I arrived in Guangzhou with very little practical classroom experience.
I’d completed my TEFL qualification, but there is a considerable difference between studying how to teach and standing in front of a room full of children.
Initially, I received encouraging feedback.
My teaching style and approach seemed promising.
However, I soon discovered that the situation was rather more complicated.
I’d been recruited to help fill a staffing gap that would be created by the departure of the director of studies.
Unknown to me, he had been assigned responsibility for training me in the centre’s teaching methods.
That training never properly materialized.
Apart from one demonstration lesson disguised as a training session, followed by rather cryptic feedback from him and another experienced teacher, I was largely left to figure things out myself.
Eventually, the director departed, and I inherited part of his teaching schedule.
I was lost.
I had students to teach, expectations to meet, and very little understanding of how the centre wanted lessons delivered.
So I did what seemed sensible.
I observed my colleagues.
I watched their lessons, studied their classroom games, and experimented with ways of adapting those activities to suit my own teaching style.
A few weeks later, I was invited to lunch.
To my surprise, the former director of studies was there.
“I thought you’d be on your way back to America by now,” I remarked.
That was when he confessed that he’d been responsible for my training.
He also admitted that he hadn’t been particularly interested in carrying out that responsibility.
“I just couldn’t give a damn,” he told me. “I wanted to leave.”
Wonderful.
He also revealed that he was moving to another Chinese city rather than returning to America, as he’d previously told our employer.
It wasn’t exactly an encouraging introduction to the professional world of foreign teachers in China.
I wondered whether this was typical.
Fortunately, subsequent experiences would show me that teachers, like people everywhere, come in all varieties.
Meanwhile, the centre itself was undergoing considerable administrative upheaval.
During my six months there, I saw three principals come and go.
The first departed before I’d even had time to settle in.
The second seemed to recognize some potential in me.
She also managed another branch and arranged for me to observe and train with one of her strongest teachers.
That experience was invaluable.
Unfortunately, her tenure was short-lived.
A third principal took over.
And she wasn’t particularly fond of me.
To put it mildly.
Six months into my Chinese teaching adventure, I found myself facing the possibility of dismissal.
But the company’s management offered another solution.
A transfer.
I interviewed with branches in Tianjin.
The first interview didn’t lead anywhere. It felt as though they weren’t particularly interested in recruiting another teacher.
Then came another opportunity.
And this time, things worked out.
In September 2019, I moved to Tianjin.
I inherited some existing students and began attracting others through demonstration lessons.
And something interesting happened.
Those games I’d observed and adapted in Guangzhou?
They worked!
My approach connected with the children.
I began understanding how to engage students, communicate ideas, and create learning experiences without always relying on a shared language.
I was developing my own teaching identity.
Perhaps my difficulties in Guangzhou hadn’t been entirely about my ability to teach.
Perhaps part of the problem had been the mismatch between my approach and the expectations of that particular management team.
Whatever the explanation, I was improving.
My confidence grew.
I built relationships with my students.
And, for the first time, I began to feel that I might actually be good at this teaching business.
Then came the Lunar New Year.
And with it, something nobody could have anticipated.
COVID-19.