Working Week 1

Notice: This post is about working at Disney English.  Unfortunately, it’s against company policy for me to post any pictures of the classrooms/kids/curriculum onto my blog.  So, sorry, no pics

I just finished over a week of teaching real, live Chinese children to speak English!  Having worked with teenagers for the past eight years, and loving it, I’ve been worried that maybe I wouldn’t like little kids very much.  But after weeks of observing in the centers and finally getting to teach, I think that it’s going to be great.  Mostly because these Chinese kids are SO adorable!   

Back home a lot of people told me that I’d probably love teaching Chinese children because they have more respect for their teacher and are much better behaved.  Most of the kids I teach are between the ages of 3 and 10 (LOTS of 4 and 5 year olds) and as far as I can tell they’re exactly like kids back in the states.  The little ones cry a lot, yesterday I had a little boy spend the entire first half hour throwing a screaming fit.  They wet their pants, roll around on the floor, they’re chatty, they can’t sit still, they’re easily distracted, they’re sneaky, they hit and push and can’t keep their hands to themselves.  If anything there’s a few more issues because if the child has special needs it isn’t diagnosed (before one of my classes my assistant told me, “There’s a boy in this class that’s really weird.” And then when I met him I realized he’s obviously autistic.)  And there’s A LOT of only child issues.  Can you imagine? 

But just like American kids, they love singing, dancing, competitive games, stickers, cartoons, positive praise, stuffed animals, and Mickey Mouse.  Like normal little kids, they adore their teachers and are constantly trying to hug me or hold my hand.  They are absolutely enthralled with the magical Disney curriculum.  They adore the characters, the imaginative play, the games, they even like all the silly noises and voices I make and repeat them like little parrots.  

Any day now I’ll be heading to Hangzhou to take up my permanent position, but until now I’ve been subbing for a guy that’s away on vacation. What has surprised me about the job is that about half of the Foreign Trainers complain about their work!  I think that these people are CRAZY!  I mean, I’m sure when I get to my permanent job it will be more demanding but right now I looks like cake compared to teaching the US Public school system.

• ·         Three days a week I don’t go into work until 1:30pm
•  Classes are never disrupted by fire drills, assemblies, standardize testing schedules or field trips.

• ·         The most I ever have in a class is 15, sometimes I only have 5!

• ·         Planning time or lunches are never interrupted by club meetings, rehearsal, lunch duty, or IEP/504 meetings.    

• ·         If a kid wets their pants or starts crying uncontrollably, I keep teaching and my Chinese assistant takes care of the problem.  Since she speaks Chinese she deals with a lot of the behavior issues too, so I can focus on the content. (What?! Do you have any idea how much time teachers in the states spend dealing with non-academic classroom issues??!)

• ·         My assistant also handles most of the parent interactions and answers all their emails in Chinese.

• ·         Back home, my classroom was not regularly cleaned, it was disgusting.  Here there’s a cleaning woman on site all day long.  She swoops by my room between classes and empties trash or picks things up off the floor.  She must do this three-five times a day!  My room is always immaculate!

• ·         I have all the planning time I need, I have NO grading, and I never have to take work home.  This week I have two days off and they were REAL days off.  No errands to run for the plays, no school events to chaperone, no endless stack of assignments to enter into the computer, no handouts to make or emails to return or research to do.  It was amazing! 

• ·         And the best thing ever?  Absolutely EVERYTHING is provided for me.  I have a full and comprehensive curriculum and I will never need to spend my own money to buy something for my classroom.  Disney has endless closets and cabinets filled with everything I could possibly need for these lessons.

For example one day I was teaching “red circle” (with the 3-5 year olds there is always a section about colors and shapes).  This is really a small part of the lesson, but provided for me was a slide with the red circle on it, flash cards of red circles, laminated paper red circles, large soft round circles, small red circle pillows, an interactive white board feature where the students can press colors and shapes to make the red circle, a song about red circles, an interactive story that incorporates red circles, game and activity ideas, and more! 

Don’t get me wrong, the job requires a lot of energy and is super draining, your basically preforming 20-25 hours a week.  And foreign language can be so abstract for kids, its really hard for them to grasp.  I mean ‘red circle’ is pretty basic but I watched a trainer struggle for an hour trying to teach “What are you wearing?  I’m wearing pants.”  She did everything; games, songs, gestures, modeling, drilling but the concept of ‘wearing’ was way over those 5 year old kids’ heads.  Let alone the pronunciation.  It was exhausting to watch and by the end I felt as frustrated as they did, “Yeah, wearing is such a weird word!  Stupid English language.”    

I’m glad that the work has challenges so I can keep interested, but I don’t know what people are complaining about.  You teach basic English language, you get plenty of free time, you get paid, you get to live in China.  This job is awesome!