Author: Shanghaiwriter

When reading the November/December 2022 issue of Modern English Teacher, I came across an article by Vita Korgen in which she talks about how she was reading a book and began to think about how to apply what she was reading to teaching English. Recently I started reading Donald J. Robertson’s excellent ‘How to think like a Roman Emperor – The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius’ and began thinking about how Stoicism could be applied to teaching English. The following is just a few musings on integrating philosophy into teaching.

Know thyself

Before getting into Stoicism, though, I feel there’s a more general philosophical rule that should be examined: Know Thyself.

The famous inscription from the Delphic Oracle has permeated our modern culture, but I don’t think everyone lives by it. Galen observed that “only the very wise among us ever know themselves and the rest of us fall into the trap of supposing either that we are completely without fault or that our flaws are few, mild and infrequent.”

It has been suggested that accurate self-perception is vital to self-development. Limiting the scope of our inquiry just to teaching English, I believe that knowing ourselves could relate to a teacher knowing, on a theoretical side, what their teaching philosophy and approach is, and more concretely, what your strengths and weaknesses are when it comes to teaching. For example, do you have strong time management skills but weak class management skills? It would help if you knew this about yourself when preparing your actions/reactions to your learners. Getting to know yourself can only be done through self-reflection, which I’ll talk about later in this article.

Stoicism’s most basic rule

Stoicism’s basic rule is that a person should know what they can change and what they can’t change and learn to tell the difference.

This rule is especially applicable to English teachers in China who are often faced with circumstances that are not ideal for teaching but that they can’t change. For example, you generally can’t change the classroom given to you, the number of students in your class or often the syllabus you have to follow, so what can you change? The classroom setup, the activities in your lesson, or your teaching approach. This is a non-exhaustive list, but the part that a teacher must reflect on is learning to know the difference between what they can and can’t change and then focusing on what they can change.

View things objectively

Stoicism suggests that how we talk and think about events involves making value judgments that shape our feelings. Wisdom thus comes from grasping things objectively. If a teacher makes a judgment call about a student, thinking, “that student is a terrible student,” every thought they have in the future about that student will be affected by the judgment call they made that the student is terrible. Instead, Stoicism suggests that you simply state facts. If a student fails an exercise, don’t label them bad or good students or extrapolate a myriad of reasons why the student failed, simply say, the student couldn’t complete the exercise and go on from there. After a class that didn’t go well, a teacher doesn’t have to think, “I’m a horrible teacher,” just “that class didn’t go as planned,” and move on to the next class.

A teacher’s meditation cycle

Marcus Aurelius suggests a daily meditation cycle. In the morning, you rehearse the key events you will be doing that day. During the day, you keep track of your behavior and habits. Finally, in the evening, you review what you did well, what you did poorly, and what you could do the next day differently.

This cycle seems quite similar to reflective practice and Kolb’s experiential learning cycle. As a reflective practitioner, a teacher plans their classes, keeps track of the data during class, and then reflects on the data after the class, integrating any improvements into their planning for their next class.

These are just a few thoughts on integrating Stoicism into teaching, but I hope it piqued your interest in discovering Stoicism for yourself and how you can apply it to your teaching or to your life in general.

I’m sure you are aware that a new version of Dune (part 1) is out in cinemas. I was able to get my hands on the first six books of Dune and naturally started reading them. I’d only ever read the first book before which is the most famous one. I would say it’s the best one but it’s not the one that made him famous. That was the third one in the trilogy though I’m pretty sure it stood on the shoulders of the first two.  I’m not sure if I’ll go further than the first six books, as those were written by Frank Herbert. More recent books were written by his son and another author together (always based on Herbert’s notes of course) and I’m not sure I’ll read them. So I sped through the first book which as always was an awesome story on so many layers. I made my way slowly to the second novel in the trilogy but I didn’t feel quite the urgency to finish it. Without giving away spoilers let’s just say both the story and the writing style make it hard to really immerse yourself in Dune.

Frank Herbert as a writer

Reading Dune made me almost despair of ever becoming a good novel writer. I mean I think the novel I’m writing right now is alright and enjoyable to the reader but I’ll be the first to admit I’m still a beginner when it comes to crafting a story and it’s nowhere near to the complexity of plot and themes in Dune. I was worried that I’d have to write something like Dune to be a good writer. Fortunately, I realized a few things after reading more about Frank Herbert and listening to some of his speeches and interviews.

The first thing is that he was fifty-five years old before he became a success so I still have time. The second thing is that I don’t have to write Dune, it’s already been written. All I need to do is tell a good story.

The universe of Dune is not for everyone. The novels are often very abstract and written in a strange way. I recently read an article that said the last three Dune books out of the six Frank Herbert wrote were “turgid and impenetrable.” I’m only halfway through the fourth book so I’ll reserve judgment. So far I’ll just say that while well-written the story is a bit of a slog but it might all make sense in the end (I hope.)

What I’ve learned from Frank Herbert

What I’ve found more interesting than his novels is his writing habits and how he got his ideas for the stories and developed them. His consistency in writing is an inspiration and something I hope to emulate.

These are the most important thing I’ve learned from Frank Herbert so far:

“You don’t write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you’re really doing it, that’s all you’re doing: writing”

“There’s an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard-earned money (energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.”

Keeping my views to myself

When I sent my first novel out to alpha readers, most of the feedback was positive. One, however, said that while I was a good writer, the story itself was “trite.”  Maybe it is though as I see it there are some original ideas in it. Perhaps they meant that it didn’t have much in the way of a political message. Dune has a political message and it gets more and more evident as the series continues, sometimes to the story’s detriment. It seems to be the rage in the writers’ groups I watch these days that every story must have a political message or some theme currently in vogue. I prefer to just write a story to be a story. The views of characters are just that and not my view on something. In the novel I’m currently working on, some characters have opposing views on the same subject and I hope the reader will not be able to identify which view is mine but simply attribute the views to the characters.

I don’t think, as a writer, it’s my job to sell a certain point of view or to convince the reader of something. I’m not saying that a reader won’t learn anything from my novel but that’s not my main goal. If they walk away thinking about something in the novel or it changes their life then that’s great. In the end, like Louis L’Amour, I’m just a troubadour around a campfire; here to entertain and hopefully tell a great story.

Life update

A small update before I get into my topic for today. My family is doing well. Lyra is nine months now and almost walking. She hasn’t started talking yet but she does look to enjoy holding books in her hand which gives me hope for her future. I’ve started writing again. I am rewriting the novel I was working on and didn’t finish but I left it for so long that I wasn’t able to just pick up the story from where I left off. As I’d been writing it, there’d been a few changes in the world and storyline so since I’d need to rewrite it anyway, I decided to start over from the beginning and do the rewrite as a way to get back into the story and it’s been working. I’m quite happy with the way it’s been going and hope to finish it eventually and get it out to the alpha readers.

I’ve also started prepping for my next master’s course which will start in January and that’s been pretty interesting. My only worry is being able to get my hands on the necessary reference books but I will start looking at that next week. I had given up the blog and let the domain expire but after thinking about it, I decided to renew it.

Finding a balance          

For me, balancing hobbies is about balancing consuming versus producing versus consuming. Let’s start with definitions. Producing, for me, is when you undertake the process by which the result is a product. Consuming is therefore the opposite when you are using someone else’s product. A product can be either for yourself, like when your gardening hobby produces some herbs for cooking, or the greater public when some writing gets published. As I get older, I think more and more about the balance between producing and consuming, both in my hobbies and in my life.

Cultural differences           

My Chinese wife’s parents don’t understand why I spend so much time gaming as for them it’s just a waste of time that I could spend working or educating my child whereas for me it’s a source of relaxation, especially needed since I live with my in-laws at the moment. The Chinese viewpoint on hobbies is that if it doesn’t generate money in the end, it’s not worth doing. This is perhaps why many Chinese I have met don’t have hobbies in the sense meant in the US, Canada, or Europe which can be defined as “a pursuit outside one’s regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation.”

The five hobbies             

My main hobbies are gaming, writing, reading, studying, and watching movies/TV series. Watching movies or TV series is kind of a background activity as I rarely sit down to directly watch something these days. It might be controversial but I do consider studying a hobby and the order of the importance of my hobbies can change. If I have a deadline for an assignment then that will take priority. If I’m trying to finish writing a novel, writing becomes more important. The main point is that once everything else is done how I divide my free time depends on whether I want to produce or consume.

The ongoing battle

I feel there’s a greater debate to be had on if it’s better to consume or produce in your general life, but I’m trying to just focus on hobbies in this article. Dividing up my main hobbies, I would say writing and studying are producing hobbies while gaming and reading are consuming. Of course, you can have producing in a game that can give you the same mental satisfaction as producing in real life but the result will not be as permanent. To simplify it we’ll just keep the division. As I get older while I still enjoy gaming and reading as much as when I was younger, I start to feel guilty if I ignore my producing hobbies. Perhaps behind it is the fact that producing hobbies could become something larger in my life. My writing could eventually lead to a published novel which could be another source of income. Studying can lead to another diploma which can open up other avenues.

To the victor goes the time           

For the moment, this means that I am trying to keep my gaming and reading to a minimum while expanding the time spent writing and studying. For this reason, my gaming consists of only two games and I refuse to play any others. Yes, I could play many others and I am sure they would all be fun and exciting but the problem is that there will always be another fun and exciting game to play or book to read but in the end, I get more enjoyment from producing than consuming so that’s what I want to spend more time doing. I can see my consuming hobbies even getting crowded out eventually by the producing ones but I don’t think it will ever come to that extreme as producing can be tiring and sometimes you just need to relax and consume someone else’s product.           

The blog lives on

This is the main reason why I decided to keep the blog, it is part of my producing and I think it’s of interest to a few people. It also gives me a platform to post non-novel-related writing so I will keep it going for now. I might not be putting up an article every week but if I have something I want to talk about or news to share, you can rest assured an article will appear.

I just finished reading through the Wheel of Time series again, all fourteen books. I’ve been psyching up to start writing again, so I decided to dive into the Wheel of Time again as it’s one of the most outstanding fantasy series. I have to admit that binge-reading the series in its entirety was a much better experience than I remembered reading the original books to be. I read each book as it was published, and the sensations I recall were that of a story that had so many characters and subplots that the main storyline, or even the side stories, barely moved forward. Reading an omnibus version of the story was like reading one long novel, which significantly improved the experience.

My first introduction to the series had been reading the tenth book in the series, and I understood nothing that was happening. Of course, I understood the words on the page, but I had no sense of the world or who these people were, and I felt nothing much happened. A few years later, I discovered the series again and started from the first book to book 11. Keep in mind the books are long, probably 250,00-300,000 words each though it’s hard to say precisely how long they are without a hardcopy but with a cramped pdf format, the first ten books were still 4000 pages, so that I would say at least 800 regular pages each.

The first book in the series is probably the best story-wise, with the last book being second best since it has to finish the story, and there’s so much story to conclude that it doesn’t have time to meander like the earlier books. That is part of the problem. So the first book was excellent. You could say it is a very standard storyline, but the world-building is fantastic, and Robert Jordan builds up his characters. There are still some flaws that will appear later in the series. There are three main male characters at first, then three main female characters are added, plus many many side characters. This isn’t too big a problem for the first book as most of the characters stick together. They split into three different storylines in the second half of the book, but most of them come together by the end, though the climactic ending feels a bit abrupt when you consider how much time is spent meandering in other chapters.

The next ten books split the characters even further and add even more characters so that despite the length of the books, each character only gets a few chapters of story per book. This works now that the whole series is published, and you can read the entire story together in an omnibus. Still, when it came out, this was very frustrating for me as a reader, and even when reading it today, some chapters feel like they don’t add anything to the story. I will come back to this later. Sometimes the progress of the main storyline feels tacked on at the end of each book, just so that it can be said that progress was made.

Of course, the main thing that everyone remembers about Wheel of Time is that after book 11, the original author died, and a replacement author had to be brought in to write book 12, which turned out to be books 12, 13, and 14.

It’s a testament that both fans and publishers wanted an ending to the story despite its flaws. I don’t know that this would have been done for many other series. Take A Song of Ice and Fire by George R. R. Martin, the source material for the TV show Game of Thrones. If Mr. Martin were to die, I’m not sure anyone would want to finish his series, given the reception the end of the show received. When the new author took over the series, I feel there was quite a bit of pressure for him to show that he could make it in the Robert Jordan style, which is very meandering and with eleven books of plot and storyline to tie up, the last two books got longer and longer. They probably could have fit another book in there, but the publisher probably didn’t want to have to tell fans that they would have to buy a fifteenth book after the three were announced.

In the last book, the new author has to tie up everything from the rest of the books, and I feel that some things were put in just so they could say that there was a point to what was written previously. For example, in the eleventh book, there’s a chapter where one of the characters encounters a village where at night everyone becomes violent, and the whole town kills each other only for them all to be reset in the morning. The character moves on by the end of the chapter, and there isn’t a point to it except to say that weird things are happening. In the last book, these same villagers are brought in, but in a really useless way, just so that the call back can be made so that it wasn’t a wasted chapter. Many side characters and storylines get abruptly wrapped up, though the writing is excellent, and once the book is finished, you feel that the endings didn’t quite do justice to the story when so much time was spent on useless details. For example, a main character’s story will get wrapped up in a page and a half, while in previous books, a whole chapter would be dedicated to how that character traveled on his horse from point A to point B. I also felt that the last book was not as enjoyable as it could have been.  You know that the author is going to spend the whole book just wrapping up plotlines which starts to feel a bit mechanical as if instead of telling a story, the author is just ticking boxes.

As a writer, can you have too much story, too many characters, too much you want to put out there? Everyone knows those series that are announced as a trilogy and then expanded to five books. Even worse is when an author gets a five-book deal and has to stretch what should have been two or three books into five. Is less more sometimes when it comes to writing? Maybe there are only a few writers that can try to tell a story on such a grand scale, even fewer that can make a success of it.

I’m sure that Robert Jordan had the end in mind and most of the major plot points when he wrote his first novel as he was able to seed in future callback moments, but I have a feeling that at some point it got away from him, and he couldn’t get to the ending without having to wade through all the rest first. Fortunately, he managed to get all his books published, even a posthumous ending trilogy, but I doubt a publisher or editor these days would have the patience for that. It took me almost a month to read the series, and I read fast. That’s an average of a novel every two days. It would probably take an average reader a lot longer to get through it. It would have been different if each book had been able to stand on its own as a novel, but other than the first book, which leaves a cliffhanger ending for the sequel, you either have to read all fourteen books, and if you’re not ready to spend at least two months of free time reading the Wheel of Time, or you’re better off not starting it.

So I’ve been thinking of the different language goals for Lyra, and I’ve come up with different yet similar plans for each language.

French: My goal is for her to be fluent enough to be conversant appropriate to her age, but be able to build on it in case we ever decided for her to do French schooling. My own French is not perfect and when I went to university in France I was often embarrassed by the mistakes I made, so she’ll probably have to eventually take French lessons that focus more on grammar when she’s older. I think the most important part of this will be making sure she understands why she is learning French and how it will be useful to her and that she’s not just learning French “because she’s French” but because it has the potential to be useful to her in the future. To emphasize this, I will try to get her French relatives to only speak to her in French so that she actually has a reason to use her French.

English: She probably won’t be doing any actual studying in English before middle-school, if then, but I want this to be her primary extra-curricular language. I feel there’s a lot more material available in English than French or Chinese (Ok, my knowledge of what material is out there in Chinese is small, but I’m going by what I can do for her. Even if she were able to read material in Chinese, I wouldn’t be able to read it and discuss it with her so it is useless to as at a pedagogical level.) So English will probably be the fun language or the one she uses for self-learning.

Chinese: This will probably be the primary language she communicates with outside of the house and at school until she’s at least twelve, so she’ll need a solid grounding in Chinese, but thankfully, I’m not responsible for that. I’ll support her while she learns it from others but other than encouraging her to do her homework, my part in advancing her Chinese language skills will be minimal.

In short, I want her to be able to speak all three languages up to a certain level, after which her use for each language will diverge, but she’ll still need to be fluent in them. I believe, however, that the first steps for each language will be the same. I’ve bought some English and French books and will start to establish regular reading times with her. At first, I’ll be reading to her to get her used to the languages, regularly alternating French and English. Eventually, when she gets old enough to start reading on her own, reading together. By the first two years, my goal is for her to have a small library shelf of English and French books that she and I can read together and that she can eventually choose from when she wants to read on her own. I think it will be interesting to see if she prefers English or French books once she can read independently. There will be Chinese books in this library, but I’m not buying those, and I will leave that part of the library to my wife.

From my research and teaching experience, I’ve found that watching TV or videos in a language doesn’t help children learn the language unless there is a language interaction, either on their own or aided by a teacher. For this reason, I’ll be focusing more on reading. Besides, I believe that developing a love of reading will help Lyra become a self-learner regarding languages, and in general, so I want to cultivate that as early as possible. She won’t have an iPad and ideally won’t watch much TV for the first three years. My hope is that as she gets older and wants to entertain herself, her first instinct will be to grab a book.

Happy New Year!!! It’s a new year, so a fresh start to the blog with the addition of a new subject.

Well, I sent off the assignments for my masters on the seventh. I took advantage of the October holiday to do the final rewrites and editing and send them in, for better or worse. I should know the results by the end of November at the latest. You may have noticed that I haven’t been that active on this blog, but that’s been because I’ve been concentrating on my assignments. I thought about posting some blogs about how I’ve been studying and working on my masters, but I thought that would look bad if I don’t pass. If the results are positive, I might do a post about my studying methodology and the whole experience, but I’ll leave it alone for now. After spending eight months on that course, I’m a bit tired of it and need a break from thinking about the masters. Now that the assignments are finished, I’ll have some time to get a little writing done while I prepare for the next big event in my life: the entrance of my child into the world.

Yes, my wife is now just over six months pregnant, so I am now turning my attention to getting ready for the arrival of our firstborn (and probably last) child. So far, I’ve read through a book on Montessori and started watching some youtube videos on it. It’s a little less stressful than academic studying because there’s no pass/fail, but then when you think about it, there is, but the fail is screwing up another person’s life.

I’m hoping to get some writing in and at least finish my fantasy novel before the baby arrives (due date is January 27^th). Not too much planned for the next three months other than that. I’m looking at it as the final calm before the storm arrives, except that the storm will last about eighteen years, haha.

I’ve also had an idea about a limited podcast series on teaching in China that I’ve been pondering that I want to talk with some friends about. We’ll see if anything comes of it.

Anyway, this is just a little post to let you know that the blog is starting up again. I wasn’t sure that it would, but I enjoy doing it though it might take a turn towards baby care in January. You’ve been warned.

I’m working on a new technique for my life updates, which I call “blog in progress.” It’s a journal where I write things down as they are happening throughout the week, and when it gets to a reasonable length, I’ll post it on the blog.

I’ve decided to skip these last two days of the May 1^st holiday and get back to work, which for me, means working on my masters’ assignments, studying Chinese, and working on my novel. I’m doing this for three main reasons. First, my wife’s company is German, and they follow a European work schedule, which means for these last two days of holiday, it’s just me by myself at home. Second, I feel guilty if a day passes, and I haven’t put in some work on my master’s assignments. Third, since I haven’t started up work yet, every day is pretty much a holiday still, so it’s not like I’m sacrificing that much by studying a few hours in the day.

For my assignments, my goal this month is to get all the back groundwork done so that I can do the teaching and data analyzing in June. For my views of learning, this means getting the needs analysis done and then creating the material for the class. It’s highly likely that I will kill two birds with one stone and use the materials I make for the Views on Learning class for my Views of Language assignment if they can coincide enough. The views of language assignment is really about the material itself, whereas the views of learning assignment is about how the class is addressing the needs of my learner. My third assignment, which is views on teaching, is more about my actions as a teacher in class so that one will have to wait till I gather the data from teaching the classes for the other assignments. I’ve finished the general referencing spreadsheets for all my assignments, by which I mean going through all my reference books and noting relevant quotes. However, I am still waiting for Rod Bolitho’s “Discover English” to arrive.

Healthwise, my weight has finally caught up with my sedentary lifestyle and my good cooking, so it’s back to no alcohol and dieting. I have a secret weight goal that I’m not telling anyone. It’s very ambitious and will probably take a while to get to it, but we’ll see.

I managed to do one writing session for my novel in the last week, but I only got down about 1200 words. My issue is that while I have the end of the story in mind and one of the storylines is more or less mapped out, I’m having issues with the other one, and as I’m alternating between them, my writing slows down whenever I’m working on that one. Still, progress is slowly being made.

I’ve also started up on my Chinese again, mostly doing online quizzes with HSK 3 vocabulary for an hour every day. After a few weeks, I’ll start practicing actual tests. I’m not sure if the HSK testing centers are open again or not, but if they are, I should probably get it done while I’m not working.

Last week, I taught myself how to use zoom for teaching, and this afternoon, I’ll have my first zoom class with a senior year kindergartner. It’s only a 30-minute class, so it won’t be that long. The kid is taking classes with VIPkids at the moment. Still, the parents are worried that it’s going to fast, and their kid doesn’t actually understand what is being taught, so the lesson will mostly be reviewing vocabulary and using it instead of learning something new.

I sent my draft questionnaire in to my tutor, and it came back with mostly positive feedback and a few suggestions. I’ve also given it to a few colleagues whose opinion I value, so I will get back to that on Monday. I’m also working on analyzing real writing samples from my student’s professional life. This weekend I’ll start general research on different task types and how they relate to Language Awareness. I won’t start making the tasks until my learner does the questionnaire and interview, but I’ll be looking at what kind of task types I think would be appropriate and references to back that up.

This next week I plan to finish up the questionnaire and give it to my learner as well as the follow-up interview, after which I’ll start working on the materials for the class. I’ve found that a lot of reference books give you examples of tasks but don’t explain how they’re supposed to work. I’ll be spending a few days researching that as well, otherwise I’ll have to come up with my explanations for them, which I will anyway but they like it when you have actual references to support your theories.

“Get that dog out of here!!!”

I looked up from my place in the line in my neighborhood vegetable shop to see who was shouting at whom. The local supermarket had previously had a fresh vegetable section but with the advent of the coronavirus they’d shut it down and now there was only one fresh vegetable shop in the neighborhood. I was the only foreigner in the store I’d been waiting in the check-out queue for about fifteen minutes. From the rate of progression and with at least twenty people ahead of me, I’d be waiting at least another thirty minutes before I got to the cashier. Everyone in the line was wearing a face mask and we were all maintaining as much distance as possible from each other as we could and still be considered to be in a line. The rain outside made this shopping trip even more dreary.

The object of the shout from another customer in the line was a Chinese middle-aged man, wearing what looked to me like nice designer type clothes, obviously well-to-do. He was holding a leash, at the end of which was a black and white border collie.

“I don’t have anyone at home to watch it,” the man pleaded, “and it’s raining outside.”

He’d probably stayed alone in Shanghai to watch the dog while the rest of his family went back to their hometown, I thought.

“We don’t care,” someone in the line said, followed by someone else chiming in with “you should have left it at home.”

The man backed away from the hostile line to the entrance of the shop. He came back in a few moments later, visibly upset at having to leave his dog outside in the rain. Social media had been circulating stories recently of how the coronavirus could spread from domestic animals like cats and dogs. It was utter nonsense. Nobody really knew what animal, if any, the coronavirus had come from. Bats and snakes were the current suspects from experts but they were a far cry from domestic pets who had never been to Wuhan. A lot of people didn’t seem to be making the distinction. There had also been some disturbing videos circulating on Wechat of cats and dogs being buried alive by their owners.

“There’s another one,” came the cry.

This time it was an older lady, in her fifties or sixties, carrying a small dog with curly fur. I didn’t recognize the breed but it was obviously a house dog that had never been to Wuhan.

“Get that dog out of here,” someone shouted angrily, “this is a food store.”

The old lady backed out of the store and left, choosing to not buy vegetables over leaving her dog out in the rain. I’m not a health expert so I don’t know if having a dog in a fresh vegetable store is dangerous in general, but the hostility from the other customers wasn’t about random diseases from dogs but about catching the coronavirus from them, which was ludicrous.

Half an hour later, I paid for my vegetables and headed home. Outside the store, I passed the black and white border collie, waiting patiently for its owner who was still stuck in the check-out queue. Fortunately, it had a slight overhang to protect it from the rain, but I was pretty sure that a lot of dogs in China would not have as caring an owner. I could only hope that all dog owners would remember why they had bought their four legged companions in the first place.

I originally started writing this article before the Spring Festival holiday, and I’ve been putting it off since I’ve been on extended leave, so it didn’t feel relevant. I figure now that I’m getting close to getting back to work, I should start thinking about how I can improve my working relationship with my Chinese coworkers next semester.          

Something I’ve seen in a lot of English language teachers in China, and I’ve been guilty of this myself in the past, is only doing the very minimum required or the very minimum that satisfies their school or employer. I’ve worked with some teachers who, despite being paid by their school for a nine-to-five workday, considered any time they weren’t actively teaching in a classroom as their own private time and deeply resented any intrusion by the school. Any insinuation that they should plan lessons or spend their office time on teaching-related tasks would result in anger and disbelief. Since I took the CELTA in 2019, I’ve been trying to be more professional in my work ethic, which has resulted in my looking for ways to increase my value. I’ve found that there are two ways I can add value to my teaching, privately and publicly.

Privately, I’m talking about things that I do for myself in my office while I’m not in class. Instead of non-teaching related activities, I read English teaching blogs or digital magazines, or I research new activities and games. For example, I keep a list of different activities that I’ve found to work with my different class levels to which I will add whenever I come across an activity I think might work with my classes. When lesson planning, I will cycle through them so that I only use each activity every couple of weeks. Discussing how my classes went and how I can improve them with my colleague is another way I try to improve myself as a teacher.

Publicly adding value to my teaching is when I’m creating concrete material that the students will use in addition to my usual lesson plans and material that I use in class. For example, in addition to my regular class time, during my office hours, I create audio, visual, and textual material that the students can use at home to review the weekly target language if their parents so wish. I don’t expect them to do it, and when I teach my classes, I consider that the students haven’t done the extra material, but it’s there for those who want it.

In my experience, I’ve found that most Chinese teachers in kindergarten train to be kindergarten teachers, not language teachers. They don’t know what material is best for language teaching or what other projects I should work on to increase the students’ language level, so they never actually come out and tell me to do new things. However, they will recognize a good thing when they see it, and they will continue to want it in the future. After I started creating extra material for the students to peruse at home, my Chinese coworkers now expect that they will have that additional material every week to pass on to the parents and start asking where it is if I’m late in supplying it.

An additional advantage of publicly adding to my value is that it lessens the chances of friction or jealousy between my Chinese colleagues and me. Privately adding to my worth is a good thing for me, but my school won’t know about it unless they see something concrete in new activities or teaching methods in my classes. Because foreign English language teachers receive a salary magnitudes more than private kindergarten teachers in China, Chinese teachers can sometimes be jealous or question why I’m getting a higher wage than they are. I’ve often had this experience when the teachers do speak some English and feel that they could do as good a job at teaching English if it wasn’t for the fact that they are Chinese and not a “foreigner.” Going the extra mile in my teaching shows that I’m aware of the advantages I have as a foreign English Language Teacher and that I’m doing my best to give my kindergarten their money’s worth. I recently made a PowerPoint review of our first semester for the students of my advanced class to have during the Spring Festival holiday in case they want to review. I’m sure that creating something of the sort never crossed the mind of the Chinese teachers. However, once I gave it to them, they immediately recognized its value and were made aware that I’m not spending my office hours on non-work-related personal projects.

In the end, it comes down to making a conscious choice to be the best teacher I can be and taking the initiative to do research or make material that I think will be useful to the students without waiting to be asked or told what to do.