u/llbeallwright

Putting so-called Tier 1 schools aside, it appears that there are two choices available to international teachers in China today.

One is stability but overwork through year-on-year workload increases at one of the usual suspects, e.g. Nord Anglia. This is worrying as the trend points to working more and more for the same or less as the years go by.

The second is to take a gamble by going with a smaller school, where you either luck out with decent pay and work-life balance or are cast into the Wild West, where you’ll have to brave and overcome all sorts of mental, unpleasant, and sometimes even unhinged events that make overwork at a branch of one of the corporate schools look very appealing by comparison.

Am I missing something here? What do teacher options in the international (and bilingual) school landscape of China today look like to you?

By inherent qualities, I don’t mean those things that are right to put on a CV or say in meetings. I mean your actual personal qualities that you would possess even if you had not become a teacher.

Those qualities that are genuine and innate: your personality characteristics and personal preferences.

By stage of schooling, I mean prep, primary, middle, and high school.

I believe particular personality characteristics are required to enjoy, or at least tolerate, teaching at a given stage of schooling. If you don’t possess them, then you could behave like you do, but you will never genuinely enjoy teaching that stage and could easily end up hating it.

By inherent qualities, I don’t mean those things that are right to put on a CV or say in meetings. I mean your actual personal qualities that you would possess even if you had not become a teacher.

Those qualities that are genuine and innate: your personality characteristics and personal preferences.

By stage of schooling, I mean early years and Key Stages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the UK, and kindergarten, elementary, middle school and high school in the US. The same goes for equivalent stages in other countries.

I believe particular personality characteristics are required to enjoy, or at least tolerate, teaching at a given stage of schooling. If you don’t possess them, then you could behave like you do, but you will never genuinely enjoy teaching that stage and could easily end up hating it.

By inherent qualities, I don’t mean those things that are right to put on a CV or say in meetings. I mean your actual personal qualities that you would possess even if you had not become a teacher.

Those qualities that are genuine and innate: your personality characteristics and personal preferences.

By stage of schooling, I mean early years and Key Stages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the UK, and kindergarten, elementary, middle school and high school in the US. The same goes for equivalent stages in other countries.

I believe particular personality characteristics are required to enjoy, or at least tolerate, teaching at a given stage of schooling. If you don’t possess them, then you could behave like you do, but you will never genuinely enjoy teaching that stage and could easily end up hating it.

By inherent qualities, I don’t mean those things that are right to put on a CV or say in meetings. I mean your actual personal qualities that you would possess even if you had not become a teacher.

Those qualities that are genuine and innate: your personality characteristics and personal preferences.

By stage of schooling, I mean early years and Key Stages 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 in the UK, and kindergarten, elementary, middle school and high school in the US. The same goes for equivalent stages in other countries.

I believe particular personality characteristics are required to enjoy, or at least tolerate, teaching at a given stage of schooling. If you don’t possess them, then you could behave like you do, but you will never genuinely enjoy teaching that stage and could easily end up hating it.

I won’t say the name of my school, nor the city or province it is located, only that it is in Mainland China. What I will say, though, is that I really don’t want to work at such a shithole again.

It is one of the more reputable schools and is known throughout the country, but the unaddressed behaviour issues render it down to the level of a shitty state school in that pisshole set of islands that sit like a stain in the armpit of NW Europe (so at least it is becoming an authentic parallel of what it is branded to be).

This place has virtually no consequences for student behaviour. It has a behaviour management system, yet it is not applied, and consequences for the most outrageous student acts are overturned. You can imagine the effect this has on student behaviour and teacher morale.

They say the reason for this in China is fear of students leaving a school. Consequently, these so-called places of education indulge and create brats by further warping what are already entitled minds. In doing so, they f*** over YOU!

The ultimate decision makers are money grubbing scumbags who prove their total lack of consideration and respect for teachers daily. F*** THEM, their POS lackeys, asshole parents, and entitled offspring.

Which one would be the worst to work for as a classroom teacher?

The dullards of Dulwich? The creeps at Cognita? The b*stards in Basis?

Best answers are informed by your personal experience or reliable sources of information, including enough people voicing their concern or discontent.