teacher seminar

One of the last things I did in Songyuan was teach a section in an eight day seminar for 200 English teachers from Songyuan public schools. The teachers were all Chinese and taught mostly at the middle and high school levels.

My school sold the program to the education department, which the owner had deep ties to (recall Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest). The seminar had four sections, with one foreigner teaching each: American Culture (my section), Classroom Language, Pronunciation & Intonation and Communication & Presentation. The teachers came to us in groups of 50 and we had each group for day and a half. At the end of the seminar each teacher was supposed to give a short presentation and there was a written test.

When I was first told about the seminar, the foreign teacher/business development consultant guy at my school that had helped the school's owner set up the whole thing said he had all the material and such for each section, we just had to present his stuff. The department of education ended up making changes to the length of the seminar and the desired content the night before we started, so a lot of that went out the window anyway, but once I went through my section of the "prepared" material, I ended up just tossing it anyway. The guy had literally just pulled headings and entire sections off wikipedia for each section. I am amazed as to how it fooled anyone as being a solid program of original material, but that is neither here or there. The material for me honestly read like it might not have even been written by an American, so I just made up my own.

Even though it was a lot of extra work that I essentially didn't get paid for, I really did love the seminar. It was a continuation of my favorite part of my regular Oil Adults 2 class, a mutual conversation about culture, so an opportunity for me to learn as well.

Having never taught in a public school, unlike most of my coworkers, I went into the seminar with little to no expectations, and I was STILL surprised. The English teachers did not speak English. Most of my regular students have a better grasp of the language than the teachers did. We foreigners had Chinese translators translating literally every word we said and translating the teachers' questions and such back to us. Many of them didn't even try to use English and speak directly to me.

In each section there were maybe one or two, three tops, people with a solid enough grasp on the English language to actually have a conversation with me. I knew that the focus for English language teaching in the Chinese education system is reading and writing, but the lack of verbal communication skills still came as a shock.

Over the course of the seminar, I was also surprised to learn that many of the teachers had not been to university and many of them had no English training at all (so the above made sense), they had been math or science teachers that the school just arbitrarily reassigned to teach English. And these were supposed to be the "best" English teachers in Songyuan. Scary.

The biggest surprises of the whole thing though came on test day. The four foreigners teaching consisted of myself, the business development consultant guy, the school VP and then another American guy in his early 30s. As usual, nothing was communicated to anyone ahead of time as to how the test would work logistically, but the other American guy and I figured between the development guy and the VP being there, everything would get figured out. Boy, were we wrong.

The morning of that day was for the individual presentations, which was easy enough, and the afternoon was for the written test. The first major problem came when the development guy and the VP never came back from lunch. And didn't answer their phones. And neither did the school owner. 

After about an hour's worth of running around trying to figure out if they were coming back or not and searching for an appropriate room to administer the test that wasn't locked (and yes, this did involve marching all 200 teachers all over a high school), we finally settled on keeping the teachers in their groups of 50 and keeping each group in a separate classroom to take the tests. That left the American, myself, a Chinese school admin and a Chinese TA to administer and monitor the 200 teachers taking the test in these four rooms.

Observing the testing process was mind blowing. Every single one of them would have failed in an American testing setting. They ALL cheated. They were taking out notes, phones, dictionaries and books. They were talking loudly to each other and walking around the room to see others' answers. I could literally hear them going down their answers sheets reading, "A, B, D, C, C, A…" to each other and trading test papers, not even trying to hide it. Nothing we said could stop them or even make them feel like they should bother trying to be discreet. The American and I were just blown away.

There was a short break after the allotted testing time and THEN the others from my school came back, finally, and we got everyone together into an auditorium. The American guy and I made the "I'm disappointed in you guys" speech, which I can't say I ever imagined I'd be doing to hundreds of other adults. We accepted some responsibility, but expressed just how shocked we were, why and what needed to change according to western standards.

Cheating is such an accepted part of culture here, but to see it in action like that, and from teachers no less… wow. It made me feel really depressed. Many of them couldn't even understand that they should be embarrassed.

visa lording

For 99% of EFL jobs, a class Z work visa is built into the contract as the school's responsibility to provide. Many foreign language schools like to screw around with these and try to hold them over our heads and/or not provide them. Visas are a lot cheaper to get for foreigners before we get to the country, especially in China, because once we are here we have to physically go to Hong Kong to get the visa, whereas before we arrive, the whole process can just be done by mail.

If you get caught working illegally in a country it's not the end of the world. You'll get fined and likely deported, but not jailed or anything crazy. You will, however, have that stigma against you when you try to work in other countries and you likely cannot work in whichever country you were busted in again. As far as the school you were working for illegally goes, they will get a small fine, a slap on the wrist, and that is all. The chances of getting caught are slim, but still much riskier for the teacher than the school.

Now I want to share a story about a hypothetical friend in Songyuan. She got her job teaching in China last minute, so her employer told her to just get a class L tourist visa to come over and then when she got here he would get her Z visa. This friend arrived at the beginning of February and since then has been bugging her boss about getting her visa. At first he kept telling her to wait until more foreign teachers came so he could send them all at once to cut costs. Eventually he stopped making excuses and just blew her off.

Toward the end of April, my friend told her boss that she would be unable to work in the month of May until flight arrangements had been made for her to go to Hong Kong to get her visa. Within a day, her boss had interrupted a class of hers to tell her when she would be going. He asked her to look up flights, since he was so busy. She had no problem with this, as she was essentially planning a vacation for herself and two of her friends (they were also without visas and she had included them when speaking to her employer).

She sent him the info and asked for confirmation of flights and hotels. She never got it. She asked her boss and he said everything had been purchased and set up by another school admin so she should email him. She did and never got the info.

Then, a week before she was supposed to leave, she received her schedule and saw that she was set to be judging the Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest. As I have mentioned before, the pay for working the contest is ridiculously minimal, you're basically volunteering. My friend had previously stated that she would not work the contest and hadn't been scheduled to do so since, so she went in to her employer and told him as much.

He asked why, she gave her reasons (low pay, detracts from teaching hours, not in her contract and she'd also had her schedule screwed with when she showed up at 6am one day… don't mess with a girl at 6am). Her boss's arguments for her to work were that it was for charity (not true), the school wasn't making any money (the school is actually calling every single contestant afterwards and using the judges' comments to recruit them to the school), was she so greedy (this is her job?!) and if he let her do this then what about the other teachers (not her problem). Then things got dirty…

He asked her, "If this is your attitude, then why am I paying 5K to send you to Hong Kong for your visa?" She said something to the effect of, "Because it's part of my contract that you are almost four months late in fulfilling." His reply was, "I don't care about your contract. Maybe I don't get your visa." To which she said, "Then maybe I don't work for you anymore." He basically said he didn't care. She asked if he wanted her to come to work tomorrow (so was her going to get her visa), or not, and he said he'd think about it and call her later. He never called, so she didn't go to work the next day.
 
My friend was only so worried, because she had plenty of people to stay with if need be, and the way she saw it, she had three options: 1.) she could easily go work at another school in Songyuan 2.) she could go to Xia'Men early, where she was planning on going in September anyway OR 3.) she could work a two week summer camp in Thailand with a friend and make enough money to travel for a few months without working.

Her only concern was getting her flight money and making her employer pay. Her contract read that if her employer broke her contract he had to pay her three to ten times her monthly salary, depending (on what, who knows). She also wasn't entirely sure how long her tourist visa was good, it didn't say on the visa. All it said was that it was good for multiple entires into the country, but only 60 days each entry, and she had about 10 days before she hit that 60 for her current entry.

In her unexpected day off, she interviewed with another school in town and met with a few of her adult students who are completely awesome and took the day off work to counsel her and help take her mind off the whole thing. Also that day, her school VP asked to meet with her in the evening to get the lowdown. She had texted the VP and her students the night before to let them know she wouldn't be teaching the next day so she wasn't flaking on anyone by not showing up.

Her VP and the school she interviewed with both told her that to work elsewhere in China, she would need a letter signed by both herself and her employer releasing her from her contract early, eek. The VP got her side of the story and then met with the employer to try to smooth things over and get him to be reasonable. She called my friend later that night and said he would still get her visa if she would be flexible to potentially help with the contest in the future. She said no. The VP told her that she does the scheduling, so she would make sure my friend never had to work the contest again. My friend still said no, there's no way she was going to work it, the VP could say whatever she wanted, but if it ever came down to it, she wouldn't do it. The VP said ok.

The next day my friend saw her employer at school and he asked her, "Are you still mad at me?" with a big smile.

time is $$$ (or not)

I'm a pretty laid back person, but sometimes when people (i.e. my school) don't have any respect for my time and think it has no value, it gets a little annoying.

A few days ago my VP was talking on the phone to my school's owner about the schedule, and in the middle of the office with all of us foreign teachers there she said, "We will just put a teacher's name there on the schedule; we don't pay them for classes on the schedule, just for what they teach, so if the student doesn't show up it doesn't matter." That definitely grated at me a bit. Like we have nothing better to do that wait around in the hopes that maybe a student will show up and we might work that day.

The whole value of time issue is also why many of us foreign teachers at my school are aggravated about the Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest. I've pretty much removed myself from that situation, which is awesome. Earlier this week there was supposed to be a mandatory meeting for all teachers at 6pm regarding the contest. Administration didn't put it on the schedule, didn't verbally tell any of us about it and they just wrote it on the a large white board in the school the morning of. I had conflicting plans, so I didn't go. Nobody said anything to me about it either, which was nice.

I did miss some news apparently though, because when I got to school the next day, there was such a huge crowd out front I thought there was a fire or something. The contest round that day happened at our school, instead of elsewhere. Consequently, most of my classes for the day were cancelled, not that the school figured this out beforehand or anything (because that would make too much sense).

I left when they decided my morning classes were cancelled, but then one of my school admins called me to back school because he changed his mind. When I got back, the student he called me back to teach got into a fight with him because the student didn't want to have class. Meanwhile, I'm sitting around awkwardly watch them fight, getting caught in the middle and not working toward my teaching hours at all (until I did end up tutoring him that day). No bueno.

royalties & privacy

The fact that I write came up with one of my adult students the other day and he was asking about my blog. I'd love to be able to send my students links, but with the Great Firewall, none of them can get to see it. I told this particular student I'd send him a screen capture though so he could.

He asked me if I write about my students; I told him I do, but I never include the names of people I write about to protect their privacy. Regardless, he jokingly demanded royalties, which cracked me up.

On the privacy note though, I really do try not to include too much detail about specific people or things that might potentially bite me in the ass down the road. The English speaking contest is the only thing I would think maybe I have too much information about (as I have the actual name posted), but at present I'm too lazy to go through and take the name out of posts it's mentioned in.

I'm not too worried about anything really, as I like to think I provide pretty fair observations about everything and the rest is my personal opinions, but maybe that's just me.

My mom is a big worrier, and she's definitely pointed out a time or two when I maybe included more detail than I should have, and I consequently made some edits. She's pretty concerned about someone stealing my identity from information I put on here though. Personally, I think there's more information about me on facebook than here!

A couple of my Chinese friends have asked me why I include so many details about myself as well. I just explain that it's MY blog; it's about MY life; of course there's going to be a lot of information about me! I'm not trying to write an informational book about China.

reputation & contest debacle

My school and its owner have a bit of a bad reputation in town. All the foreigners know it, and it kind of sucks when a new person starts at my school, because we're torn between scaring them about the contract they've just signed and warning them so they know what to watch out for.

He's pretty much known for asking ridiculous things of foreigners and preying on their guilt and general niceness. There are definitely other Chinese that are way worse to work for; we do get paid, and we get paid usually within two days of whenever we're supposed to (which is the tenth of the following month), so that's good. I've also turned in expense reports without receipts and still gotten paid. What we need to watch out for is keeping track of our teaching hours, our days off, our overtime and things like that.

As I've mentioned, we're all contracted for 88 teaching hours per month, with one day off per week. We do not get paid for office or prep hours. So to calculate your salary, you can look at your teaching hours or your teaching days each month, and it can get confusing because the contracts aren't clear.

Especially with me being in Tianjin for a few months and having different pay rate there, I make sure to calculate exactly what I expect to get paid in a way that makes the most sense for me and then I lay it out in an email to my school's accountant so there are no surprises. My explanations of pay have resulted in me getting paid exactly what I thought I should each month, instead of having it spun in the more negative direction for me.

My explanation for March did result in an hour and a half long meeting with my school's owner and the vice president yesterday though. The owner is Chinese, and is kind of realizing that the contracts are open to interpretation on a couple of different points and wants to make a change.

The more I talk with him, the more I don't know if his reputation for asking ridiculous things is actually intentional and malicious, like he wants to take advantage of us, or if he genuinely doesn't realize he is doing it, or that it is happening, as he likely isn't making all the day to day decisions that affect us.

In the course of that conversation yesterday the possibility of me taking on some of the school vice president's responsibilities while she is on a month and a half long holiday came up. I'm not placing too much stock in this, as the whole graphic design for the school thing has yet to come to fruition, but it's been put out there.

The idea of a promotion of sorts is obviously initially appealing (yay American ambition), until I think about the fact that the VP gets the shit end of the stick a lot (in a "don't kill the messenger" and she is the messenger kind of way), and also I don't plan to stay here, so what do I care about moving up.

Regardless, I told them if they want me to expand my role beyond teaching, they need to lay out exactly what they have in mind and I'll consider it. They also asked how many teaching hours I can handle each week, which is a bit scary considering my schedule this week had like 50 hours.

Back to ridiculous expectations and requests though... this whole Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest is quite the debacle. The whole contest is VERY time and labor intensive, much more so for the Chinese TAs than for us foreigners, but still. Any judging hours that we have do not count towards our contracted teaching hours for the month, and there is judging literally every day, Monday through Friday. We've even had to contract teachers from other schools and cities to come in and help us.

I asked the VP how we get paid for these judging hours at the onset of the contest and she said they count toward our office hours. I don't think she realized at the time that we don't get paid for those at all. Naturally I went to my school's owner and asked about it. He kind of tried to feign ignorance or dodge the question, but I basically bullied him into answering and telling me (and the two other foreigners I brought in with me for backup/witnesses) that we will be paid half of our hourly teaching over time rate for contest hours. We were satisfied with the fact that we had an answer and we were getting paid, but that rate basically amounts to nothing.

What makes it especially bad is that most of the judging hours require us to get to school crazy early, like five or six am. Luckily for me, I've only been involved in two days of judging.

My school is super unorganized and things happen last minute all the time though. This is partly a function of China in general, but also my school takes it to an extreme. I got a call the other evening confirming my final student for the following day, and reminding me that I was to be a judge at five am the next morning (apparently it was on the schedule and I missed it). I told them no. They NEVER hear no. But there was no way I was starting work at five am, and then with the confirmation of my final student, I was scheduled until eight in the evening. 15 hour days are not what I signed up for here.

When I told them no, the VP threw a, "Well I'll just have to tell the owner..." type comment out there to scare me. Neither of them said boo to me after that call though. Point for me!

communist heat & schools

In Chinese apartments (and businesses I've recently discovered), you do not have any control over the heating unless you buy a stand alone unit. Most places are heated from the floor, and whoever controls the temperature (the government? hooray for Communism?) usually keeps it reasonably warm. The heated floors are pretty nice in theory, except that the Chinese don't really enjoy them, because they wear sandals in the house.

I was slow to follow this custom at first, but the more I'm here and see how much dirtier everything is than in the States, the more I don't even want my socks on the floor. Mops are used to clean floors, then hand railings. Maybe the rag that cleans the floor of a restaurant will clean a table afterwards. They probably won't use any kind of soap. Squat toilets, while great for someone that hovers over public toilets anyways, mean that you're standing in a lot more pee than in your average western bathroom. So your shoes are a lot grosser. So yeah, the sandals are clutch.

Turns out though, April first the heat in Songyuan was turned off for the year. And then it snowed. Twice. It's not too terribly cold inside my school because there are so many people there all the time. There are stand alone heaters as well, but I don't think we turn them on. Neither The Crack Den nor Crack Den 2.0 has a stand alone heater, which definitely means they're colder than I'd prefer, but not cold to the point that I wear my winter coat inside. Where you really notice is in restaurants that don't have stand alone units and the schools we're judging the contest at. The schools. Are. Freezing. It sucks. I can't imagine how the kids can focus.

Granted, I can't imagine how the kids can focus anyway. They go to school at 7am and leave at maybe 9pm. On my way to dinner tonight our taxi hit traffic because of parents picking their kids up outside of a high school at 9pm, no joke. Some of them have school on weekends too. And on top of all of the in school hours they still study like mad. I'd go crazy! I'm not sure how all of it works though; I have a few tutoring students that spend all day at my school Monday through Friday, with different tutors, and just learn English. They don't even go to their actual Chinese high schools. Seems like that shouldn't be quite legal. Truant much?

Even with all the in school hours, they do have sports teams, no clue when they have time to practice. They don't have any of the clubs or other extracurriculars that western schools do though.

zai jian Crack Den

Yesterday I finished class at 5pm to find my school's caretaker waiting to rush me home to move. I had absolutely zero notice that it was going to be moving day, so my stuff was definitely not set up for quick transport. The caretaker brought an older gentleman from Singapore that teaches English as well and two young, male Chinese TAs to help move me. My replacement from Tianjin, who is in town for the Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest, also came along, as she was moving into The Crack Den for the remainder of her visit.

It was a crazy scene there with four men I barely know manhandling all my stuff and throwing it into whatever bag was closest to them, just to get it moved asap. I'm talking shower stuff, groceries, dirty laundry, everything. The caretaker sitting on my obnoxious, purple crocodile suitcase to zip it closed was priceless. My Tianjin replacement was just watching and I'm sure being thankful it wasn't her stuff getting tossed around.

My bags are not small, but these frail looking Chinese men lugged them down four flights of stairs into the van. Luckily my new place is on the first floor and near The Crack Den but definitely a quicker walk to school.

The new place is bigger, especially the bathroom, which was my main issue. I have some shelving in my wardrobe, which is great and a bigger bed too. The bed is actually a Chinese version of memory foam, as opposed to the hard-as-a-board-we-don't-use-springs mattresses in most places, which is nice too.

I am actually fully unpacked now, for the first time in China! Very exciting for me. I'm trying to get rid of one more bag of stuff, which will bring me down to three huge bags to check when I travel and a large carry on. It's a lot of stuff, but not when you consider the fact that it's everything I own. Lots of the younger foreigners still have stuff at their parents' homes, but mine lived across the country from me when I left, and my stuff really wasn't worth shipping. All I have left in the States is my bike, my tent and my sleeping bag. It's weird, but I have so little stuff now and it still feels like way too much.

Back to Crack Den 2.0 though. The only really kind of eh things about the place are that there are no light fixtures, just the light bulbs in the ceiling, which definitely makes it look Crack Den ish, and then the spiders. I've only seen two so far, and they're just daddy long legs, but there are spider webs in all the corners and stuff.

Still, it's a huge upgrade. And I'm already so much more comfortable here. Pictures to come.

Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest

My school has partnered with the government of Songyuan and a local tv station to hold the first Happy Songyuan English Speaking Contest. The contest will run for about three months and is open to Chinese of all ages, from primary school up through adults, separated in age based brackets. We'd all heard rumblings about the contest at school, but no one really gave us any details, until the first round of the contest began on Monday. And turns out us foreign teachers are all judges.

The contest sounded like a really cool idea at first to promote social growth and English speaking/awareness in Songyuan. Upon further consideration, it's totally just a way for my school to recruit more students and make more money, but props to my school owner for having the connections and wherewithal to pull it off. The first round has around 6,000 contestants from what I've heard. Each contestant will receive a follow up call from my school trying to enroll them based on judge comments (so comments from the foreign teachers at my school).

We actually had to bring in some teachers from a nearby city that work for a friend of my school's owner to judge the first round because there are so many contestants; the other teachers are essentially on loan to us. We also brought my replacement in Tianjin and another teacher from out there in to help judge as well.

The materials for the contest, including the signup sheets, have photos and bios of some of us teachers I was surprised to find. I can't read my bio and haven't had the whole thing translated, but someone told me it mentions that I was the head of the school in Tianjin. Helllloooooo resume builder, lol! Oh, and they made us all business cards, with just our first names, and none of our contact information, just the school's.

On Monday, we had to be at school at 6am to take a one and a half hour bus ride to the location of one of the first rounds of judging on the outskirts of Songyuan. There will be three rounds of the contest, each about a months long.

For judging, they put each foreign teacher/judge in a classroom with a Chinese tabulator. Contestants come in one by one, the tabulator asks their Chinese name, matches to their registration forms and cards (complete with photos), and asks if they are ready. Then they give their speech. For the first round each contestant is supposed to have written a five minute speech about basically anything (topic is "My..."). After the speech, we ask them a few questions. We judge based on grammar, pronunciation, fluency, accuracy and stage presence and then give comments. They are not penalized for being under time. No one has come close to going over yet.

The first day of round one judging, we had mostly middle schoolers from a rural area of Songyuan, and the speeches were just discouraging. In total I think we judged about 900 students that day, and there were two speeches that we heard over and over again, almost verbatim.

"My family. We are a happy family. There are three people in my family. My mother, my father and me. My mother is a teacher. She is a very good teacher. My father is a doctor. He is very busy. I am a student..." etc.

"My friend. I have a friend named _______. She is very cute. She has long, straight, black hair. She has big eyes, a small nose and a small mouth. She likes the sing and dance..." etc.

Of course there were variations and some standout students, but for the most part, they all read almost the exact same speech and has slim to zero idea what they were saying. We would ask questions like, "What does your mother teach?" and get, "Yes" as an answer. For some of us, the Chinese teachers from the school would stand in the room and it became obvious that they were coaching the students on what question we might ask and telling them how to respond. Ugh.

There was a reporter from the tv station at the first day of judging and she interviewed me, so I might be on the Chinese news (yay CCTV!). She asked how students in that area were performing and I felt bad being honest, but they told me to, so I tried to put a positive spin on it and say that many students needed a lot of work but there were a few excellent contestants.

I didn't take part in the second day of judging, but I did in the third, and we had all high school students. They were more in the center of the city and much, much better. I did get many speeches on the same topic ("My dream..."), but all were obviousl written by the students. Except the one contestant I had that got up and just read the lyrics to Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On." My first question was, "What is your favorite movie?" Made me laugh.

This week has been my first time in Chinese public schools and first time for a new bathroom experience. Girls bathrooms have trough-ish toilets! There are no flushing systems, just maybe a hose at one end. Luckily the teachers' bathrooms usually have stalls, but the students' bathrooms are just rooms with troughs around the edges and you do all your business out in the open with everyone watching. It feels like you shouldn't be going to the bathroom there. If you teach at a public school without a teachers' bathroom, you can literally be having a face to face chat with your students while you take a poop. In general though, the schools are just pretty gross. And the whole building always smells like bathrooms.