The Police are Coming!

As China is changing their education policies to attempt to make it cheaper to raise children so couples will have more kids by attacking the academic training centers, even if they don’t really address why training centers are so popular, the competitive nature and brutal exams popular in schools. I’ve posted the whole long explanation before so I’m not going to go into here.

However, I thought it would miss my training center as the law is just being tried out in one city per province and, by some miracle, Shenzhen wasn’t the chosen city in Guangdong, my province, which is the only time I’ve seen that happen. Shenzhen is always the guinea pig city.

But, I was wrong. It is coming to Shenzhen. Worse – it’s coming for my training center! And the policy still hasn’t officially been changed to the new one here.

Can’t Teach That

To comply with the new regulations, I’ve been told that I can’t teach grammar and vocabulary anymore. Officially. We teach reading and we talk about what we just read. We are also allowed to occasionally write. And, we have STEM or STEAM classes that sometimes relate to the stories and sometimes are just fun things to do.

Most of the classes for the younger kids have them drawing or coloring something. My class just made something we called “opposite sliders” to practice some of the words that were in the unit as many of them were opposites, like up and down, far and close, push and pull, ugly and beautiful, and night and day. The older kids get to do things like make ice cream or popsicle catapults, but they do also have some coloring activities, like who can camouflage the lizard to match a picture best using colored pencils.

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Teaching grammar and vocabulary are too close to teaching English as an academic subject, what kids learn in school, and teaching school subjects outside of school is no longer allowed. In practice, I’m still expected to follow the same curriculum as the previous years and teach grammar, vocabulary, reading, and writing. I don’t know if that’s going to change in the future, to actually comply with the new regulations, or not.

I have no idea what the center is going to say if someone comes by to check on us and they see our textbooks. They very obviously have a vocabulary and a grammar section, complete with exercises. Are they just going to say “we don’t teach those bits and we’re making new books without them for next semester” or just hope they don’t read English and don’t notice?

I do know that all books need to have some Chinese to go with the English. Our books have the title in both, so they’re assuming that’s all the Chinese it needs.

Can’t Have That

However, it did decimate the library. There’s nothing in there anymore. Hundreds of books, just gone. Granted the former library books are just in storage somewhere, but it just looks sad to go from bookcases full of books to just a handful here and there.

The kids used to live going in there and reading. I guess they’re just going to have to fight over the 5 remaining books until the center finds the money to buy new, legal books.

In addition, the classrooms have also had an enforced makeover. Anything that related specifically and obviously to grammar, so the verb tense guide I had on one wall, is gone. Some of it has been thrown out, some hidden, probably with the books, and most of it is greatly missed. It took me a couple days to not want to point at the wall where the verbs used to be to remind the student about how to properly conjugate a verb in English.

Every time one of my students forgets what the past tense is, I miss it. Every time they add ‘s’ to verbs with I, you, we, or they subjects, I miss it. Unfortunately for me, they forget several times a class! Giving me way too many opportunities to miss it.

And, for some odd reason, they’ve also targeted the alphabets that are up in some of the classrooms. How do you teach a little kid to write the letters without having an alphabet on the walls somewhere? When I taught the beginners last semester, I used my alphabet poster all the time.

But, the bad doesn’t stop there. Oh, no. It keeps going! I was recently told that I can’t have flashcards. How do you teach a little kid a new word without a flashcard with a picture? (That’s not actually rhetorical. If you have an answer, I’d love to know. I may have to do it in the near future.) But, they haven’t actually taken the flashcards away. Yet.

And it’s not just the things that the new regulations are targeting.

Hiding in the Closet

Ok, so it wasn’t actually a closet; it was a classroom. And I wasn’t the one told to hide. It was two teachers who are working there part-time. The center was told or noticed (I’m not sure) that there was a police officer coming. They thought that he was coming to inspect the center, as they’ve been expecting someone for a couple weeks now. I keep getting told that if anyone does show up in my classroom to ignore it and let my Chinese teacher handle it.

But the officer wasn’t coming for us. He was coming to deal with a noise complaint on the music school next door. They have drums. I’ve wanted to complain, too. Apparently, they aren’t the most friendly of people, either.

There is some disagreement over if part-time teachers are allowed or not, or under what circumstances they are allowed. The company I work for, who actually pay me and deal with a lot of the logistics of my living in China, says that they are allowed as the teacher has a contract with them and does work full-time elsewhere, at a public school. The training center thinks they aren’t allowed because they don’t work there full-time.

However, as a teacher, you really want to know which is actually right, or at least have a very good excuse why you don’t know the law and someone else you can blame it on. China will often throw foreigners in jail for a week or two for some minor law breaking (unruly drunken behavior usually or teaching something against Chinese policy) and then deport them. If they’re lucky, the person is allowed to go back to their apartment and pack before being chucked over the border into Hong Kong. But, often someone will just disappear for a week or two and pop up again in Hong Kong asking for someone else to pack up their stuff so they can go home.

For me, as long as I get my residence permit renewed sometime this month (already in the works although my work permit did decide to hide at the office for a minute), I think I should be fine, as long as I don’t want to go anywhere. There’s another Covid outbreak in the next province over, conveniently starting just before a couple major holidays. I’m not surprised.

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