teaching vs planning

This first few weeks in Tanggu has really been my first introduction to teaching, as I only taught maybe 14 hours the week prior in Songyuan. I have felt in Tanggu like I have been doing so much work, way more than I should be doing, outside of my teaching hours. The foreigners and the Chinese I know all agree with me as well, and I am finally getting a handle on it and making a more reasonable balance for myself.

All foreigners' contracts are structured based on so many teaching hours per month, lesson planning and office hours are expected and we are compensated as such, but they are not necessarily tracked and do not count toward our teaching hours. When you tutor or teach a class that isn't working from a book, teaching requires a lot more work outside of your teaching hours to prepare, as you are essentially creating all course materials yourself. This has been my struggle; I am not as good at coming up with things in class off the cuff and I don't want to be a boring teacher, so I feel the need to prepare a lot before class. A lot of foreign teachers don't do this.

For the two middle schoolers I am tutoring I am creating their material as we go. We don't work on their work from English class, as they are both really good with the language and ahead of their class. We aren't working from another book, and we aren't really working towards anything. One wants to take the SATs, but she's too young for a lot of the practice materials out there.

The labor union guy I am working with wants to be able to give a speech in English by the end of the year and has a 52 lesson course we are working through, which helps. He studies ahead of each class and learns very quickly though, so we burn through the lessons in no time. The lessons also need to be supplemented quite a bit to teach a well rounded use of the language.

The government class I teach has 40 people registered and between five and ten people show up each class, all with vastly different English levels. The class is theoretically supposed to be business English, and there is a sort of book for it, but no one in the class uses English for their jobs (which are all in different bureaus of the government by the way) and all they want to do is practice speaking. When I met with the people that contracted us to teach the class, their only measure of success was how many people return week after week. Given all that, I am not using the book, so I am creating all my own material for them as well. I teach them in three hour blocks at a time, which can be very long, and some people come every class, some only come on Fridays and some only come on Saturdays, so I have to remember who I am catering to each class.

Oof.

But like I said, I am keeping a better balance for myself since my friend was in town all last week. I am also finding things to do around the city, even if my TA doesn't want to go, and hopefully this week I will meet some new people too. Regardless, my plan is still to return to Songyuan soon and get back to my life and friends there :)