Working Towards a Better Teaching Environment

January 23, 2011

At the moment I’m trying to pin down some ideas for the future. The whole new year thing (both of them), the last few few months remaining on my contract and the fact that people I know all seem to be getting engaged has prompted me to mark and execute on my plans for the future.

There are a few sticking points that I know are true and won’t change anytime soon:

-I love writing about video games and my analysis is worthwhile

-I am very fortunate to have such a wonderful girlfriend

-I still wish to invest many more years into my Chinese study, transition into native speaker-esque lifestyle

-China makes me pretty happy and I have some good friends here

-I want to keep living the independent life

-Teaching English is a favourable, flexible job in China

So, my plan is to structure my future around these permanent-enough factors. This means moving to Shanghai to be with my girlfriend, continue to write about video games and teach English and practice more Chinese. My current situation, bar the fact that I don’t live in Shanghai is pretty favourable to my sticking points. However, one can always make life better.

I am enjoying my writing more than I ever thought that I would have and have therefore decided that this year I want to start working on same game-specific books full of analysis. Putting out a book, particularly while I am still quite young, would make me an authority, popularity and credibility, so long as I can get them off the ground. Also, what I am finding now is that I have to sacrifice one part of my goals with my current time table. I can’t work a full time job and be a good boyfriend, writer and Chinese student.

So, my plan is to hopefully work part-time from this June and live in close proximity to my girlfriend too. This way I have more time for us, more time for Chinese and the time allowance needed to write my books and improve my teaching.

Currently I’m feeling frustrated at my current teaching job, which is not necessarily a bad one, mind you. It’s just that the corporate aims and the aims of the teachers often clash which can infuriate me at times. I often stew over how much of my feelings towards my job are related to my approach, the situation of the school/classes, the types of classes I have—really, what I want to know is, where do the problems lie and how can I remove them so as to make my job and the student’s experiences more enjoyable.

The following is a list of detrimental factors that have strong affects on the classroom environment:

-2hr long classes (especially with kids)

-lack of local assistant in low level classes (this is utterly ridiculous at times)

-some inadequacies in materials (flash cards, books)

-disciplining students

I guess what I really want is to teach adults. Sure, there’s a sort of trepidation in teaching adults and sometimes they go dead quiet on you or can be unreasonable, but it sure beats having to discipline a classroom filled to capacity with young children. I think that this is what I want more than anything. The challenge now is trying to find such an ideal job, I could transfer thorough my current company (which would be the safest option), but it’s hard to know yet. I have to ask some questions and fire off some emails to check and make sure it’s possible. I know that there are positions open in Shanghai for adult centres and I know that I fit the bill, which is great. All I’d have to do is negotiate my work hours down. I guess I’ll get cracking on the first part of that plan earlier this week.

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