Kindergarten Torture

The kindergarten has quickly made itself my least favorite place ever. I think I would rather have to go back to high school again than work here any longer.

The lady that interviewed me, the head of education or something like that, has been nicknamed ‘The Evil Teacher’. She is the one that is the most vocal about criticizing my teaching. Now, I don’t have an issue with constructive criticism. I had to get really comfortable with it as a VFX artist where everyone had an opinion and corrections.

Unfortunately for me, her method of giving criticism was basically saying all the things that you are doing wrong – you aren’t energetic enough, you aren’t exciting, you need to play more games, you need to speak more – never mention anything you do good or well, and never give you suggestions on how to improve or correct your perceived flaws.

And, even worse, her and my employer decided to gang up on me to tell me all this. It was a half hour meeting where they mostly just told me what a horrible teacher I am. My second week of teaching in a school. Great way to set someone up for success, guys!

In the meeting, I was also asked if I knew what the plan for the day was before class started. I didn’t. There was a schedule for the week posted but it never, for the whole time I worked there, matched up to what we did that day. The Evil Teacher made it sound like it was my fault that I had no way of contacting the other teachers, was off work before their daily planning/review meeting, and didn’t ask enough questions to know what we were doing and instantly memorize that information. (And, yes, I know that is a very common criticism in China.)

At that meeting, I just nodded and said “I understand” a lot. The only change I said I would make was that I would talk to the kids a lot more when I was ‘playing’ with them. I’m sure I can figure something to babble about. I mean, I’ve seen other people do it. How hard can it be?

The next day, The Evil Teacher took over my teaching time, probably to ‘show me how it should be’. Honestly, I thought she was ridiculously over overacting everything. She made even the most over-the-top actors seem boring by comparison. Her lesson wasn’t any more organized than mine were (there had yet to be a lesson plan or, even, more than a vague idea of what to teach) and she ran into some issues with sharing, which we already knew about and were doing nothing to fix.

I’m still not sure what I was supposed to learn by watching her. I know the kids didn’t pick up anything useful – one remembered A, A, A, /a/, /a/, /a/ (A – letter name; /a/ – letter sound), but never came up with it at the correct time. I think he only repeated it when learning E and then wouldn’t stop.

I took over again the next day and was told I seemed more energetic. I did nothing different.

A few days later, The Evil Teacher was back again. She wanted me to play a game with the kids. She mentioned that they had a lot of resources and offered to share them with me. I thought it was a great idea especially as I had my other job to go to and wouldn’t have much time to find anything, which I mentioned when asked for the resources.

I was then told that I needed to stop using my other job as an excuse and that this was work, too. She wouldn’t send me the resources any more and needed to start taking this job seriously. Really? I don’t take the job that I show up to on time/early every day, help out how I can, when I can, follow along and try to fit in the best I can with little idea of what is going on, what to do, and none of these resources I’ve heard so much about but never seen seriously enough? I know I’m never going to be the energetic clown that they’d like, but it’s just not something I’m comfortable with.

In that moment, I have never hated a job more or wanted to quit more than I have that kindergarten. Immediately after leaving that day, soon after that lovely little chat, I messaged my employer and said that I think the kindergarten and I would be much happier if we never saw each other again, sat on the stairs to the metro, and cried.

I had been there for just 9 days. I didn’t like my last job before becoming a full-time teacher, but I was there for over a year after it went bad. I made sandwiches in college for 2.5 years, none of which was pleasant. That kindergarten was able to do in just 9 days what most of my other jobs had never been able to do – make me actually hate them.

I was talked out of quitting, but not into guaranteeing that I’ll work the last 10 days. But, I never heard any more mention of being more energetic. I also avoided The Evil Teacher as much as possible.

I was eventually sent a list of useless games to play and a pages file, a mac only format and I don’t own any Apple products. The games were either something I already did, were so poorly explained in Chinglish (Chinese + English) that I had no idea what it was, were not useful for the topic, or were something that the kids had difficulty with, like sharing or understanding English.

Like so many other suggestions there, I ignored it.

For my last full week in that hell hole, they decided to start it off with a bang. The Evil Teacher said that there’d be an open house on Friday with the students and their parents. The parents would be there the whole day. And, here’s the best part, they wanted me to be the lead teacher for the whole day!

Because the parents expect it.

I said lots of NO! and gave several reasons why it’s a bad idea – I haven’t done it, I still don’t know the plan for the day, the current arrangement works.

I don’t think I convinced her.

We’ll see how badly this goes on Friday when all the parents show up.

If you have any questions about any of the terms I’ve used, look in the glossary.