunately, speaking Chinese, but I can now download things and I have WeChat and DingTalk (a work chat and file sharing app) installed. And I learned how to log into them by scanning a QR code (who’s surprised? I know I’m not. China loves a QR code).

Over at the kindergarten, they’ve been sending me some social media posts, or the Chinese equivalent, for me to edit. Normally, I love editing writing. However, they send them halfway through my other job.

Apparently, they don’t understand that I have a full time job and that they are the part time. And I don’t believe in doing unpaid work, unless it is for a charity, and even then, I’m more likely to just donate. Eventually, they figured out that it’s better to just hand me a sheet of paper and a pen before the kids arrive. I’m happy, getting paid, and they’re happy, getting the thing edited.

They also asked that I create some rules for their library, as I used to be a librarian. I don’t mind, but it’s a lot of work and they really couldn’t give me any directions on what they are looking for, except they want the students to be able to borrow the books.. They also did most of the research already and already have an idea of what they want the rules to be, but just want my input to say that the foreign teacher made the rules.

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That can also apply to the school as a whole – they know how they want to run it but they have no idea how to get there, or at least can’t, or won’t, tell me their next steps. Currently, the kindergarten is just a lot of chaos and disorganization. Every day that passes, I can’t wait to leave more than the last.

I also had a meeting with the kindergarten’s head of education, or something, and my employer one day. It was basically all the things I should be doing better and no mention of anything good I’ve done. They complained that I don’t know the schedule or have any idea what the plan for the day is, as it’s a thing that they talk about after I leave for the day and don’t bother to tell me.

The other big complaint was that I’m not being animated enough in class. When half the kids just stare at me blankly and don’t participate in other group activities, there’s only so much I can do to be entertaining, especially when that’s not my normal teaching style. However, I do a lot of the things that they said I should in my TC classes to be more entertaining.

Overall, the other teachers at both schools are all nice. But, those at the kindergarten are stuffy and don’t really chat with me all that much, while at the training center, they all want to get to know me and how they can help me be a better teacher.

And a cat walked me home (okay, technically, it was a block) but it wouldn’t let me pet it. I was very sad.