Part 3 of 4 - The untouchables
As we move up through the rarefied caste system of ESL teachers in China
we must consider the ‘untouchables’. These are the ESL teachers that have a
CELTA qualification and may or may not have a PGCE; nevertheless they are a
step up from the RADicles (of course each group is not mutually exclusive and a
teacher may belong to one or all of these groups).
This step up is in terms of the types of schools can they teach at and
the salary they get paid. In the main this type of teacher might be working for
what in China are generally called ‘International Schools or Foreign Language Schools’.
Most, if not all of the untouchables that I know (apart from any newbie’s),
have been in China for a while and many have Chinese or Asian/Filipino wives
and children. To be in this type of a school is very beneficial because the
children of said teacher can attend the school at very competitive and
discounted rates plus wages are significantly higher than those of the gap year
graduate or the RADicl.
As mentioned in Part 1 once you have achieved a CELTA qualification more
options for better quality work opens up for you at these better quality
schools. At these schools you
might be teaching CIE courses aiming towards iGCSE’s or AS/A levels if they
follow the English curriculum or you might be teaching the IB or the American
ACT or SAT exams.
The most likely place to find an untouchable is in a Chinese High School
where the students are being groomed for foreign universities such as in the
International and Foreign language schools. This is where having a specialist
degree like Math’s or the Sciences comes to the fore as not only can you teach
ESL English you can also teach a specialist subject. Similarly at some of the
better Universities teaching English and/or teaching a specialist subject is
also a possibility.
The thing about a lot of the untouchables I know is that they really think
that they are untouchable in the sense that they believe that the terms of
their contract do not actually apply to them. Some of these good schools pay excellent wages, if you have a CELTA you can
expect to start on around 10,000RMB (approx £1000) a month as a new, barely
experienced, teacher rising, with experience and length of service in the
school to 20 – 25,000 RMB per month. Most of these schools have a dress code
for the teachers - shirt, trousers, and good shoes. Some might even stipulate
white shirt, black trousers – a uniform if you will. Yet some of these untouchables are so conceited that they
still want to act like a gap year graduate and turn up in jeans, tee shirts, or
shorts in the summer and then they complain when the school fines them as much
as 500rmb (£50 approx) for breaking the dress code as per stipulated in the
contract.
Yes, these highfliers are so self assured (read arrogant or stupid) that
they sign a contract without reading it or at the least without having any cognitive
understanding of what the contact they are signing insists over and above the
salary and conditions such as the free apartment and health care.
‘But in my last school’ is a popular whine of the untouchable. ‘In my
last school I didn’t have to……………………..’
Please complete the gap fill:
A.
Wear a
white shirt
B.
Not wear
jeans and tee shirt to lessons
C.
Come to
staff meetings
D.
Pay
attention in staff meetings
E.
Provide
complete lesson plans before the lessons
F.
Be on time
G.
Do extra
curricular activities with the students
H.
Sit at my
desk and do my office hours
I.
Not leave
before 5PM
J.
Fulfil the
terms of my contract, which I signed of my own free will, to the satisfaction
of my managers
You will notice that generally, in the better schools, the ones paying
the higher wages, the teachers are expected to put in a full day. That often
means being at ones desk at 8am or earlier and leaving at 5pm. That you might only have two or three
45/60-minute lessons during that day is irrelevant, as you will be expected to
stay at your desk, despite being ‘finished’. That’s why you get the big bucks.
What you do at your desk in China stays at your desk. So after you have
done your usual school admin, marking, writing your lesson plans then basically
you can do what you want. If you
are with Chinese teachers you will notice that they do not need a prompt to get
their head down for a nap or two at their desk whatever time of day. Of course the two-hour lunch break is
also naptime. In the offices I
have worked in the camp beds are stacked up against the wall and come lunchtime
they are put to good use by the snoozing teachers. The lunchtime nap is a cultural norm in China and a jolly
good idea it is too.
Camp bed in the office
The rest of the time at your desk is yours. You can surf the Internet, watch movies, shop on Taobao, and
write that block-busting novel you have wanted to get down on paper/on to your
hard drive for years. I am currently writing this blog during my own two-hour
office session as per my contract. I have also used this time to write the book
I mentioned in Part 1. To write newspaper articles for the Shanghai Students
Post, to do the proofreading for a local university, so technically I’m being
paid twice for the same time – kerching! Plus as I’m not physically at another
place of work as I would be if I were teaching I can kid myself that I’m not
working illegally and in breach of my contact and my Z visa conditions. (Of
course the school does know about my book and my writing for the student newspaper
it would be difficult to hide them as they are in the public domain but they
seem pleased as it adds to my reputation.)
So the school pays the untouchables big bucks and also expects the
teachers to work for it, no surprise there you might say. This often includes
extracurricular stuff such as going on school trips, meeting parents, being
wheeled out to a dinner as the ‘performing white face tame monkey’ on the staff
and a myriad of other tasks that often get foisted on you at very short notice.
If there is one thing about working in the Chinese education system that
riles us Westerners the most it is the lastminuteism that infects the system
from top to bottom. So one might
be in the apartment having done with teaching and office hours for the day, feet
up, watching Game of Thrones with a beer, when the phone will ring.
‘Rob, where are you?’
‘Here in my apartment, why?’
‘You have a class!’
‘What?’ Frantically checks the diary on my iPhone. ‘ No I don’t’
‘Yes you do. 4th lesson in the afternoon. Didn’t anyone tell
you?’
‘No. Nobody told me. What lesson?’
‘Senior B, we have changed the time table, come now they are waiting’
‘Oh Okay.’ Frantically
pulls on trousers and shirt and leaves to give a class on the fly.
This type of thing happens with a depressing regularity.
Or its Thursday evening, you have made big plans for the weekend,
starting with a big Friday night at the bar grumping over a 10rmb Carlsberg or
three with all the other RADicls then Saturday downtown, more 10 kuai beer,
maybe a curry and more bar stories that you’ve heard a hundred times or more, but
are too polite to mention as you try to get your own favourite story listened
to again - your phone beeps.
The Spring trip is a regular event in the school calendar - this year was to proto-military place run by ex soldiers!
Chinese teachers enjoying the break
It’s a message on QQ, from the school administrator, ‘On Saturday
afternoon the school is having a parents/sports/open day or something ‘ and
they want you to be there/give a speech/talk to parents (despite in the two
years I’ve been here there has only been one parent with English good enough to
hold a conversation with me and she is an academic at a local university) /just
be a white face smiling inanely as disinterested parents waltz past to talk to
the Chinese staff.
Parents queuing to register their kids for next year
Bang goes the big Friday night as you don’t want to get so pissed that
you have a hangover and stink of booze when you are in front of the parents.
Plus you now have a PPT to create from scratch or a speech to write that not
only will inspire the parents to keep forking out around the 80,000rmb (£8000
approx) per year, (for my school anyway) in fees plus extras for boarding,
books, uniforms, trips and so on but also enables you to promote yourself as
the BEST teacher they have ever had there in the history of ESL teachers in
China. But bang there goes most of your Saturday, although you hope you can leave
sharpishly once you have shown your face and given your speech/presentation and
best smile and get downtown to meet up with your best buddies for that well
needed pint.
Parents event where I am joined by my co -teachers
Parents arriving
Personally, I think it is important, despite the late notice and the
fact that they are messing up your weekend, to be there. It shows commitment to
the school and I think it shows respect to the Chinese members of staff who
work a darn sight harder than the ESL teachers. In most schools the Chinese staff have to be there at around
7:00 am and most if not all do not leave until after 9pm at night, others work
later because as my school is a boarding school staff are allocated roles to
make sure kids are in bed and nicely tucked up before lights out – these staff
tend to stay the night in the dormitories despite having families and young
children of their own to go home to.
At my school, which has over 3000 pupils, school starts at around 7:10
when the students file in from breakfast for self-study they have a full day of
lessons until 21:00 although formal lessons finish at 17:00. The evening
lessons are more about self-study, clubs and hobbies.
My schools winter timetable – the summer timetable advances 15 minutes
but still finished at 21:00
Time
|
Self study
|
7：10-7：35
|
|
Morning
|
1
|
7：45-8：30
|
|
2
|
8：40-9：25
|
||
3
|
9：55-10：40
|
||
4
|
10：50-11：40
|
||
Lunch time
|
11:40-13:25
|
||
Afternoon
|
1
|
13：25-14：10
|
|
2
|
14：20-15：10
|
||
3
|
15：20-16：05
|
||
4
|
16：15-17：00
|
||
Self study
|
1
|
18：30-19：15
|
|
2
|
19：25-20：00
|
||
3
|
20:10-21:00
|
||
On top of being here for so long everyday, the Chinese staff are not
allowed off campus without a pass out signed by one of the bosses. For this
full week the Chinese members of staff get paid significantly less than the
Western Teachers –approximately 6-7000RMB per month, they also have
significantly shorter holidays during the summer when they have to work.
As you would expect the untouchable ESL teacher would think that getting
involved in this sort of extra curricular activity, especially at short notice,
is beneath them. The exhibit a sort of colonial arrogance which exhibits itself
as lazy racism whereby they think that they are better than the Chinese who
can’t seem to be able to organize things in a logical and timely fashion. They expect things to be done in the
way they expect them to be done in the West before they even considering doing
something. They want the Chinese
to respect their situation and defer to their bewilderment and hurt feelings
when they are asked to do something, at the last minute, that is out of their
comfort zone. You can hear it in their raised voices as they squeal out their
outrage that their bosses actually had the discourtesy to ask them to do something
that they feel is beneath their elevated status.
Any change is also seen as a threat. As noted above a common refrain from this type of teacher is
‘Well in my last school, we never….’.
Shake their comfort zone and vindictive, insolent, backstabbing bullies
drop out of the tree. It is as if
they have found their niche, their comfort zone and its just too much hassle to
think about doing anything new, or challenging, or even things that might
benefit the students and enhance the reputation of the school. Indeed, so self destructive and
arrogant are these teachers that just this last week at another school I know
an ESL teacher was challenged by both the Chinese boss and the English
‘manager’ about his standard of dress. As I have already outlined many schools,
and this is one of them, have a dress code. It’s outlined in the contract that
he signed but this teacher constantly turned up dressed in shorts, polo shirt
and trainers. His argument, when challenged, was that his dress had no bearing
on his teaching ability so it didn’t matter.
His arrogance was such that he had no conception that first and foremost
he is a role model for his students, secondly the school wanted to protect its
reputation as a good school with parents and visitors who might come across
him, and thirdly the school expected certain standards of professional
behaviour from someone who was professing to be a professional. As he didn’t
get his way in the meeting he had a hissy fit and left his job. This man has a Chinese wife and a child
and because he could not put on a shirt in the morning he gave up a very well
paid job. No doubt he could get
another position relatively easily due to the very buoyant job market in
Nanjing but it does tell you something of the mentality of this group. This guy
is not an isolated case, believe me.
Just this week I hear more stories about untouchable teachers. First, one who was requested to meet
his Chinese boss at, say 2pm. The
teacher waltzes into the Chinese bosses office at 2:15, fifteen minutes
late. The boss says, ‘You’re late,
the meeting was at 2pm’. Teacher
shrugs and says ‘What’s the problem?
You were sat in your office doing nothing anyway!’ Here’s a thought – Try doing that at
home with your boss – see what happens!’ Second is the teacher at a good
school, earning good money, 20K plus, his girlfriend is just pregnant so he has
to get married, teaching his students English four letter (swear) words. He got sacked (told his contract would
not be renewed) although he has to work out his contract – four more
weeks. He found a new job the same
day, via contacts, but on the other side of the country from where his
girlfriend lives and from where his future in-laws/grandparents live. Grandparents, in China play a very
large role in the upbringing of their grandchildren. But he responds to this with a shrug of the shoulders, ‘it’s
a fair cop’ he says and moves on to the next school.
I have never had the opportunity to ask one of these untouchable
teachers, especially the ones with a PGCE just why is it they are in China and
why are they so resistant to change in their schools. I have an inkling that these types of teacher would find
teaching in schools back home too much like hard work. What with having to come
up with lesson plans and doing the admin and filling out forms – “Well I never!
Is that what its come too! What?
Stay after 15:15 to do a club? In my last school in China….”
If you think that I am being a bit harsh on these ‘untouchables’ what
you have to realize, especially if you do come to China to work, is that here
it is every man and woman for themselves. When you join a school, which may
have other foreign teachers working there, do not think, for one moment, that
you are joining a team. At best,
what you will be joining is a loose alliance of individuals who happen to have
similar qualifications as you and a range of different experiences either here
or in other countries. Some of
them will know all the tricks of the trade, they will know everything they can
and cannot get away with and push the boundaries of acceptable behaviour to the
limit in order to make their life easier and to increase both their guanxi and
their salary.
Wikipedia tells us that guanxi describes
the basic dynamic in personalized networks of influence, and is a central
idea in Chinese society. In Western media, the pinyin romanisation of this
Chinese word is becoming more widely used instead of the two common
translations—"connections" and "relationships"—as neither
of those terms sufficiently reflects the wide cultural implications that guanxi describes. So the
jockeying for position and the backstabbing and intrigue that’s more subtle
than at the court of Elizabeth 1st is normalized amongst Western
teachers in these well-paid jobs. They are just looking out for themselves. Trying to build relationships and
connections with their Chinese managers and bosses, just building guanxi so
that when the shit does hit the fan they will be well placed to ride out the
storm – they hope. We all have to
do it. You will have to play the
game too, get used to it and learn
it quickly.
Of course this all is borne out of an immense sense of insecurity
concerning our jobs and our place in China. A lot of these teachers have invested time and money into
staying and living in China with wives and children but that could all finish
in the blink of an eye should the Chinese bosses decide that you haven’t been
pulling your weight or you’re simply not the dish of the day anymore or you are
just too expensive so you will be replaced by a cheaper bilingual Chinese
teacher as is happening at a large school not a million miles from where I am
now. One teacher, I know, was
told that he was under threat because he was constantly late for his
class. He knew, for a fact, that
he had only been late, due to unforeseen circumstances, for one class during
the whole semester and this is despite providing a lot of help and advice to
the school gratis as it was setting up and opening.
I, myself, was telephoned by my administrator and told I was late for a
class that had been re-arranged and nobody had told me about. I had to remonstrate with the admin, quite loudly and
forcefully when I saw her because she had started to get annoyed with me and
use an officious tone of voice on the phone. I eventually got an apology and
the woman immediately rang the admin assistant who had not passed on the change
of class to me and tore her off a strip instead. But it is incidents like these which do raise ones level of
insecurity because one really never knows how much the Chinese bosses of the
school are reading into your, in their eyes, transgressions.
This is why when I teach I dress the part, I look professional, and I
act professionally. If I am asked to fulfil a role, such as meeting parents or
giving a presentation, even a last minute request, I do it with a smile on my
face, a willing attitude and good grace even if it is screwing up my day or my
weekend. I mean this doesn’t happen every day or every week, in the main they
are blue moon events. But I want to increase my guanxi with the school. I want
to work here next year, so I want my contract and my visa renewed. My point of view is that I work very
few hours for a decent salary, I am pretty much left to get on with my teaching
without managers or bosses looking over my shoulders. So why rock the boat?
The consummate profession en route to class! Ha!
Hints and tips
Kindle: If you like to read then you need to bring a
kindle or other reading device or drop the APP onto your phone. Bookstores in China barely carry English language books. If they do they
are mainly those classics that are out of copyright, Dickens, Austen, some of
the American authors, Verne and so on. In Nanjing I have only found one bar that has a book
exchange - Blue Sky.
Other Electronic Devices
If you are going to buy electronic devices buy them before you come to
China. Computers, Tablets, Kindle,
Smartphone’s are all of a similar price here to those back home. Also if you do
wait to buy in China the operating system is in, wait for it, Chinese. Some may
have an option to change the language but do you want to take that chance? You
might get a good deal in Hong Kong if you have a stop over there.
In China I recommend Huawei - you can change the OS to English and they are excellent phones - half the price of iPhone.
In China I recommend Huawei - you can change the OS to English and they are excellent phones - half the price of iPhone.
Peripheries such as USB sticks, External Hard drives, Headphones, Cables
and so on are cheaper here so there is no problem there – just watch out for
fakes.
I also purchased a printer/scanner, a Canon (around 400RMB or £40
approx) simply because at my school (and at the other college and training
school I have worked at) there is not a communal printer networked to your
computer like you might have been used to at home. At my school there is a
print room. You take your stick to
the print room, use their computer (all in Chinese) to print one copy of what
you need, then you give the women the instructions for how many copies you
need. You have to do this in good time, like the day before you need them,
because they are printing for the whole school. Or you print a copy off using the one printer in the
teacher’s office that is attached to another teachers machine. So if he/she is
not at their desk and their computer is locked then you are stuffed till they
come back.
It was easier to purchase my own printer, so I can do the single sheet
printing (I still use the print room for bulk) at my leisure and the scanning
of any teaching material I might want to use.
English Grammar for Dummies. 2nd Ed. You will find a free downloadable pdf of the book here.
English Grammar for Dummies
Part 4 - The Entitled
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