My Teaching Contract

After my Pine Pudding incident related in the last post I had to go to Yueqing to talk to the high school administrators who had said they had a job for me. In usual Chinese style, they told me come on in, it had been decided that I would be hired. they had been talking about signing a contract earlier this week, but hadn't had a final word on the salary that I wanted. I told them that I would sign a contract when they had gotten it all figured out.

Yesterday they called and told me to come on in like I mentioned, only stating i should come in the afternoon, not specifying a time. When I got there all the administrators were having a meeting. I waited for 2 hours. Then I came back to the office and they said the principal was not there so they couldn't sign a contract with me until he got back to talk about it. I then asked everyone when they thought the principle might be back. (never ask just one person, the sense of lying here is very different from what I am used to at home. They are not lying, they are just obfuscating the truth. Perhaps, because they don't know an exact date, they don't feel as though they have to tell you their honest assumption even if they are 95% certain.) A few people said a couple days. One person said next month, but because he said it on the 29th, that easily could have been 2 days to 33 days. he was very firm about his answer however, repeating it several times. Often people will repeat their answer to a question over and over again, the general feeling being the more often something is said the more believable it is. Other people said a week still others said a few weeks. His wife, also involved in the school administration said she didn't know a couple times. She later said she could tell him to come back early.

They did however welcome me to come and start teaching as soon as possible. They said the salary would start from whenever I began working. but still no word on what the salary would be. They want me to teach 8 classes a week spread out over the whole week and be in the office 7:25 am until some time after 4 pm. and in the mornings on Saturdays. they also want me to go to extra curricular activities and participate. and they want me to stand around in the 10 minute breaks between classes and teach the children English. they told me that If I could improve the English of their students then they would be really happy. however, they don't seem to have arranged it so that I will have any chance at all of improving the English of their students. I guess I could sit in the office for 6 days a week and get some serious reading done, but I'm not sure if this is really the best idea.

I had just been reading a very interesting blog about Contract negotiation in China the night before. Thank God I had because had I not I might have fallen for one of their tricks. The blog is a lot of fun. After reading it, I realized that the Chinese aren't really all that bad, the funny thing is they are used to Westerners being really culturally sensitive and taking bad business practices that they would never accept at home for cultural differences. A link to the blog: http://chinesenegotiation.com/

This is a good read just for fun or for anyone who wants a review of business negotiation. His point is simple and applicable wherever you are doing business. Do not make excuses for bad business practices on the part of your partners or anybody else.

Back to repeating a proving something is true by repetition, I have had to do this with the English teachers here. I tell them a sentence in the textbook is incorrect and they tell me that is just British English grammar. I don't get angry, even though I mostly enjoy reading British publications. I read the Times and the Guardian online, and I prefer British novels (I don't mean Harry Potter, either.) One example sentence the teacher put on the board that tickled me was "This is the man whom I was talking to." Or something along those lines. I love the use of whom, now seldom used in a sentence ending in a preposition. They should be happy I don't ever correct them in front of their students. Anyway, I have to resort to repeating myself to convince them of grammar rules, my explanations never help.

Besides the frustrating school administrators, the high school is really beautiful. It is built on a series of large terraces on the side of a mountain. The Teachers apartments are nestled in trees and rocks at the top of the campus, and you can walk up to a pavilion to look down at the city and mountains opposite.

The Children are nice, and very eager to talk to me, but in general behave like wild animals inside and outside the classroom. The teachers don't even bother to argue with the kids because if an argument starts the kids really get into it. There are 55 plus kids to a class.

This another big reason I am hesitant to accept this job. They really expect me to increase the English language ability of a student population of 1500 with 8 hours a week and 55 kids each hour. I only get face time with 450 kids for one hour a week per class. Not much chance of that happening. I do love the setting and they layout of the school, and the kids are great, but the teacher's apartments are holes.

Any prospective partners to start an import business instead?