Reflection on Teaching in China

I’ve been done teaching for a few days now, so I suppose it’s only appropriate to reflect on my experience.  I’m not entirely sure what I had expected or hoped for in a foreign teaching experience, but I know I definitely didn’t get it.  My expat experience felt eerily similar to my pathetic college experience.  If I wasn’t in class, I was in my room.  Because my school was so far away from everything it made it pretty much impossible to have any kind of a social life.  Granted I was able to go downtown and spend time with my brother and his friends on weekends, but it was a little strange because I didn’t really have any of my own friends.  That’s not to say I didn’t look forward to weekends or that I didn’t like my brother’s friends.  Indeed I did, but it wasn’t until recently that we met some other teachers at a foreign teacher’s retreat that felt more like our friends.  Which really makes it kind of sad to be leaving now, and upsetting that the retreat wasn’t held earlier in the year.  But when did this become a post about my social life?  This is supposed to be about teaching!

I think I’ve done enough complaining about my bad classes that you can get a fairly good idea of what I disliked about teaching.  While my complaints still stand for the majority of my classes, there were about three classes that I actually enjoyed teaching.  Consequently these three classes had the oldest students in them.  Not only was their English level much better, they were far better behaved too.  But even within these classes there were plenty of students with terrible English skills.  On the long, miserable bus ride back to my college one weekend, one of my students (whom I thought was one of the better ones) stood next to me smashed up against me and wanted to talk.  Weather is always a safe subject, so I asked when was the last time it snowed in Changzhou, but she had no idea what I was saying.  I tried asking other simpler things, but she couldn’t understand a word I said, so I just spent the rest of the bus ride in awkward silence.  It was a pretty depressing conversation though because I realized then that I gave my classes way more credit than they deserved.  I honestly don’t think any of my students learned a single thing from my classes.  What my class did provide was an opportunity for them to practice things they already knew.  If that helped them at all, then great.  If not, sorry I wasted your time.

Even though teaching was a pretty disappointing experience, I’m still glad I did it.  I came to China before in 2006 to teach for a summer camp, but I didn’t stay long enough to feel satisfied.  This time, even though I still didn’t stay that long, I feel like I’ve seen and experienced plenty of China.  The only remaining question, then, is would I do it again?  That depends on what you’re asking.  If you’re asking if I’d teach again then the answer is without question; no, I’ll never teach English again.  When I do live abroad again, it will have to be for some reason other than teaching English.  I may have had a select few good teaching experiences, but the bad far outweighs the good.  If you’re asking if I’ll come back to China, then the answer isn’t so clear cut.  I’m not opposed to coming back to China.  I would enjoy coming back to China, it’s just not very high in my list of priorities.  There are so many other places I’d much rather go before I come back to China.  It’s hard to answer my students when they ask me when I’ll come back.  I quickly found they didn’t like the answer “probably never” so instead I just shrug.