Hello Everyone..my apologies I really really suck at keeping up to date with my blog and I promise to try to be a more interesting blog to stop by. I have many stories to write about to catch p with the past month but the first one is about my day today. Today is Wednesday, just another day at the office here in China. I have been teaching here at Shazitang Education Group for two full months now and have settled into my role as the grade 5 foreign English teacher. Since I am only an intern, I have it pretty easy most days in terms of work load. School here in China is structured much differently than school back in Canada. I work at a boarding school so students live in dorms (did I mention I teach at a primary school? this means these kids live at the school 5 days a week at age 6!). The working day for these kids starts at 7:15am. I have to be at the school for 7:45 to have breakfast before heading to my office to plan lessons and then teach a few morning lessons. For me, I usually teach 3 or 4 lessons each morning, have lunch followed by a rest time (the most glorious two hours of the day, which lately I haven't been lucky enough to get). Afternoons are typically pretty laid back for us foreign teachers. We plan lessons in the office, learn Chinese, or plan and run some fun activities and workshops for students. After dinner at 5:30, we get to go home for the day. But the working day is not even close to finished for the students and other teachers. They continue to have lessons until 8:30 at night! In case you didn't put 2 and 2 together, this means that these kids are in school from 7:30am until 8:30pm!! Makes me take back my days of complaining about 9-3:30!
Today I got the taste of what it is like to work as a full time Chinese teacher and man, do I give them huge credit. The amount of time and energy teachers here put into their job is absolutely insane and I can say that I truly appreciate what teachers do. Being one of only 6 foreign teachers with 6 school campuses and 10,000 students can make you a hot commodity and we tend to get some days that are jam packed full of lessons and activities. Today was one of those days. We had lessons in the morning followed by a trip to another campus to put on Halloween activities and games for the afternoon and then rushed back to the main campus to do a few evening lessons. After a whirlwind of a day I am so happy to be sitting on my bed and enjoying a cup of tea. And to think that most teachers here do this everyday. This absolutely blows my mind! Today really gave me an insight in to how hard Chinese teachers and students really work. Every single day of the week the students study away at school for hours and hours in hopes of being smart enough to one day be accepted into university.
I guess the point that I am trying to make is that we have it so easy back in Canada. Our school system is set up so that students get to learn while having fun and we understand that childhood is important and allow students to enjoy it and make the most of it. Here in China, kids spend their childhood at a desk in school for 13 hours a day with a pile of books and not to mention the homework that follows. It might sound absurd. You might be reading this thinking, why? what's the point? Well in a country with a population of 1.4 billion there is a stiff competition to get into a prestigious school and let me tell you, there are many students who want a spot at a top notch university, even just any university really. For us in Canada when we graduate high school we have endless options as to where we can study. Yeah sure, institutions can weed people out by charging a certain amount for tuition and setting a standard for what kind of marks you have to obtain to gain admittance into their institution but when it's all said in done, if you want to go to university, you will get in somewhere and be able to go. In China, it doesn't work that way. You have to work extremely hard to get yourself a spot in a university and the competition begins at an extremely early age.
Think back to when you were a student in elementary school. What do you remember? The fun you had with friends at recess and all the fun games and activities and school projects you did in the classroom? Hanging out with friends after school, playing sports or having dance lessons? If this sounds about right for you then you are extremely fortunate to have such positive memories because for the students that I stand in front of and teach everyday, the majority of their childhood is spent sitting in a desk, nose in the book.
Today was a great friendly reminder to be appreciative for where I come from and was a great chance to spend a day in the life of a Chinese teacher. I hope you can learn something from the day that I had as well. If you're interested in learning more about how different the Chinese school system is from ours in Canada, click on this link to watch BBC's series, Chinese Schools Very enlightening!
Cheers!
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