Employment & Professional Development

Hi DR. Greg,

I like the relaxed workload of this Chinese university where I am currently employed. There are many other advantages to working here as well. However, I have had the thought that I am crippling my professional development by working here. It's not much of an English department.

The book is terrible, and there is no audio visual equipment. The school is too cheap to pay for handouts to the students, so I send them materials to their e-mail addresses, and they can print it if they wish. There is an older woman who sits in my classes twice a semester who has "unique" ideas about teaching. She would have enjoyed being German in WWII. It's not what they taught me in my CELTA class.

How do I keep from deteriorating and improve as a teacher? Are people who work in private schools better teachers in the long run? I don't want to be worked to death, like in many private language schools, but I do want to improve as a teacher. Any advice?

Your question goes to the very heart of the problem with EFL teaching in China as I describe it throughout the Guide. Foreign teachers—irrespective of education and experience—are simply being hired to meet a highly contested and bitterly resented Ministry of Education requirement. Most schools are amply satisfied with their foreign teachers just as long as they show up on time for their classes and the students don’t actively complain about them. The net effect can be quite demoralizing for those who take themselves a lot more seriously than their employers do, especially for foreign teachers such as yourself who are trying to make a legitimate career of this.

I don’t see working for private language schools as the remedy to this problem. Although it is true that private schools are initially and ostensibly much more accountable to their students (and parents) for what is actually being taught than are universities, in the long run, the relationship between student satisfaction and improved English language skills tends to be a weak one. Private schools don’t evaluate the effectiveness of their foreign teachers by assessing their students’ increased functional use of English but, rather, by simply examining retention and increased enrollment rates at the end of each month. Ultimately, “good foreign teachers” are the ones who keep the students coming back for more, irrespective of how that result is actually achieved.

It’s not clear to me from your question how you are defining “career” and, related, what credentials you have besides the CELTA certification. If you are referring to your career as an EFL teacher in China and you have a bachelor’s degree, you might find more professional satisfaction working for a better (higher-ranked) university, especially one with a foreign language graduate school program. As the students in these programs have definite plans and the real need to actually use English one day, textbooks and administrative support tend to be better and, generally speaking, the work is a lot more rewarding. You can check our directory of Project 211 universities in the Guide or simply conduct a search on “China universities ranking.”

If you are referring to your future as an English language teacher in general, then I fear that working as an oral English teacher in China might be creating a big black hole in your résumé. Assuming you have a master’s degree in a related field, you should be focusing your job hunt on international schools, joint-venture programs, and Western universities with branches in China, i.e., institutions where you are actually held accountable for what you are teaching and what the students are learning.

Many foreign English teachers in China, especially—but not only—those whose careers are limited by education and experience, often find satisfaction in the long-term relationships they build with their students and not necessarily in the work itself. When I was teaching oral English in China, my personal and professional sense of accomplishment was not derived from deluding myself into believing that my students’ listening and speaking skills were meaningfully impacted simply by briefly communicating with me for 100 minutes a week. My satisfaction came from knowing that I was exposing my students to information and, especially, a mind-set (perhaps, more accurately, a sense of hope) that they had no other access to outside of my classroom. My real contribution to the people of China had absolutely nothing to do with “teaching English” (although, on the surface, that’s what I was being paid to do) but in the mentoring I provided to those who were too afraid or forlorn to confide in their friends, Chinese teachers, and families.

As I had lived in the same community for several years, I would often run into former students I hadn’t seen for quite some time. I would remember them as having been among my best students in that they could communicate reasonably well in English. Much to my surprise, they would quickly abandon their initial attempt at communicating with me in English, apologizing profusely and explaining how they hadn’t used one word of English since graduating from college, and, entirely in Chinese, would tell me how much they missed me and how deeply I had influenced or helped them.

Honestly, at the time, those chance encounters were more than enough to sustain me through the absurdity and futility of the English foreign language program in China. While I am now finding true intrinsic value in my work as a professor of psychology at an international (all English language) medical school, for the first time in China, I strongly suspect that I’ll never again experience the same type and degree of appreciation I had known in my former role as the "friendly foreign English teacher."

While it is quite important for medical students—originating from Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and the United States—to know the difference between a thought and a mood disorder, it is not nearly the same as helping a 21-year old girl from Anhui province to accept that her life isn’t over because her first boyfriend left her. Teaching students how to interpret the Kappa statistic is quite important if they are planning a career in public mental health, but taking the time to assure a junior from Wuxi that he isn’t crazy or “falling apart” just because he cried when he learned that his uncle had died dwarfs the former in overall significance I think.

The point is, reaching out and being available to one’s students as a mentor is a role that every single foreign English teacher in China can enjoy because all that is required is genuine concern and, in the end, it is what you will really be remembered and appreciated for.

PS. Unless your school specifically prohibits you from doing this, instead of e-mailing the next article to your students, consider using your designated class monitor. He or she is usually responsible for making Photostat copies of and then distributing any articles you will use in class the following week.

Thanks Dr. Greg for your excellent response. I suppose I didn't provide enough information. I have an MBA and am 53. I may have mismanaged my life in the states, or more likely been unable to maneuver through a string of unexpected calamities a few years ago. I had a good career until about 3 years ago when I was in a car accident, downsized and my wife left in short succession. I recovered as well as possible before coming here. So, about the hole in the resume... Well there isn't much to go back to, and I am beyond my prime marketability. My friends at home are hurting worse than me due to the economy, so maybe I will just relax and see what I can contribute to the world. If I can only remember that it isn't all about me.