Is Teaching ESL in China a Dead End Job?!
Hello Steem Blockchain!
I have been teaching at a public high school in China for 4 years and one thing that people say when getting into teaching ESL abroad is that it is a dead end job.
Are they telling the truth?
Well yes and no.
If you sole source of income is teaching ESL at the job you work, then it may be a dead end job. You can work for many years in the same school and you may not have any promotion to look forward too. For me, I have been teaching the same courses for 4 years and if I continue to stay here for a few more years, it will probably stay that way. I will probably never become a manager or something.
The exception to that rule is if you work for a Training Center. In these jobs, they have different job positions within the school. Basically, a training center is a for-profit business that exclusively teaches English to non-native speakers in foreign countries. Usually, they would teach young children or adolescents. One of the most well-known establishments in China is a branch school called English First (EF). Many foreigners work at these centers because it is quite easy to find a job and the salaries a little higher than other teaching jobs. If you work in a training center, you can get promoted to a DoS or Manager or some other position. However, I am not a huge fan of these places because they are for-profit and you will probably be expected to work a lot longer and have to take jobs that expect you to promote their school. A lot of foreigners might feel degraded teaching at these places because you basically have to entertain a bunch of children with silly antics.
Source
But there's more to it!
Teaching is a transferable skill! The skills you learn while teaching are usually transferable as well. If you only see your job as a source of income and don't utilize what you have learned, then you will stay in the same job for a long time. However, if you allow yourself to be the one learning instead of teaching all the time, then you will realize that you can use these skills in other areas of life.
Every year that I have taught the same courses at this school, I have taught it in a different way. I am getting better at it and am able to teach more in less time. Because I am in China, I make videos on DTube that earn me extra money. By learning how to teach effectively, you can also teach online which is awesome because you can earn money from the comfort of your own home.
There are instructors that create training courses for IELTS and TOEFL that are quite expensive and people from all over the world can pay for these courses because they need to get a high enough score to attend post secondary education.
Teaching can also help you in making videos and coaching people in other subjects. Just because I teach math, science and business in China, it doesn't mean I can't teach spirituality and cooking. The content is different, but the way you teach will be very similar because you learn techniques on keeping people engaged and receptive to new information. Heck, you could open up your own school once you know the ins and outs of running a school.
Saying that teaching ESL abroad is a dead end job is using a very limited mindset to come to that conclusion. I earn money by making videos in China, but if I was back in Canada, I think less people would be interested in that.
Hope that helps all of you out there!
Thanks for reading & watching!
Check out my other posts!
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The Difference Between Teachers in China and the West
What Kind of Imported Food Is Available in China?
MOUTHWATERING Food Of China's Ethnic Turkic Minority!
The MASSIVE Construction Boom in China!
Why I Left My Engineering Career To Be a Teacher in China!
Is Chinese Food Low Quality? Organic Farming in China
Why The Heck Did I Move to Communist China?
What's It Like For A Canadian Living in a Small City in China?
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Great video man. I love how you edited it at the beginning, what program are you using?
There's one really good point you made in this video and it kind of goes along with the whole monetize your life and document what your doing to earn money.
There's so many people who live in fascinating or beautiful places and they don't take advantage of their location. You are a perfect example and illustrated this very well.
Another one, my girlfriends cousin lives in Hawaii. SHe's really into hiking and staying fit. Everyday they go hike mountains, go to beautiful waterfalls etc andthey share it on their Facebook, but make no effort to monetize it. If they were to put that stuff on Dtube or Steemit or Youtube they'd probably make a good amount of money.
Same thing if someone lives in a historic city, I'm thinking of my folks who live in South Carolina, when I go down there it's fascinating how you can be going through an average suburban neighborhood and see a plaque in someoen's front yard about how the first shot of this civil war battle was shot here or something like that. I'd be going all over the city making videos of historic places and telling the story. So many ways to make money.
I am using a free open source program called Kdenlive on my Linux Mint OS. The first clip is called a hyperlapse. You take multiple photos focused on the same point while taking a few steps towards/away from it and then put it all together as a video sequence with video stabilization. The second clip is called a timelapse. Same idea as a hyperlapse but you keep your camera on a tripod in one position and have an app on your camera that can take photos in 2-3 second intervals.
Teaching in China allows me to travel here and experience a new life. There are so many foreigners here that do nothing but teach. Hell, they have been here for over 5+ years and still can't speak any Chinese even.
I agree. It is important to start. Once you start positing amateur videos of your travels, you may feel the urge to upgrade and make better videos so that you can monetize your content and learn a new skills (filming and editing).
Most people don't take advantage of where they live. I think everyone that lives in their hometown considers it “boring" because they are used to everything. If they actually saw their city from the place of a tourist, they could probably find a lot of stuff that others find interesting.
Teaching in Training centers, you do have some opportunities to advance higher up or gain diverse work experience, depending on which company it is.
You could get bumped up to Academic Director, Senior Teacher or a Teacher Trainer. Sometimes this allow you to work with HR and get involved with the hiring process. These companies sometimes offer positions in marketing for their ESL company if you possess any additional skills they can use. Sometimes they have job offers to do work as curriculum developer or editor for their teaching materials.
But as far as public schools and international schools. It's just work as a teacher with potential pay increase yearly. Maybe at most you could get promoted as a lead teacher at the school.
Very true. I don't know all the positions you could be promoted to if you work in a training center. I have a friend that works at EF and he said that some teachers will exchange a salary increase for a job title promotion. So basically they feel satisfaction in being called a Head Teacher or something lol.
Local training centers or some companies like Kids Castle, Web English or Ashton don't offer that much career advancement.
EF, Disney English & Longman English for example have some kind of a career development plan for teachers. Something worthy enough to put on your resume. I saw some people at Disney English bounce from a teacher to working with creating teaching materials and permanently working at the downtown headquarters thinking of ways to help teachers teach more effectively.
But unfortunately not most of the training centers are pro-teacher.
Some training centers are strictly about "teach English" nothing more, nothing less. Teach without an opportunity to get promoted or lateral into another type of position with the employer.
Another dilemma with Teaching English in China is now they are really cracking down on letting expats work more than one job in China. So it puts a damper on the go-getters and hard workers who can handle two jobs at once. If you have a work visa for English Teacher, you're not allowed to accept other forms of employment with other Chinese employers. The only other route is work online.
Some training centers have more ranks than others.
Promotion are something like this:
Foreign Teacher/Chinese Teacher > Senior/head/lead Teacher and Teacher Trainer > Academic Director/Center Director > Regional Director/HR Management and Recruiting
Academic Directors sometimes have the ability to fire you.
Yeah I felt like those guys got some kind of an ego boost being called "head teacher" "senior teacher"
Its like any job, If you hate it, or only do it for income, its a dead end job.
From my experience, the training centers are a nightmare to work in. (great students though) Ugly office politics and backstabbing often takes place, its not much different from typical corporate culture.
Its easy to find work when you are young, after you hit middle age (which is about 40+ in China) there are very few places that will take the risk, even with an experienced teacher.
Teaching is rewarding, if your students make progress, and most importantly, they must enjoy being there, if not, its just a waste of time.
Seeing my students progress and value my class is what makes teaching fulfilling. If I can see that students are grateful for what I am teaching them because it helps them towards their goals, then it is a great job.
I don't care much for job titles as long as I have a good salary and enjoy my time here. I wouldn't want to work in most training centers because of the politics and being treated like a white monkey.
What do you do in China?
At the moment, not much.
I did over 10 years of corporate English training, I'm burned out on it.
Everything has moved online, much to the detriment of teachers and students.
Face to face communication is becoming a lost cause.
Very true! And a joke: when you see an expat/a foreigner in China, you ask: "Are you an engineer?""No.""Ah, then you must be an ESL teacher?" Haha, of course there are other jobs too... but you know both, so you can rock there! ;)
Exactly. I actually thought about becoming an engineer in China but being a teacher allows more freedom and a higher salary lol.
For my 5th year in China, I really want to become a professional in filming/editing and take my classes to the next level. I am thinking about creating a kickstarter campaign with my students to create some brand new product. I have done something similar in the past but it wasn't a brand new product. That ended up successful.
The kickstarter campaign with your students is a brilliant idea! You will have a lot of fun and it's great for their creativity, problem-solving skills, entrepreneurial spirit and so on... They will learn so much more than from the boring textbook for sure!
And remember to tell me your new product after it's created, so I can promote it on Steemhunt, haha... :D
Nice :)
I am planning to post a new blog in the next few days about the product my students and I manufactured and sold on campus. They sure learned a lot.
Thanks for your help, Donica. I appreciate it.
培训机构的老师可没有寒暑假，你的暑假快到了，好羡慕……有大块的休假时间。
嗯。 我要回国然后回去。
你是说你暑假回加拿大，然后在开学前再回中国吗？
嗯
Totally agree man
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