Only One Student Needed Stitches – Teaching English Horror Stories

Special Topic: Finding and Keeping Jobs in China

Like many foreigners in China I have taught The English. And like many foreigners in China teaching English, I sadly lack credentials that would make me honestly worth the money I have been paid. This in mind, I try to work extra hard when I have a teaching job. Being able to speak a language natively does not qualify you to teach it. In many respects my European friends who pass themselves off as North American to get teaching jobs are far better qualified because, unlike me, they have actually studied English.

For a while I taught at a school in Li Shui Qiao. The school was in an apartment way past Beijing’s fifth ring road in a complex that could have been a medium sized city. Of all the jobs I’ve had in China this was one of my favorites but it started off terribly, almost tragically.

I showed up late the first day because I had didn’t realize how far away Li Shui Qiao actually is. The Beijing Subway map is not proportional. The yellow line 13 isn’t a squat U shape inverted above the center of the city, it’s actually a long stretched out saggy U inverted above the 2nd ring road. There were no legitimate cabs at Li Shui Qiao so I had to hurriedly bargain with a couple of hei che (literally, black cab) drivers.

I arrived in a rush, sweating under my rumpled second-hand sweater – an attempt to look scholarly and legitimate – difficult to do with a giant mushroom cloud of black hair exploding around your head. I walked in, put down my bag, and start teaching the assembled students who were already squirming out of their chairs and either scared or incredibly amused by me.

There were two classes and the first was a group of about six or seven eight and nine year olds. For the most part they behaved, but during our brief break in the middle of the class my new boss slipped me my money and slipped out the door telling me to lock it behind me when I left.

After 45 more minutes the eight year olds were done and soon there parents were coming to pick them up to take them back for more studying and maybe even private tutoring. In China, the weekend is only a prolonged study hall for young students who suffer extra classes and private tutoring on the weekend so they can test well on the gao kao in another 10 or 15 years and go to a top college.

The next class was four year olds and they were bundles of whooping, arm waving joy. They kept scooching their chairs up to my desk and stealing my big flashcards. Their normal teacher – I just taught them every four classes so they could hear what they’d learned in a Midwestern drawl, usually a harried shouted Midwestern drawl – had left behind a lesson plan, but Simon Says failed when every student ran at me and tried to crawl up me. I had to peel them off my legs before we could get back to business.

Disaster struck during the break when the kids were running around the apartment screaming with the couple of older kids who were left behind waiting for parents to come collect them. They ran in and out of the empty bedrooms and bathroom trailing noise behind them like the aftershock of an airplane. My stern admonitions and shouting did little to impose peace.