Foreigners are Teaching Machines

I know a guy back in the US who is trying to find a job in Jiangsu province, but every school or recruiter he’s contacted has refused to divulge any information about their job openings, saying things like, “I’m too busy right now, you can just talk to me when you come to China.” Uh… are they really so busy, they can’t answer a couple questions over e-mail? And how can they reasonably expect someone to move to China without first giving them some details or even guaranteeing them a job?

“Chinese schools treat foreigners like they’re a teaching machine,” my friend noted. Hey, that’s the title of my post! And it’s so true, it’s giving me a stomachache. The contract I signed with my school mentioned I would teach up to 20 classes, but four of those classes hadn’t started yet. So I wasn’t surprised (just terribly disappointed) when they finally added them to my schedule. Whoever is in charge of scheduling, however, needs to learn some consideration. They put me down for five classes on Wednesday and are asking me to teach until 5:00 every day (with even bigger gaps in my timetable than before).

The teacher who dropped this bad news keeps telling me these were difficult classes to arrange, it would be nearly impossible to work out an alternative, and sometimes you just have to buck up and do your job. Of course, one glance at his own timetable shows that he only teaches two classes in the morning and has the rest of the day to putter around the office. Even with the extra responsibilities, I’d much rather be in his cheap knock-off Chinese quality shoes. Teaching five classes (hell, teaching four classes) is physically exhausting, but the day the schools care is the day… nah, it’ll never happen.

If teaching wasn’t already tiring, I go and make things worse by trying to do a game with the students. Not only do I get incredibly bored having to explain the rules to all 16 classes, but middle school students can be just as rowdy as primary students when you’re doing anything besides a run-of-the-mill lecture. The problem with trying to play a game like Chutes and Ladders with 50 students is… that… you are trying to play a game like Chutes and Ladders with 50 students. The other problem involves all the waiting the other teams have to do while the team at bat takes forever to do their thing.

The way it’s set up, teams draw cards from a deck to move. Depending on what number (and color) they draw, they have to make a sentence using so many words from either the red list or the black list. Taking turns wasn’t working out, though, so I decided to have all four teams draw at the same time and talk amongst themselves at the same time. It creates about 30 seconds of chaotic chatter, but all I have to do is stand quietly in front and wait until everyone’s ready. Then they spit out their sentences, I correct as needed, and we can move on. It’s going a lot smoother than before, but… I still don’t want to do this five times a day.

15 October 2009 | Teaching | Comments | Home
tags: class activities, contracts

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