What’s it like to be a teacher in China?

Such a great question! I wonder if many retired or veteran teachers already know the answer. Every time I learn a little more about being a teacher here in China, it reminds me of the stories I heard about what school was like when my parents were growing up.

This is the English teachers' staff-room from one of our school visits. Wendy (my Peace Corps site mate) is getting filled in the day's schedule by Phoebe (with her back to the camera). Note the triple stack of exams waiting to be dispensed in the foreground.

In my county, the students stay in one room all day long and the teachers move around. To hold the dictations, quizzes, and exams of their 80 pupil classes, each teacher is assigned a desk in one of the schools’, classroom sized, staff-rooms. Typically teachers are grouped by department (like English, or Mathematics). However, at the school where I live they recently reorganized the staff rooms by grade level, so each room has a mix of subject teachers who share a roster of students. This best-practices effort to foster smaller learning communities within the school is one of the many ways China is adopting what are referred to here as “Western teaching methods.”

Instead of being a part-time or full-time teacher, a teacher is assigned a number of classes per week, a “class” means a 40 or 45 minute block of time. The lowest number I’ve heard of is 1, the highest, 44! Most teachers I know average between 16 and 20. Classes can start as early as 7am and finish as late at 10pm, with a three hour lunch break that includes plenty of time for a nap! Well, maybe the nap part isn’t like when my parents were growing up.