Rant

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I am feeling in a rather strange mood tonight. I feel kinda happy but in a very pissed off way because I realised that through being pissed off with the politics involved in my job that I actually care about this job a great deal.

Teaching is a great experience, it's like an acquired skill that improves over time and it really is nice noticing the improvements in your teaching. It's great getting to know the students and amazing seeing the improvements they make. And as sad as it is, it is kinda nice to get into the job and think of yourself as a tool for them to use to learn English and see how I can apply myself.

Tonight I am in one of those pissed off with the world kinda moods. I have a student in one of my classes who has been at this school for 6 or 7 years. In every class he sits there, he stares at the floor for the entire duration of the class, he doesn't know much English at all because he has blatantly used this strategy ever since he started studying at our school. If I pay him attention he puts in the effort, but his English is nowhere near good enough to start forming sentences on his own so I literally have to put the words into his mouth and get him to repeat what I say. I feel this is about as much progress as I can manage with him for the time being but maybe if I were allowed more time with him and if the situation was slightly different he could improve a lot and actually gain something from being here. But his motivation is so poor he can't be left to his own devices to study, and neither can I nor my Chinese teaching buddy dedicate all of our effort to ensuring he works in the class. I've brought it to the attention of the senior staff that he needs to be moved into another class for lower ability English if he will learn anything because there is nothing he can learn. And after a lot of hassle there is ultimately only so much they can do, the rest lays with the parents. My buddy has tested this student to see what his ability is and it lays far, far below the class he currently is in. She's asked him if he wants extra lessons to help improve his lessons and he has turned this down. If there was ever a case of a student not wanting to be in a school then this was it, it's not like he see's it as a nag he just really doesn't want to be there. He's wasting his time, he's wasting the other students time and he's wasting his parents time and money. Now at first I got pissed off with him because I thought atleast he could put in some effort instead of just sitting there and shaking his head, but then I found out a little more. After my buddy phoned his parents it turns out his parents are hardly there, he lives with his grandparents (which I think is quite common in China). His parents are pretty much never there for this child, most kids in China don't see their parents very often but I think this student in particular doesn't get much from his parents, instead his parents are too busy making money in some really "important" business. As a result, they obviously show their child no love, they decide to waste their money on a false image, sending their child to a language school to learn to speak English well, but he's not learning anything, he's putting extreme effort into not learning. This child has problems simply because his parents don't care and I'm pretty sure when my buddy finally does speak to them that they are just going to say "Oh no, there's no problem, his English is fine."

Perhaps you think I am jumping to conclusions thinking that is what his parents will say. Well I wish that were the case. I have another issue to do with parents who are willing to believe a steaming pile of bullshit for the sake of their face at the expense of the kids. I have a class with 4 students in, and due to the recent loss of 2 teachers some teachers are currently overloaded with extra classes and so some classes have got to be merged, and so in this class of 4 students will come another 4 students. Let's call my current students students A and the new ones students B. Now both sets of students are studying from the same book, A are currently on page 35 and have one more lesson of revision to do before I feel they are ready to do the end of unit test and move on to page 36. Students B are on page 41, after talking to their old teacher I have found out they are not fast learners and they did badly on the end of unit test and so should resit it. This would mix perfectly, students B would join A just as they are about to finish their revision for the test, then do the test and work back up to page 41 again and go over everything again so it is clearer in their heads. But no. The parents of students B think this is a waste of time, they refuse to accept that their kids' English learning skills are slow, they refuse to accept that they should resit the test and that it would actually BENEFIT them to revise everything up to page 41. The parents unfortunately have the final say, in terms of my teaching it doesn't bother me but I saw my poor students walk out of my classroom in bad moods today because they were told that unfortunately they have to take more time out of their already limited spare time to do back up lessons to catch up with students B. And this is all for the sake of face. I hate the whole culture of face in this country, it's the most pathetic thing. If the parents could just accept that their kids aren't actually at a level they expect them to be then those students would all be better off. But no.

My poor buddy has been doing all this chasing up, she works many, many, many hours in a day. I swear the Chinese staff are in the school for 12 hours a day. They have to do all this extra admin stuff, phone the parents, sit in on the lessons, give backup lessons, explain things to the students etc. In general they work a lot harder than any foreign teacher. They have a far better ability to teach English than we do, because they know the in's and out's of English as they have actually had to study it, whereas us lazy foreigners just speak the language, not once in school have I been taught how my language works, I just know how it works. These Chinese staff have spent their lives working stupidly hard, going to school from the early hours of the morning, finishing in the afternoon, going to English school in the evening and doing a whole range of extra activities. They spend years at University studying English, aswell as another subject, and they actually study as opposed to the majority of students in England who somehow manage to scrape by whilst being utterly lazy (myself included). But after all this hard work, in every school I can guarantee you the Chinese staff will be earning 5 times less than the western staff, in some schools even less. I don't deserve the money I'm earning based on this principle. I feel bad, but at the end of the day I guess I don't feel bad enough to start giving my money away. I suppose I'm selfish in a way. But you know what's great about them? They really don't seem to care. They know how to live in this country, they don't treat me any differently for coming to their country and living a lifestyle that pretty much rips the piss out of them, they treat me with respect and act as my friend. They are great people.

In other random ramblings, I am being scatty again. I have to say that this year has been by far the most confusing year of my life...I say year, I guess I mean 6 months. I thought coming abroad would help me make up my mind about what I want to do with my life, or mainly what job I want to do. It hasn't in the slightest, if anything it's confused the living daylights out of me. I think I know that I definitely want, always have wanted and always will want a job for a lazy person, because I am a lazy person. I want free time, I want lots of money, I don't want to do much in my job and I want to enjoy it. You could say that's the job I have right now, I actually love it. I'm passionate about it, I love teaching, I have a lot of free time although the majority of it I chose to spend planning my lessons because I want to make my lessons more interesting. I am earning far more than enough money to survive, save and have a good time in this place. I don't ever have to wake up in the mornings...Well every so often I do. I don't do much in my job, I teach 3 hours a day, sometimes 4, I spend a while sitting their planning, that can be up to 2 hours everyday but that's when I get really into it. I'm not constantly nagged by a boss, I'm left to my own devices and I work with great people. I love it! Unfortunately I miss people in England and I wish I could go back to see them. But that would mean I have to either go back home and work in some inevitably crappy job, or spend ages saving up to come home and live on a tight budget for about a week (because Chinese money doesn't stretch as far in England). It frustrates me. If I could afford to fly back to England on every holiday I got in this country then I probably would and I'd quite probably be set for life. The thought of living and working in England does not appeal to me in the slightest. The thought of seeing my friends and family is the only thing that drags me back to England. There honestly is no other reason for me wanting to go back to England. I know any job I get as soon as I go back to England is going to be crap, I know I'm going to hate getting back into the swing of things because in all honesty I hate England. I really do. I think there's worse countries in the world, but I think England is far from a great country for me to live in. I know I will not be happy living in England unless I could somehow get a job, a level of wage and amount of free time quite similar to the life I have now. But that's not going to happen. And so the thought of returning home is a mixed feeling one. Seeing people again will be so amazing, more amazing than it's ever been before, but going back to live and work in the country I hate will be a horribly depressing experience if it's anything like other working experiences I've had in England. Although I did enjoy doing the summer TEFL school, but unfortunately I don't think I can get work like that to last me all year. Infact, talking about how great TEFL is, I don't understand why more people don't do it. It really is a dream. You can go anywhere in the world. If you're reading what I'm saying and understanding every word of it you CAN go anywhere in the world, you CAN live a lazy life and you CAN live a luxurious life. I feel very lucky for being me now.

I'm liking what this experience is doing to me. I've learnt a lot of Chinese which is great, I can speak it well now. I've learnt more about my language and I've learnt how languages shape cultures, and I think learning Chinese has helped me to understand the Chinese and also understand more about my own culture. I've had a great time getting to know people from all over the world. It's been amazing living as a foreigner, getting compliments everyday, having random strangers come out of nowhere and do you the most amazing favours. Have people come up to you and randomly ask for your phone number of a photo. I've learnt how people operate, I've learnt more about how I operate. I value my opinions on things. Maybe I valued them before but I feel I value them far more now, I feel like I deserve to be known as a more interesting person, not because I've lived in another country but because I've gone out of my way to face supposedly difficult experiences with confidence. I've thought about the most practical ways of doing things and done them, for example learning Chinese, I love the way I've learnt it. I spent the first 3 months studying my arse off but since then I've rarely studied, I've just practiced, messed about with it, learnt loads and had a great deal of fun. I feel so independent now, I feel really able to do things on my own. My first few days in this city I didn't really feel nervous at all, I didn't exactly feel daunted by the whole experience, I just felt like being independent and trying to get to know the place on my own and make some friends using the language skills I've developed. I feel this experience has opened my mind a lot, I feel more clear about there being both sides to any argument and for the motives behind things. I feel quite happy with who I am becomming.

In other news, if I am slow with replying to emails then I apologise. I am in a really anti email mood at the moment, it's not that I hate emails, it's just I can hardly ever be bothered to type them (same goes with this blog). And my MP4 player, I got it working again since I got my laptop (I simply formatted it and wiped it clear off all previous data (grr)) and loaded lots of cool music onto it. But now it's not working at all, I've tried taking it to some Chinese guy at a repair shop but he said he can't fix it so I shall have to buy a new one, which is a huge pain in the arse because I loved that toy! I can't afford to buy one anywhere near as good as it either, but due to China being amazing, cheap MP4 players are easy to come by and I can buy a 1GB one with the option of adding SD cards for about £18. So that shouldn't be too much a problem, it will just never be the same 😞.

Anyway, I feel I've typed enough for me to justify not having to update this for a little while longer! So I shall leave now, bye bye!

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