Wow 2015 that was already a really long time ago
times just going by really fast like it's almost spring in about two weeks
these cherry blossom trees are gonna be blooming it's gonna be beautiful
so how did I come to teaching English in the first place I used to be in
marketing I was working for a Taiwanese company doing marketing and I was so
sick of my job I wasn't even there for that long I was so sick of the job I was
just like forget this I'm quitting and moving to the other
side of the world let's mix things up like I don't like driving in America
very much I got into some car crashes people hit my car I was like anxious
about driving and just quit and left basically alone and and here we are
eight years later it was supposed to be one year it turned out that it's a
little longer than one year that happens to a lot of people they say the point of
no return is three years that after you've been abroad for three years it's
really hard to go back to your own country you get reverse culture shock
after I quit my job in America and moved to China I was just a volunteer at a
school in Xi'an testing it out there were like 60 kids her classroom so that
was not a very good ratio not in my favor sixty to one and you can see that
it's like a pyramid of kids through a ton and that's a public school and then
I went to an after school program in Harbin and taught kids there for like
a year or so and they had a little more money they weren't rich kids but maybe
they had a little extra money to pay for English classes on the side the last
school in China was an international school now those kids were loaded like
those kids had money and the videos you're gonna see are from our field trip
than the last school I taught it was in Tokyo in Japan I taught adults and oh my
gosh it was so much easier I taught people most of my students were like way
older than me 40 or 50 years old a lot of men some women that was a little awkward
teaching people that were so much older than me Here I am a 20-something year
old teacher teaching people that are 40 50 even 60 years old the hierarchy was
like out of balance there but it wasn't it was a good job not good paying and the
salaries in Japan for teaching English are going down when I taught just two years
ago three years ago we got $20 an hour now it's down to $16 an hour at the same
school same work too many people like Japan like you guys gotta stop coming
here and teaching English you're making our salaries go down so burnt out on
teaching kids straight up they're cute but they drove me crazy and it was
somewhat my own fault because other teachers could control them especially
the Chinese teachers but man it was hard for foreign teachers because they
just thought of us as a big English talking plaything really tough really
tough I wasn't cut out for that
yeah that I cannot control the kids and that's my own flaw that's my own
inability classroom management skills was the issue I I'm just not good at it
you know you can't do everything right so I quit my job teaching English in China
and Japan to go into grad school because I don't want to teach English for the rest
of my life like it's been eight years I still do it privately just a little on
the side for tutoring but really I'm not an English teacher anymore and I don't
think I'm gonna go back to being an English teacher anytime soon and it's
not because it's a bad job it's just not a good fit for me and I want to move on
with my life and do other things nothing quite attracts a lot of attention like
walking around with 90 kids and you'll see me speaking a lot of Chinese here
normally we just spoke English in the classroom that was the rule and a lot of
people think that these teachers go into China and Japan to teach English that
they know Chinese or Japanese honestly usually they don't or not to a
very high level and out of the 30 American teachers in our school I was
the only one that knew fluent or advanced level Chinese everybody else
had various levels but that was to my disadvantage to be honest because I kept
getting in trouble by my boss for using too much Chinese with the kids and that
was kind of a point of contention for me because we were starting from zero like
English level zero abc123 and I'm trying to control a classroom of
twenty thirty students only in English and they can't understand now I'm
already like a plaything to them so really wasn't working out
I ended up using some Chinese with them and getting in trouble for it
even though their local English teacher the Chinese English teacher use Chinese
with them I wasn't because we had to get them used to using English only so it
was a little frustrating
please do not think that all the kids are crazy and misbehave all the time
these two Brian and Lily were some of the best kids that I ever taught they
were so sweet and so nice I just love them to death and I got very close to
some of the kids I even got close to some of the adults students who were
very kind we keep in contact via email even to this day even long after I
stopped being their teacher but be careful don't get too close to some of
these Chinese families because there's bribery issues if they start breaking
out red envelopes that means there's money inside and you can get in trouble
for accepting that and it's no small amount like they will start bribing
people with $2,000 to get their kids some extra attention or to get better
grades who knows just don't accept it you know there's boundaries use common sense
I'm not good at controlling them and that's one of the main reasons I had to
quit like it was driving me nuts you can see in these videos well this was a
field trip so it wasn't a normal day by any means I want you to take a look at
this little boy in this little girl here she's from Cameroon she speaks perfect
Chinese and she speaks French and this little boy sat next to her he had the
biggest crush on her he would look at her the whole class it was adorable and
I could control the kids sometimes I'm exaggerating a little bit and these
videos don't really show how our classroom really was because we weren't
in the classroom that day it was a little crazy you know I never thought of
teaching English in my own country because quite frankly I don't think I'd
like it you know there's so many rules and just strict stuff all the kids
really want is they want a hug they want to know you like them and you're not
even allowed to do that in America I would just feel so suffocated by that I
just like these kids I wanted to be close to them and you're not allowed to
do that and that's no fun so I don't think I'm cut out for being a teacher in
my own country besides I was a business major anyway I'm not even qualified to
teach in the United States
one of the coolest things about teaching English in China and Japan was meeting
people from other Western countries the Aussies the New Zealanders the guys from
South Africa the people from the UK even Ireland people that I'd never interacted
with in Michigan it was awesome and here they're telling me you got an accent I
was so shocked like I have an accent wait a second wait a second I thought
Michigan set the standard for English for the world now you're telling me
that's not true but I actually have an accent it was
shocking because I I was just a Michigan girl I barely even left my own state let
alone my own country so so eye-opening so awesome and I learned so much I would
recommend it for anyone who is looking for some adventure who wants to travel
the world I went to like tons of countries during that time you get three
months paid vacation you're gonna go to a lot of countries and that was really
really awesome a good salary in China would be about twenty five thousand
dollars which doesn't sound like a lot but you have no card no expenses you
just put that money in the bank and on top of that you can get a lot of money
from teaching students privately so after taxes you're talking about thirty
six thousand dollars and you're just banking it and then I mean a lot of my
colleagues just traveled the world that's all they wanted to do they didn't
even really want to teach English so we're probably wondering how I even got
a teaching job in the first place with no teaching degree and no experience
well I did have to get certification for it it's called TEFL and I just worked my
way from the bottom up I started at a kind of a so-so school in a so-so City
low salary all that and just worked up and then eventually made it to Japan but
that was after many years of teaching in China and Japan is not necessarily the
best place you want to be for teaching English
They were both good experiences both China and Japan depends on your style but realize if you go to
Japan you're not gonna get paid as much you're not gonna get a lot of vacation
time just understand that but if you love it you know come over come over now
what's stopping you yeah it's kind of a weird thing to do but more and more
people are doing it my parents were so freaked out in the beginning when I
first came here in 2012 and now they know people that know people that are
doing it and it's gotten a little more normal with them somewhat a little bit
of course they worry but I'm okay and it's very safe here so don't worry about me
I appreciate it don't worry about me
Japan offered us a lot of freedom and it was certainly a lot easier to get the
visa to go to Japan than it was to go to China there was a lot more paperwork
involved in that but once that was done this school pretty much took care of us
they gave us free housing which was awesome they took care of all of our
problems if we didn't speak Chinese they would take us to the doctor like they
did everything it was great gosh I miss these kids so much
they were cute they're not being naughty here I told them to take the camera and
make your own video so they're just going with that I told them make a tie
Tai Chi video and they are just being creative you know they don't
have a lot of opportunities to play outside they study so much like from
morning to night and they have so much homework even though they're only in
first grade so I looked at that I was like dang I'm glad I went to school in
the United States because I was just playing all day I didn't have to worry
about homework and stuff it's a big difference
Um, real talk right now friends because I've been doing YouTube videos but I want to be realistic about
it I don't like YouTube I never really liked it I watched some of these vlogs
about people going to other countries I just thought they lacked authenticity
and they were just kind of annoying to me and then there were the language ones
with people speaking different languages and some of them were very cool and then
a lot of them were just so arrogant I couldn't continue to watch it maybe it's
just me if you feel that way too give this video a like cuz I just wanna know
if I'm the only one out there who feels that way but there were some that we're
done very well and I kind of was inspired to keep going and try and do
this in a different way a more authentic way not much going on here
school is closed down hey, beats sitting in my room right it does really does
alright see you next time