So, it’s April.

03Apr08

I can’t decide how well my school is doing. Technically business is wonderful. Given that the business of a school is to enroll students, there’s no problems. We have around 350 students at our campus, up from 10 in October if you recall. In fact, we’re doing so well that the owner just opened a second Dongtan campus this week. I think it’s the 123rd English academy to open in Dongtan in the past year.

But there is a problem. Another manager quit this week due to being overworked and underpaid. You’ll recall Andrew quit suddenly in December. Well the owner seems to be doing well at driving away good employees. I’m fairly positive they were good empoyees. They were definitely great guys. And proficient English speakers, which should count for something. Perhaps they’re easily replacable, but it still seems like a bad policy to me. Stability should count for something. Add that to the two head teachers leaving and it’s kind of a mess right now.

The teaching coordinator is leaving to have a baby. Fair enough. The other top teacher gave her notice in February for the same reasons that the managers quit, but then got some sort of deal/promotion to hang on for 3 more months. This was a good move because if she left, there’d be no one remaining who speaks English.

My schedule was intense for a few weeks in March. I got up to 35 classes in a week at one point. I had one day with 8 classes in a row and only one 15-minute break in there. That was a little tough. But we acutally brought in another foreign teacher, a woman from England, in mid-March, so I’m back down to 29 or 30 like I should be. That number of classes is not bad at all.

It’s incredibly easy. I spend at least half my time on two tasks: Dictation tests and Interviews. Approximately every week all the students have to complete these two tasks. The first consists of me reading 5 words and 5 sentences from the current unit and the students writing them down in English. I always practice the words and dialogue immediately before the test because I don’t see the point in having kids fail tests at English academy. Some still do of course, but I try to make it easy. This process takes about 15 minutes.

The interview consists of students coming up to the front of the class one at a time and being asked a series of 4 or 5 questions relevant to the current unit and them asking me one as well. Depending on how prepared the students this can take (read: always does) an entire 45 minute period for a full 10 student class. I enjoy this method of using an entire 45 minute period.

I also assign an essay occasionally, which is simply a list of questions and answers. Ideally the students would complete this during others’ interviews. This is generally not possible due to mass confusion so instead we work on this together for another 20 mintutes or so.

The amount of time I spend teaching the units is minimal. And that’s fine with me at this point.

My favorite class, and one where I actually do teach, is the top level middle-school class. We have a great book now called Impact Issues in which each unit focuses on one moral or societal issue and we read the story and discuss. The students in this class are always willing to participate and seems genuinely interested in the discussions. They’re probably not, but it’s good enough for me.

Today through Monday my work gets easier becuase I’ll spend most of time hosting the Golden Bell Competition. I promise I’ll write about this later.

I’m back.

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