Teaching ESL in China WITHOUT Speaking Chinese.
03 November 2017 [link youtube]
Advice nobody wants to hear!
Youtube Automatic Transcription
okay so I just got home from work I know
it is no longer Halloween but you can tell well if you look carefully there's something unusual but her parents cuz she just got off work yeah last week I taught a lesson about Halloween and the students didn't celebrate it at all around here so I think they were kind of pumped up to do something for it so this week is when we celebrated Halloween so yeah it was it was awesome it's so much fun they were throwing around screaming popping balloons and it was it was great so um some of them actually did have masks I wasn't expecting that but so yeah somebody had left a comment on one of your videos asking about my experience moving to China and becoming an ESL teacher right so I was just thinking I'm looking down because I I've made notes on my phone which I did prep for this video what stuff don't ever suppose a hundred percent spontaneous this is only 80 percent spontaneous yeah well you know I kind of have trouble with being spontaneous so a little a little bit of background though so you know your decision to come to China and be a teacher itself was spontaneous she fell in love with me she came over here and I said look I can set you up with a job as a teacher now if we're being all the way real that is fundamentally just because you speak English as a first language and you're in a part of China where teachers are really really scarce if you're watching this in 2017 the next two years 2018 2019 teachers are going to be scarce in almost all of China there have been legal changes and bureaucratic changes and how they can recruit and employ and do paperwork for foreign teachers so there's a crisis going on right now in higher education in China and lower in all kinds education because they really took for granted that they'd be able to get foreigners to come here and teach and it's basically impossible now it's impossible I'll just say this briefly though our video but like it's possible it's impossible partly for those reasons of bureaucracy paperwork visas the regulation changing but it's also economically today again so I was talking to her boss today and she was again inviting me to stay longer and set me up with work and stay as a teacher and he said to her look that there's no way to justify it even if you wanted to teach English in order to learn Chinese you do it in Taiwan for all these reasons you know like everything including your ability to have a cellphone your ability to have a driver's license or you know like all kinds of technical things like that but fundamentally the money in the economic situation it becomes impossible to justify teach English in China and mainland China and among the only exceptions you know when I was in couldn't make I met there's a certain stereotype but these were tired white guys guys who were like 63 to 65 doing the English teaching at that and their lives and they have no academic background or whatever related to teaching and they're not career teachers but they're this kind of sunset teacher so and you know obviously the at the opposite extreme you get people who are still in university or just finished their BA who are who are here to teach English but really because they're learning Chinese Bailey so really spontaneously she came over for her first experience with teaching and you didn't have a hell of a lot of experience with kids in general and yeah so now you know now we're gonna talk about it I mean yeah in the space of six months yeah so when I first came over and visited eyes'll I was offered like three different jobs yeah and yeah that's right so I forgot about that that's right but no as soon as you were here ya have any angry isn't very profitable in the United States and technically it's not really profitable here but it is more in demand here because people want people who can speak English fluently so I did interview for a position that was just I felt would be too many hours and I think eyes'll did make a video about that job posting oh well really really that would have been university level teaching so she was offered a job teaching University aged students yeah but the job that I took was with a fellow professor who teaches with so a university professor who set up a small private school or busi van if you know the industry terms as a for-profit enterprise on the side yep yep so that's just teaching children so okay yeah so the reason why I started writing these notes and was you know I had had that comment on my mind but also I am now tutoring as a she's I think she's probably like 21 or something but she she has graduated from college and she's hoping to go to graduate school right for English so she has to take this this test an English proficiency test so I'm tutoring her for this test and the other day she was expressing like she was lamenting how difficult it is for her and how she doesn't think she's gonna do well on the test and she's thinking maybe she'll just forget about the graduate degree altogether so you know I I was trying to encourage her like you know this this is good for your career to to be learning English if this is what you want to be doing and generally in China it's it's a beneficial to know English yeah so um okay so what you got you making this video having at the contrasting experience of teaching small children and now also dealing with this one university age student in what I want a special class yes yeah so she asked me if I had hesitated with coming to China and becoming a teacher for this you know yes all teaching um I didn't you know I couldn't explain the full situation to her cuz it's like it would be x-rated but I said you know there was some hesitation in the very beginning at very beginning but it wasn't about teaching you know yesthank you know about like making this huge move well I was will reassure your parents that life in China was not really so different from life in the United States yeah and and by the way we just stopped here real quick a lot of people will be disappointed with that I knew a girl and my whole life would be different if I'd if I pursued a relation with her I knew a girl who was half Chinese in Canada this is way back in the day you know and I remember her saying to me she's not to UM person sorry but obviously ethnically she was half white half Chinese and when she came to China the big disappointment was it was not that different from Canada like fundamentally you know the the buildings the streets the fire hydrants like in so many ways life is the same as in Canada so that that just mentioned offhand but in a lot of ways that's what I was kind of reassuring your parents show them some photographs of where I live it's like no I mean day-to-day you know that's it's really in so many ways it's not that different from the life you dad might have noticed yeah so you know I said to her ultimately my decision was an emotional one so I can't really compare it I can't say that that would work in her situation because for me it wasn't a motorable decision to move here and you know first of all to come at you and then right right so it's it's a totally different decision for her it's a career decision it's something that you should think about rationally and of course I know there are emotions that are going to be wrapped up in her decision but you have after the short-term emotional decision now we have a ton of more long-term decisions to get informed by it like you know have the option to learn Chinese over the next year or next five years or whatever you know whatever you do you know it's not a rush you know but for the rest of your life if you want to you learn Chinese and due to circumstances in our lives if you want to you can learn French if you want to you could learn German if we could learn Spanish we don't really have a reason to learn Spanish the moment but I'm just mentioning you know it does open up doors for you that you will now consider in a more cerebral analytical way with reference to your career so the fact that the short term decision is emotional doesn't yeah that that's all it's you know I probably wouldn't I wouldn't have come over to China had I not known so I said for me it's an emotional decision so but um you know apart from coming here and falling in love with you it has been a really meaningful experience for me really meaningful life experience um so generally an interesting point for me is that I had I hadn't had much interaction with people who didn't who weren't native English speakers so um I've had some embarrassing misunderstandings with people limiting when I talk to them um but it's been good for me overall to gain this skill of communicating with people who for whom English isn't their first language you just generally I think that's a good communication skill to have yeah a good life skill to have and also even talking to people who with whom English is their first language like in a way um to avoid misunderstandings maybe I can poke in some some little things your eyes go but you don't I think one of the ways in which we both break the stereotype of English teachers here I don't think anyone's really interrogated you about this I get it all the time a lot of Chinese people will take you side and ask you like don't you worship Chinese culture aren't you here because you love Chinese culture and what they mean by Chinese culture is interesting like sometimes that's kind of a code for something political sends a code for like they really mean like high literature or opera like Chinese opera like they might have something in particular in mind and but every single time I get asked that I tell people like no I you know I'm not an enthusiast about Chinese literature or Chinese opera you know like no I don't worship Chinese culture you know I'm here for this this and this reason which would be a separate video but you know I think it's interesting both of us were in this you know frontier region of China this part of China basically only became a part of this only became party on around 1911 it's a bit of a secret you know it says you know this is a death nicly diverse lingual a diverse area on the edge of Yunnan and Myanmar beautiful great place to live blah blah blah but it is interesting we took on the challenge of being here and we're not the stereotype that Chinese people themselves are looking for because a lot of the time that's what they're looking for is the kind of white follower though it's hard to describe sorry I mean you know there are slang terms for this with white people who worship Japanese culture like you know otaku and this kind of thing you know but they're I don't really know any any simple slang term with that for white people who for whatever reason are drawn to or fascinated with and want to integrate into or marry into you know Chinese culture but that ain't us and that we're here for such a totally different set of reasons but yeah it's cool it's cool for you to say it's been it's been life-changing but it's life changing in a very different way then there might be the stereotype that even other Chinese people would expect ya know because during the color college graduate right recently have started tutoring and she's like we were talking about history like history was the subject that we were talking about I was you know I'm I'm just now learning about Chinese history I really don't know very much about it and I say you know my dad knows a lot more about it and she was like oh yeah well he must piece a university professor like oh yeah I kind of did encounter like that she would have to expected you to be like really more in Chinese culture them well where and just really brief thing they assume that like going to an American high school you'd learn about the history of China and most people learn nothing yeah most Americans don't even know which side China was on in World War two like they don't even know that and like so me my first university degree is political science and I do sometimes describe myself as a political science major sometimes as an Asian Studies major because I mean I've got a second degree one but yeah there is definitely because they feel China is the center of the world if you know the actual symbols John Wall pretty much means the land yeah see you know that that's kind of code in Canada but yeah they have much higher expectations than most English teachers to be able to live up to that way yeah yeah so oh yeah another general note is that I wouldn't have learned Chinese I really doubt it would have learned Chinese ever had I not come up here and yeah becoming ESL teacher here and as you just said a couple minutes ago that it's I can be a lifelong like sure for me like sure and I I just want to say I never pressure I've never said to her like if you fall in love with me you have to learn Chinese which oh and a lot of relationships are like that but you don't know but it is true that you you said like you know I yeah I think you would regret it if you lived here and you didn't learn some Chinese to know what you're missing that's right that's right that's the criteria and I uses are learning enough to know what you're missing yeah because if you choose not to learn Chinese after you you leave here I can respect that decision but you got to know enough to know what you decide yeah and it's true I feel like I I could have spent more time learning Chinese sure I told by you know in the future spend more time learning Chinese well in me to a real briefly you know but I mean since she came in my top priority has been her not learning Chinese you know before that I had this period of seven months we're learning Chinese seven or eight or nine months even we're learning Chinese was my main priority and then she became a member and that's fine I think she's gonna be with me for the rest of my life whether or not the Chinese language is gonna be with me for the my life will rolls gonna actually more open to speculation yeah yeah yeah oh yeah and all just the other part of that is I had learned German and in high school because it was necessarily like it was a requirement to learn some language and I had German background yeah it's some family in Germany so um but yeah this is something I was doing out of not duty but out of just interest and yeah so okay all right so on to being a teacher being a teacher doesn't really come naturally to me no you you recently comment done this conference it on this like you know there are some things that generally like I'm good at but teaching is not really one of them oh yeah I just mentioned really brief of what what it is she's alluding to her what I'm alluding to when I say that you know I really mean the kind of Master of Ceremonies role the teacher where you stand on the front you keep the classes attention and I again I wouldn't say it's about being entertaining because I don't see the role of a teacher as being entertaining your students but really just how you project your voice how you work the room it's it's in some ways it's similar to stand-up comedy without jokes stand-up comedy without punchlines but how you how do you do that yeah before I came to Asia to teach English when I was still in Canada but I knew I would I by the way I'm not a career English teacher sorry this is the first video ever seen my channel I've taught English in between other jobs and for other reasons like I was in Cambodia trying to do humanitarian work and in between jobs I taught English real well stuff like that but the English GG is my micro but nevertheless what I knew I was gonna move to Asia and I knew that teaching English would be part of my life in Asia there was a short-lived kind of documentary TV show this is before reality TV was a documentary and it was something was I think was just called Taiwan English teachers it was some of that and I remember one of the characters he just seemed like such a pathetic drunk he just seemed like why would anyone want this guy's name he seems so bored worthless and then the last episode I only sucka blows it was I did see the last episode they actually showed him waking up hungover late getting his act together dragging his ass to school to teach news teaching children but then when he stands in front of the kids he's great you know he's kind of a natural just in that sense I'm not saying he's great at teaching grammar or that was a he's great at purpose of actually getting kids to practice speak English but you can see he really had that thing I mean it's like Krusty the Klown in the Simpsons he comes onstage says hey kids and he is really good at naturally kind of holding the class's attention yeah yeah which I think you are I think you're really good at that like when it yeah he was doing my job basically for me before I moved over here like it was in America for two months in US and so I well and I did in a transitional way I did it to sort of train her and bring her in I see we're going to talk about a billion yeah you don't think there's a line from Rick and Morty which is a TV comedy show but in Rick says at one point he says well I can do anything but only if I want to like I'm oh if I'm motivated to for me a lot of the challenges English teaching is is you know I write lessons and I develop curriculum intentionally that I am interested in that I really feel there's value in so I'm motivated but if I if I think what I'm teaching is crap you know so I'm not the best teacher that way you know what I mean and I don't so yeah I mean a little bit like Rick from working more you know you know I have a my voice is not very loud yeah it's just you know something that innately you can't change yeah we she doesn't she and here this was a true in China this was also true in Laos when I taught English in Laos it's also true that I do diglossia I'm speaking in both languages be I'm switching back for three English Chinese and even though my lotion I never received a single lesson in lotion I was completely self-taught but I was doing that allow also so that's also very different from just teaching in English which is what she does she's an English teacher who only speaks English not Chinese so yeah I don't think I would have had like if I would have gone to Asia because it's something I could have done with an English degree if I would have decided to move to Asia and become an ESL teacher somewhere else other than here in mantra yeah I would not have had as good of an experience as I had one because of that because you were able to help me transition into becoming an English teacher here yeah I was able to observe you teaching lessons and then when I started teaching like you watched a couple right you were there so you were able to give me some feedback well we did we did some lessons where I taught a hundred percent and she just sat there and watched and did nothing we did some that were hybrid where we were both teaching or were teaching cooperatively she played one role but you know some extent you know maybe she has read a script and I did other you know interaction with students and then we did a couple classes where she was for the most part teaching maybe I was just helping to explain some things in Chinese yeah so yeah I think that was a really good way for me to transition into teaching because I think in other places I wouldn't have had somebody to help me train I would just be thrown into it and the person who just started working for grace he doesn't have that transition so she just hired someone who weren't yeah you did have experience teaching but only classes of like five or six students for these classes and you get experience in Russia I take it on it yeah right what and also just say generally you know my mo there was I tried to give her the education and the preparation that I think everyone in the business knows new teachers should have but nobody forgets you mean it's like oh yeah well in theory teachers should go through a gradual process of good and it never happens so I just say I think I did kind of the obvious thing that most most people if you have experience in the industry you know this is what you ought to do but nobody does and you know but I just mentioned also you were not in a corporate setting I mean it wasn't like you had a boss trying to get the most money out of you it's also a big big difference Yeah right yeah so now now I am teaching with the translators so that is different like just fundamentally the the classes are quite different but okay um I was gonna say something else going on okay I remember anyway alright so I do have some some background in Performing Arts I was in choir and I did play violin in the orchestra in high school and okay yeah whatever it was mostly high school I did play some solos for competitions some cymbal so those but other than that I really don't have experience performing in front of an audience and I know you know you know it's an audience of children but for me that that is yep I don't want to say it's I don't get stage fright it's just stressful for me like cuz it doesn't come naturally to me and trying to keep the attention of kids when I you see you were at a town when this happened when I first started teaching here at the university it really brought back memories of the theater and I'm doing stand-up comedy and doing doing comedy as an actor and stuff because this is the actual setup of how the desks are how the students are sitting and sometimes I stand behind the podium and sometimes I walk down into the crowd and speak to them sometimes you speak to people one-on-one it's like a stand-up comedians and sometimes you're addressing kind of everyone anyone it's just really brought back members from when I was like 16 years old at the theater so yeah there's definitely theatricality to it even when you're doing a completely dry you know you're not acting out scenes or anything yeah yeah right but but also you know for the kids you know there are scenes that I should be acting out and that was a new experience for me because I hadn't ever been in theatre and you sing some songs and things like yeah but just you know when I first was doing the story about Hans and the gold you know like you actually like wrote for me like mime you know putting the gold on his back and like carrying it and riding a horse and like just you know I hadn't had that experience in the vessel right you know I'm a consist so when she first started teaching I was really accustomed to while talking to the class like while keeping eye contact drawing a picture on the board that illustrates what I'm talking about while holding on a cognitive while keeping their attention doing mimetic motions miming out what the verb is what it isn't trying to get across so that that comes to me very easily and you're really good at drawing okay I think he's good she cheats you got me out whatever I'm good enough but yeah I could spontaneously draw and against relating to nouns and verbs or the situation you're trying to convey but that is that is I mean at this at this level at all levels even with university students that's you know that's an important set of skills but yeah well yeah it's just really tough for me to draw it all so like yeah I can't simultaneously talk to the class and it's it's even if you're just asking them you know like if you guys did something really simply do you know what this is while you're drawing you know but you are you know you're not looking at the board you're still looking at them you're still involving them you know trying trying to keep them engaged try to keep them learning because again what I do I don't try to be entertaining I really don't I don't try to make my students happy you know I ultimately you know I've prepared a lesson that I feel is really worth conveying so just to give a really true example because we both did these lessons I did a series of lessons on the Inuit so a kask Eskimo is the furthest north eat one candidate how they live and how they survive how they build a house out of snow and ice and this kind of thing you know and to me like I really think that's worth conveying to those to those kids I think it's worth conveying you know this is really meaningful so I'm motivated I'm engaged but then also remember what are they learning they're learning cut cut ice how do they cut I drag like you know the law this is verb needed learning the differences between the different verbs what is you need to push something or to drag something and all of that's gonna be very mimetic it's gonna be acting things that would and so on so yeah when you came in I think that was that was probably exactly the transition you participate in or those a lot of those lessons so yeah and I also think it has to do with like you're more comfortable being the center of attention yeah yeah but again so look I'm now 39 and she's now 24 you know I don't know I don't know how different I would have been at 24 or Foe doing this you know so I really but you know I started University in 1997 and I first taught English no I first starting koshary at the end of university right so you know yeah so I did go I did go through some of us of yours that's true yeah but yeah so partly it is just that were different people but partly yeah I have a huge amount of experience with lit with language learning and then a smaller amount of experience within that with language teaching that most of my professional jobs have been in an office setting and like generally talking to people as little as possible to get the job done and often like that was that was beneficial for the job to not talk to the clients you know I worked for a psychologist and I wasn't supposed to I just wanted them to fill out the paperwork I wasn't supposed to talk to them for for 20 minutes or whatever so yeah you know I this this is just to say that in the past I didn't really can't experience socializing or being somebody who is outgoing now as a teacher I'm not saying you have to be like a socialite but um you have to be more outgoing and more approachable than sitting in an office silently so um you know I think that has been a good experience for me I I think like to be more outgoing and more open to all so yeah I had never worked with children before not even babysitting kids so this has been like a pretty big change for me but I I think it's great like today today when we had this Halloween party was like wow like this is so much this is so great like to see kids having fun of course you know most classes are not like it's fun is it most tonight but you know it is good to see them like actually seeming to learn the words and when you actually teach them and they seem to be understanding it it's it's a really it's a feeling that is you know you can cherish it I'd say also you see that a lot this one stood here working with one on one you actually get to see her improve week by week here without getting into a big thing the students are fundamentally kind of overworked and rundown they're just in the class or so many hours to begin with so even the best students I find the amount they learned in the course of say two months is shockingly slow you know if I check with the module review us in two weeks later do you remember there was been drag and push got it you know I'm like they kept that they kept ice there you know but Wow you know it's a remarkable little memory retention that way yeah but no I'd say it is positive motivating one you can see the students learn but a lot of the time you better have other sources of awesome fish because you will not be able to see the blur yeah oh yeah just the range of Ages of students here too that I teach is like from you know I've taught students that are six years old up to students who are like 14 years old and also like with lesson planning it's it's important like you've been you've taught me like really you should be sympathetic to your audience and be thinking about how they would react and how they would better learn like when I first started lesson planning I'd started making things that were interesting to me and maybe directly towards somebody who was more probably more college-age or like a high school age and I went yeah really needed to think about it differently and focus my attention on like how the kids will react yeah it's it's a really good example I have this I have this catchphrase a of the time which is that you know sympathy is especially important as an analytical tool but it is a weird thing we just have to think through from the students perspective which parts of this are difficult and what you're easy and what you know how are they going to perceive this there's a lot there's a lot that goes into it no split second because once you're used to doing it you don't even realize you're doing I remember she was designing a lesson about the planets in the solar system and from my perspective I was just a hundred eighty degrees different from her so it was like no you know to a child this isn't what's interesting this is and you know if the point is to teach them these words then it can't also be to teach these words we just it's just interesting but yeah there's definitely an art to curriculum generation and this year both of us we 100% generated all new curriculum we didn't use anything from pre-existing books or any pre-existing source and I didn't use anything from any prior year I think I did one lesson one that was reusing something I wrote when I was in Laos it was it was on the use of articles on correct use of you know the Dan and so on once but otherwise everything I've done has been a hundred percent fresh so we both got a lot of experience even though I already deficit experienced I got more experience creating new curriculum starting with a blank sheet of paper and thinking okay what am I gonna accomplish in these 40 minutes these students right yeah and in the same way like you've helped me transition into that because I had no experience with it I think you it's funny cuz we did a whole separate video about university level education book review talk it's called academically adrift but we have it we have seven video recently talking about University vision it's funny too because what you're doing as a teacher I think properly understanding what it means to be a teacher is totally incompatible with being an academic presenting a paper at a conference because that is as you say it's this is me presenting what's interesting to me and be explain you why it's so important to be know the point is to start from this kind of sympathetic understanding of what the students need to know or need to learn to need to practice and how they're gonna perceive it it to work work with that perception which is which by the way is totally different here in China than it would be if you're working with Mexican students or Brazilian students what they can and can't do is totally I assume that's a topic for another video but that that really is pretty deep just how limited they are in apprehending the language and the lesson you have you do have to think through you know what yeah for example every words that they won't know it was like with one word they don't understand it right right well and like that's why is it like even we've charted with the Inuit I'm not gonna teach you some kind of etiology about the Inuit you know it's like okay we're gonna learn cut we're gonna learn drag we'd only differently drag and push we're gonna the idea of building a house out of ice and then it's like even that okay so the structure of the sentence built out of that was like one of the main points of the lesson was going on the board X is made out of why X is built out of y that sentence patter and so on and if you don't if you don't do it step-by-step then what you're doing is it's just as gobbledygook yeah so but you are thinking that way to me it's to me it is really easy and I guess I'm good at that because I spent so much time studying languages in the Didact Loesch and Cambodia and poly Korea but all this experience as a student I guess or maybe I'm just weird but yeah but that that's definitely an invisible an invisible skill of a language teacher that you will never get from getting a PhD in linguistics it has nothing to do with having an academic background or presenting papers that make it in the conference I think it's good for my personal development overall to see what topics and what mode of teaching will engage the different age groups so you know working with kids who are really young I think it's important to play like songs and games but older students even if you do have something really interesting and I this is a lesson that I that I talked tonight I think was the first time I really was like proud of my lesson like I think I did well without asking you for any help but still like some of the students weren't engaged but I just think like you know they're here in a class so many hours I actually asked I know class because I know the sentence structure I was trying to teach them was like I wish I you know I wish I could do yeah and I was like I bet you probably wish that you weren't in class so many hours at school so many hours so I was like so when do you actually when are you in class so they start at 7:30 and they have a two-hour break at lunch but then they said that they end at 10:00 p.m. I was like does because they're signed up for some some classes or program they can't attempt you and a lot of the teachers are on that similarly dehumanizing schedule yeah yeah but it was good to see how like how kids change throat I just mentioned many English teachers in Asia instead take this kind of punitive attitude of like well they don't want to learn yeah well there are students who don't want there are students who were 100 percent don't want to be there don't that is true but a lot of the time what you're perceiving as the student not wanted to learn as they've already been learning since 7:30 a.m. and you're seeing them in 8:30 p.m. and you know you you you got to get real you got to be able to think sympathetically but the position they're in and maybe how you would have felt at that age if you were working those same hours and so on because you know sure thing different age groups like how do I teach them things sure sure but I think you think it is also I mean it's it's a fundamental puzzle how do you teach someone who doesn't want to learn you know with my daughter we don't teach her anything she doesn't we only teacher we only do you think she's interested in doing its you know so she's very happy and positive all right but yeah that's uh that Deb I think that's a hurdle nobody gets over whether at university level or preschool though is that people who watch this YouTube channel once since I've put on it they've probably noticed that I'm not great at speaking off-the-cuff it's really good you know I stumble on my words and sometimes just speak slowly and she cuz I'm trying to think you know gather my thoughts before I say something or I'll just say something that I'll listen back to like why did I say that why did I say it in that manner but anyway um throughout my life I've really relied on written language to communicate with people even even when I like had difficult arguments with my parents or something like a lot of the time I would like syn my room when I feel like okay write out what's going on like write an apology letter like you know I I don't know that's just a way that I've often communicated in my life so having to speak about a subject without preparation has been a new challenge for me and also teaching ESL has been a new challenge for me because you know students will ask random questions you have to be able to speak off the cuff and have something to say in response that isn't just like I don't know you know or like and say it in a way that also the students would be able to understand so yeah that I think it's been a good experience for me I don't know I don't know if I've improved you know maybe maybe objectively the audience can tell more than I can but I you know I think I have gotten better in truth yeah it's a real workout for those improv skills and stations yeah so cool yeah I think it's been it's taken me out of my comfort zone being an ESL teacher and I think I've been growing this person great I think you know if anyone watching this video was actually addressed in teaching ocean in China or all of Asia I guess I mean in the last 17 years between between the year 2000 and the year 2017 we've really seen I think English teaching cease to be an uncredentialed profession it's used to become the last Wild West the last frontier or somebody with no formal education could be great at the job and have a good career and earn a good living that used to be true I mean like as let's say 2005 to pick a year you know that really used to be true I mean I alluded to it briefly earlier because the Chinese government has ratcheted up the paperwork requirements of bureaucratic requirements at one point you're your boss here was offering to employ you on paper as a secretary as an administrative so that like the school would be pretending they were employing an American citizen as an administrator because they couldn't get through the paperwork to to employ you as a teacher ridiculous now you know there are all kinds of you know details that so you know it's really a shame from my perspective maybe someone else I don't see anything positive but I really don't I think is really important in every society that you have fields real fields real careers that people can try and try to end succeed at but not everyone's going to succeed without this pile of credentials and it's funny because just have talk about it so much a lot of the talents you need to be a good language educator are not academic they're not academic in nature I mean what you need to know about grammar you could probably pick up in two months like you know it's probably not that deep now I'm someone who really enjoys you know I'm I'm a very enjoy talking about grammar I enjoy thinking about whether enjoyable grammar in an ancient Indian language like poly or Sanskrit or Latin or Greek or you know or English or you know these these Asian languages have studied or courier but I'm a very unusual person that way but I can recognize I recognize first of all I'm not a perfect teacher I know there are shortcomings but of the skills I have what's important in being a teacher I'm probably I'm not using that academic research side of my brain at all and you know there are these other properties of being warm about being engaging over being sympathetic yes also being analytical being creative you know there's a lot that goes into it and I don't know I feel it's a shame that now that window is closing fewer and fewer people will be able to do what you did which is try it first see if they like it see if they're good at it before they commit to it and instead we're gonna get the the opposite scenario which is I think what most American educators are trapped in Canadian educators dredgen well it's like no no no commit 9 years of your life first to getting a credential so you can do this job even though it's a low-paying job first commit 9 years of your life to this educational getting these traditionally you can't use for any other job or career and then afterwards you'll be trapped in it 1 up a choice that's that's really rough that's really terrible and you know in the past I was able to say to people well give it a try like you know if you do it for six months what's the big deal you know you know you could be a teacher for six months there are a lot of other things you shouldn't just try you know I mean no it's not like we're talking about you know you know racecar driving or something it's not something dangerous it's not something destructive just saying you can have a lot of personal growth but you know if fundamentally you decide you don't like screaming at kids or having kids screaming at you which is part of the job you know you could have that experience and make that decision and now with with it becoming professionalized and credential eyes and so on it's really like the worst of all worlds if you're going to get those credentials if you're gonna put in that many years there are other careers for you that are way more okay there's almost no way to justify doing the job formally and most of the justifications most of us we're doing the job informally whether you do an a try and see basis or you do it like me I'm teaching as an educational opportunity it's really for my own education that I'm teaching so there's a different balance of you know opportunities and you know the difference of opportunity says attach to it from that perspective but yeah it's it's a shame definitely back in the year 2001 that was almost like this gold rush of anyone can buy an airplane ticket and fly to Japan anyone can buy an airplane ticket in fly to China Taiwan it said Chris South Korea South Korea maybe more than anywhere else and cannot just get a job as English teacher but really have a career really over time build up you know a meaningful new life and a lot of people did and a lot of people from diverse you know some of them used to be computer engineer or something some of them had some totally different background they were decisive with and I think right now I think 2017 is really the year that that game has ended and we're now it's like no you're supposed to have a certificate education and a few years experience two years experience in your home country and like preferably a master's degree and so on you know it cannot be justified don't do it if that's the career path we're talking about I'd say absolutely not not for anyone like absolute no no matter who you are the only way to justify that is is if you open your own business and then you don't need the credentials anyway if you're the one who owns the school if you're doing a private private for-profit basis nice so yeah changing world and the changing face face my girlfriend yeah but in some ways it's great to hear that from you babe it's great to you that you feel you you got a lot out of it and you know I mean as with earlier I said learning Chinese it's good to know what you're missing I mean even if you close the door on this if for you this really decides for you that you don't long-term teaching is not what you want to do you take what you learn from this and and then you move on really knowing what it is you're missing
it is no longer Halloween but you can tell well if you look carefully there's something unusual but her parents cuz she just got off work yeah last week I taught a lesson about Halloween and the students didn't celebrate it at all around here so I think they were kind of pumped up to do something for it so this week is when we celebrated Halloween so yeah it was it was awesome it's so much fun they were throwing around screaming popping balloons and it was it was great so um some of them actually did have masks I wasn't expecting that but so yeah somebody had left a comment on one of your videos asking about my experience moving to China and becoming an ESL teacher right so I was just thinking I'm looking down because I I've made notes on my phone which I did prep for this video what stuff don't ever suppose a hundred percent spontaneous this is only 80 percent spontaneous yeah well you know I kind of have trouble with being spontaneous so a little a little bit of background though so you know your decision to come to China and be a teacher itself was spontaneous she fell in love with me she came over here and I said look I can set you up with a job as a teacher now if we're being all the way real that is fundamentally just because you speak English as a first language and you're in a part of China where teachers are really really scarce if you're watching this in 2017 the next two years 2018 2019 teachers are going to be scarce in almost all of China there have been legal changes and bureaucratic changes and how they can recruit and employ and do paperwork for foreign teachers so there's a crisis going on right now in higher education in China and lower in all kinds education because they really took for granted that they'd be able to get foreigners to come here and teach and it's basically impossible now it's impossible I'll just say this briefly though our video but like it's possible it's impossible partly for those reasons of bureaucracy paperwork visas the regulation changing but it's also economically today again so I was talking to her boss today and she was again inviting me to stay longer and set me up with work and stay as a teacher and he said to her look that there's no way to justify it even if you wanted to teach English in order to learn Chinese you do it in Taiwan for all these reasons you know like everything including your ability to have a cellphone your ability to have a driver's license or you know like all kinds of technical things like that but fundamentally the money in the economic situation it becomes impossible to justify teach English in China and mainland China and among the only exceptions you know when I was in couldn't make I met there's a certain stereotype but these were tired white guys guys who were like 63 to 65 doing the English teaching at that and their lives and they have no academic background or whatever related to teaching and they're not career teachers but they're this kind of sunset teacher so and you know obviously the at the opposite extreme you get people who are still in university or just finished their BA who are who are here to teach English but really because they're learning Chinese Bailey so really spontaneously she came over for her first experience with teaching and you didn't have a hell of a lot of experience with kids in general and yeah so now you know now we're gonna talk about it I mean yeah in the space of six months yeah so when I first came over and visited eyes'll I was offered like three different jobs yeah and yeah that's right so I forgot about that that's right but no as soon as you were here ya have any angry isn't very profitable in the United States and technically it's not really profitable here but it is more in demand here because people want people who can speak English fluently so I did interview for a position that was just I felt would be too many hours and I think eyes'll did make a video about that job posting oh well really really that would have been university level teaching so she was offered a job teaching University aged students yeah but the job that I took was with a fellow professor who teaches with so a university professor who set up a small private school or busi van if you know the industry terms as a for-profit enterprise on the side yep yep so that's just teaching children so okay yeah so the reason why I started writing these notes and was you know I had had that comment on my mind but also I am now tutoring as a she's I think she's probably like 21 or something but she she has graduated from college and she's hoping to go to graduate school right for English so she has to take this this test an English proficiency test so I'm tutoring her for this test and the other day she was expressing like she was lamenting how difficult it is for her and how she doesn't think she's gonna do well on the test and she's thinking maybe she'll just forget about the graduate degree altogether so you know I I was trying to encourage her like you know this this is good for your career to to be learning English if this is what you want to be doing and generally in China it's it's a beneficial to know English yeah so um okay so what you got you making this video having at the contrasting experience of teaching small children and now also dealing with this one university age student in what I want a special class yes yeah so she asked me if I had hesitated with coming to China and becoming a teacher for this you know yes all teaching um I didn't you know I couldn't explain the full situation to her cuz it's like it would be x-rated but I said you know there was some hesitation in the very beginning at very beginning but it wasn't about teaching you know yesthank you know about like making this huge move well I was will reassure your parents that life in China was not really so different from life in the United States yeah and and by the way we just stopped here real quick a lot of people will be disappointed with that I knew a girl and my whole life would be different if I'd if I pursued a relation with her I knew a girl who was half Chinese in Canada this is way back in the day you know and I remember her saying to me she's not to UM person sorry but obviously ethnically she was half white half Chinese and when she came to China the big disappointment was it was not that different from Canada like fundamentally you know the the buildings the streets the fire hydrants like in so many ways life is the same as in Canada so that that just mentioned offhand but in a lot of ways that's what I was kind of reassuring your parents show them some photographs of where I live it's like no I mean day-to-day you know that's it's really in so many ways it's not that different from the life you dad might have noticed yeah so you know I said to her ultimately my decision was an emotional one so I can't really compare it I can't say that that would work in her situation because for me it wasn't a motorable decision to move here and you know first of all to come at you and then right right so it's it's a totally different decision for her it's a career decision it's something that you should think about rationally and of course I know there are emotions that are going to be wrapped up in her decision but you have after the short-term emotional decision now we have a ton of more long-term decisions to get informed by it like you know have the option to learn Chinese over the next year or next five years or whatever you know whatever you do you know it's not a rush you know but for the rest of your life if you want to you learn Chinese and due to circumstances in our lives if you want to you can learn French if you want to you could learn German if we could learn Spanish we don't really have a reason to learn Spanish the moment but I'm just mentioning you know it does open up doors for you that you will now consider in a more cerebral analytical way with reference to your career so the fact that the short term decision is emotional doesn't yeah that that's all it's you know I probably wouldn't I wouldn't have come over to China had I not known so I said for me it's an emotional decision so but um you know apart from coming here and falling in love with you it has been a really meaningful experience for me really meaningful life experience um so generally an interesting point for me is that I had I hadn't had much interaction with people who didn't who weren't native English speakers so um I've had some embarrassing misunderstandings with people limiting when I talk to them um but it's been good for me overall to gain this skill of communicating with people who for whom English isn't their first language you just generally I think that's a good communication skill to have yeah a good life skill to have and also even talking to people who with whom English is their first language like in a way um to avoid misunderstandings maybe I can poke in some some little things your eyes go but you don't I think one of the ways in which we both break the stereotype of English teachers here I don't think anyone's really interrogated you about this I get it all the time a lot of Chinese people will take you side and ask you like don't you worship Chinese culture aren't you here because you love Chinese culture and what they mean by Chinese culture is interesting like sometimes that's kind of a code for something political sends a code for like they really mean like high literature or opera like Chinese opera like they might have something in particular in mind and but every single time I get asked that I tell people like no I you know I'm not an enthusiast about Chinese literature or Chinese opera you know like no I don't worship Chinese culture you know I'm here for this this and this reason which would be a separate video but you know I think it's interesting both of us were in this you know frontier region of China this part of China basically only became a part of this only became party on around 1911 it's a bit of a secret you know it says you know this is a death nicly diverse lingual a diverse area on the edge of Yunnan and Myanmar beautiful great place to live blah blah blah but it is interesting we took on the challenge of being here and we're not the stereotype that Chinese people themselves are looking for because a lot of the time that's what they're looking for is the kind of white follower though it's hard to describe sorry I mean you know there are slang terms for this with white people who worship Japanese culture like you know otaku and this kind of thing you know but they're I don't really know any any simple slang term with that for white people who for whatever reason are drawn to or fascinated with and want to integrate into or marry into you know Chinese culture but that ain't us and that we're here for such a totally different set of reasons but yeah it's cool it's cool for you to say it's been it's been life-changing but it's life changing in a very different way then there might be the stereotype that even other Chinese people would expect ya know because during the color college graduate right recently have started tutoring and she's like we were talking about history like history was the subject that we were talking about I was you know I'm I'm just now learning about Chinese history I really don't know very much about it and I say you know my dad knows a lot more about it and she was like oh yeah well he must piece a university professor like oh yeah I kind of did encounter like that she would have to expected you to be like really more in Chinese culture them well where and just really brief thing they assume that like going to an American high school you'd learn about the history of China and most people learn nothing yeah most Americans don't even know which side China was on in World War two like they don't even know that and like so me my first university degree is political science and I do sometimes describe myself as a political science major sometimes as an Asian Studies major because I mean I've got a second degree one but yeah there is definitely because they feel China is the center of the world if you know the actual symbols John Wall pretty much means the land yeah see you know that that's kind of code in Canada but yeah they have much higher expectations than most English teachers to be able to live up to that way yeah yeah so oh yeah another general note is that I wouldn't have learned Chinese I really doubt it would have learned Chinese ever had I not come up here and yeah becoming ESL teacher here and as you just said a couple minutes ago that it's I can be a lifelong like sure for me like sure and I I just want to say I never pressure I've never said to her like if you fall in love with me you have to learn Chinese which oh and a lot of relationships are like that but you don't know but it is true that you you said like you know I yeah I think you would regret it if you lived here and you didn't learn some Chinese to know what you're missing that's right that's right that's the criteria and I uses are learning enough to know what you're missing yeah because if you choose not to learn Chinese after you you leave here I can respect that decision but you got to know enough to know what you decide yeah and it's true I feel like I I could have spent more time learning Chinese sure I told by you know in the future spend more time learning Chinese well in me to a real briefly you know but I mean since she came in my top priority has been her not learning Chinese you know before that I had this period of seven months we're learning Chinese seven or eight or nine months even we're learning Chinese was my main priority and then she became a member and that's fine I think she's gonna be with me for the rest of my life whether or not the Chinese language is gonna be with me for the my life will rolls gonna actually more open to speculation yeah yeah yeah oh yeah and all just the other part of that is I had learned German and in high school because it was necessarily like it was a requirement to learn some language and I had German background yeah it's some family in Germany so um but yeah this is something I was doing out of not duty but out of just interest and yeah so okay all right so on to being a teacher being a teacher doesn't really come naturally to me no you you recently comment done this conference it on this like you know there are some things that generally like I'm good at but teaching is not really one of them oh yeah I just mentioned really brief of what what it is she's alluding to her what I'm alluding to when I say that you know I really mean the kind of Master of Ceremonies role the teacher where you stand on the front you keep the classes attention and I again I wouldn't say it's about being entertaining because I don't see the role of a teacher as being entertaining your students but really just how you project your voice how you work the room it's it's in some ways it's similar to stand-up comedy without jokes stand-up comedy without punchlines but how you how do you do that yeah before I came to Asia to teach English when I was still in Canada but I knew I would I by the way I'm not a career English teacher sorry this is the first video ever seen my channel I've taught English in between other jobs and for other reasons like I was in Cambodia trying to do humanitarian work and in between jobs I taught English real well stuff like that but the English GG is my micro but nevertheless what I knew I was gonna move to Asia and I knew that teaching English would be part of my life in Asia there was a short-lived kind of documentary TV show this is before reality TV was a documentary and it was something was I think was just called Taiwan English teachers it was some of that and I remember one of the characters he just seemed like such a pathetic drunk he just seemed like why would anyone want this guy's name he seems so bored worthless and then the last episode I only sucka blows it was I did see the last episode they actually showed him waking up hungover late getting his act together dragging his ass to school to teach news teaching children but then when he stands in front of the kids he's great you know he's kind of a natural just in that sense I'm not saying he's great at teaching grammar or that was a he's great at purpose of actually getting kids to practice speak English but you can see he really had that thing I mean it's like Krusty the Klown in the Simpsons he comes onstage says hey kids and he is really good at naturally kind of holding the class's attention yeah yeah which I think you are I think you're really good at that like when it yeah he was doing my job basically for me before I moved over here like it was in America for two months in US and so I well and I did in a transitional way I did it to sort of train her and bring her in I see we're going to talk about a billion yeah you don't think there's a line from Rick and Morty which is a TV comedy show but in Rick says at one point he says well I can do anything but only if I want to like I'm oh if I'm motivated to for me a lot of the challenges English teaching is is you know I write lessons and I develop curriculum intentionally that I am interested in that I really feel there's value in so I'm motivated but if I if I think what I'm teaching is crap you know so I'm not the best teacher that way you know what I mean and I don't so yeah I mean a little bit like Rick from working more you know you know I have a my voice is not very loud yeah it's just you know something that innately you can't change yeah we she doesn't she and here this was a true in China this was also true in Laos when I taught English in Laos it's also true that I do diglossia I'm speaking in both languages be I'm switching back for three English Chinese and even though my lotion I never received a single lesson in lotion I was completely self-taught but I was doing that allow also so that's also very different from just teaching in English which is what she does she's an English teacher who only speaks English not Chinese so yeah I don't think I would have had like if I would have gone to Asia because it's something I could have done with an English degree if I would have decided to move to Asia and become an ESL teacher somewhere else other than here in mantra yeah I would not have had as good of an experience as I had one because of that because you were able to help me transition into becoming an English teacher here yeah I was able to observe you teaching lessons and then when I started teaching like you watched a couple right you were there so you were able to give me some feedback well we did we did some lessons where I taught a hundred percent and she just sat there and watched and did nothing we did some that were hybrid where we were both teaching or were teaching cooperatively she played one role but you know some extent you know maybe she has read a script and I did other you know interaction with students and then we did a couple classes where she was for the most part teaching maybe I was just helping to explain some things in Chinese yeah so yeah I think that was a really good way for me to transition into teaching because I think in other places I wouldn't have had somebody to help me train I would just be thrown into it and the person who just started working for grace he doesn't have that transition so she just hired someone who weren't yeah you did have experience teaching but only classes of like five or six students for these classes and you get experience in Russia I take it on it yeah right what and also just say generally you know my mo there was I tried to give her the education and the preparation that I think everyone in the business knows new teachers should have but nobody forgets you mean it's like oh yeah well in theory teachers should go through a gradual process of good and it never happens so I just say I think I did kind of the obvious thing that most most people if you have experience in the industry you know this is what you ought to do but nobody does and you know but I just mentioned also you were not in a corporate setting I mean it wasn't like you had a boss trying to get the most money out of you it's also a big big difference Yeah right yeah so now now I am teaching with the translators so that is different like just fundamentally the the classes are quite different but okay um I was gonna say something else going on okay I remember anyway alright so I do have some some background in Performing Arts I was in choir and I did play violin in the orchestra in high school and okay yeah whatever it was mostly high school I did play some solos for competitions some cymbal so those but other than that I really don't have experience performing in front of an audience and I know you know you know it's an audience of children but for me that that is yep I don't want to say it's I don't get stage fright it's just stressful for me like cuz it doesn't come naturally to me and trying to keep the attention of kids when I you see you were at a town when this happened when I first started teaching here at the university it really brought back memories of the theater and I'm doing stand-up comedy and doing doing comedy as an actor and stuff because this is the actual setup of how the desks are how the students are sitting and sometimes I stand behind the podium and sometimes I walk down into the crowd and speak to them sometimes you speak to people one-on-one it's like a stand-up comedians and sometimes you're addressing kind of everyone anyone it's just really brought back members from when I was like 16 years old at the theater so yeah there's definitely theatricality to it even when you're doing a completely dry you know you're not acting out scenes or anything yeah yeah right but but also you know for the kids you know there are scenes that I should be acting out and that was a new experience for me because I hadn't ever been in theatre and you sing some songs and things like yeah but just you know when I first was doing the story about Hans and the gold you know like you actually like wrote for me like mime you know putting the gold on his back and like carrying it and riding a horse and like just you know I hadn't had that experience in the vessel right you know I'm a consist so when she first started teaching I was really accustomed to while talking to the class like while keeping eye contact drawing a picture on the board that illustrates what I'm talking about while holding on a cognitive while keeping their attention doing mimetic motions miming out what the verb is what it isn't trying to get across so that that comes to me very easily and you're really good at drawing okay I think he's good she cheats you got me out whatever I'm good enough but yeah I could spontaneously draw and against relating to nouns and verbs or the situation you're trying to convey but that is that is I mean at this at this level at all levels even with university students that's you know that's an important set of skills but yeah well yeah it's just really tough for me to draw it all so like yeah I can't simultaneously talk to the class and it's it's even if you're just asking them you know like if you guys did something really simply do you know what this is while you're drawing you know but you are you know you're not looking at the board you're still looking at them you're still involving them you know trying trying to keep them engaged try to keep them learning because again what I do I don't try to be entertaining I really don't I don't try to make my students happy you know I ultimately you know I've prepared a lesson that I feel is really worth conveying so just to give a really true example because we both did these lessons I did a series of lessons on the Inuit so a kask Eskimo is the furthest north eat one candidate how they live and how they survive how they build a house out of snow and ice and this kind of thing you know and to me like I really think that's worth conveying to those to those kids I think it's worth conveying you know this is really meaningful so I'm motivated I'm engaged but then also remember what are they learning they're learning cut cut ice how do they cut I drag like you know the law this is verb needed learning the differences between the different verbs what is you need to push something or to drag something and all of that's gonna be very mimetic it's gonna be acting things that would and so on so yeah when you came in I think that was that was probably exactly the transition you participate in or those a lot of those lessons so yeah and I also think it has to do with like you're more comfortable being the center of attention yeah yeah but again so look I'm now 39 and she's now 24 you know I don't know I don't know how different I would have been at 24 or Foe doing this you know so I really but you know I started University in 1997 and I first taught English no I first starting koshary at the end of university right so you know yeah so I did go I did go through some of us of yours that's true yeah but yeah so partly it is just that were different people but partly yeah I have a huge amount of experience with lit with language learning and then a smaller amount of experience within that with language teaching that most of my professional jobs have been in an office setting and like generally talking to people as little as possible to get the job done and often like that was that was beneficial for the job to not talk to the clients you know I worked for a psychologist and I wasn't supposed to I just wanted them to fill out the paperwork I wasn't supposed to talk to them for for 20 minutes or whatever so yeah you know I this this is just to say that in the past I didn't really can't experience socializing or being somebody who is outgoing now as a teacher I'm not saying you have to be like a socialite but um you have to be more outgoing and more approachable than sitting in an office silently so um you know I think that has been a good experience for me I I think like to be more outgoing and more open to all so yeah I had never worked with children before not even babysitting kids so this has been like a pretty big change for me but I I think it's great like today today when we had this Halloween party was like wow like this is so much this is so great like to see kids having fun of course you know most classes are not like it's fun is it most tonight but you know it is good to see them like actually seeming to learn the words and when you actually teach them and they seem to be understanding it it's it's a really it's a feeling that is you know you can cherish it I'd say also you see that a lot this one stood here working with one on one you actually get to see her improve week by week here without getting into a big thing the students are fundamentally kind of overworked and rundown they're just in the class or so many hours to begin with so even the best students I find the amount they learned in the course of say two months is shockingly slow you know if I check with the module review us in two weeks later do you remember there was been drag and push got it you know I'm like they kept that they kept ice there you know but Wow you know it's a remarkable little memory retention that way yeah but no I'd say it is positive motivating one you can see the students learn but a lot of the time you better have other sources of awesome fish because you will not be able to see the blur yeah oh yeah just the range of Ages of students here too that I teach is like from you know I've taught students that are six years old up to students who are like 14 years old and also like with lesson planning it's it's important like you've been you've taught me like really you should be sympathetic to your audience and be thinking about how they would react and how they would better learn like when I first started lesson planning I'd started making things that were interesting to me and maybe directly towards somebody who was more probably more college-age or like a high school age and I went yeah really needed to think about it differently and focus my attention on like how the kids will react yeah it's it's a really good example I have this I have this catchphrase a of the time which is that you know sympathy is especially important as an analytical tool but it is a weird thing we just have to think through from the students perspective which parts of this are difficult and what you're easy and what you know how are they going to perceive this there's a lot there's a lot that goes into it no split second because once you're used to doing it you don't even realize you're doing I remember she was designing a lesson about the planets in the solar system and from my perspective I was just a hundred eighty degrees different from her so it was like no you know to a child this isn't what's interesting this is and you know if the point is to teach them these words then it can't also be to teach these words we just it's just interesting but yeah there's definitely an art to curriculum generation and this year both of us we 100% generated all new curriculum we didn't use anything from pre-existing books or any pre-existing source and I didn't use anything from any prior year I think I did one lesson one that was reusing something I wrote when I was in Laos it was it was on the use of articles on correct use of you know the Dan and so on once but otherwise everything I've done has been a hundred percent fresh so we both got a lot of experience even though I already deficit experienced I got more experience creating new curriculum starting with a blank sheet of paper and thinking okay what am I gonna accomplish in these 40 minutes these students right yeah and in the same way like you've helped me transition into that because I had no experience with it I think you it's funny cuz we did a whole separate video about university level education book review talk it's called academically adrift but we have it we have seven video recently talking about University vision it's funny too because what you're doing as a teacher I think properly understanding what it means to be a teacher is totally incompatible with being an academic presenting a paper at a conference because that is as you say it's this is me presenting what's interesting to me and be explain you why it's so important to be know the point is to start from this kind of sympathetic understanding of what the students need to know or need to learn to need to practice and how they're gonna perceive it it to work work with that perception which is which by the way is totally different here in China than it would be if you're working with Mexican students or Brazilian students what they can and can't do is totally I assume that's a topic for another video but that that really is pretty deep just how limited they are in apprehending the language and the lesson you have you do have to think through you know what yeah for example every words that they won't know it was like with one word they don't understand it right right well and like that's why is it like even we've charted with the Inuit I'm not gonna teach you some kind of etiology about the Inuit you know it's like okay we're gonna learn cut we're gonna learn drag we'd only differently drag and push we're gonna the idea of building a house out of ice and then it's like even that okay so the structure of the sentence built out of that was like one of the main points of the lesson was going on the board X is made out of why X is built out of y that sentence patter and so on and if you don't if you don't do it step-by-step then what you're doing is it's just as gobbledygook yeah so but you are thinking that way to me it's to me it is really easy and I guess I'm good at that because I spent so much time studying languages in the Didact Loesch and Cambodia and poly Korea but all this experience as a student I guess or maybe I'm just weird but yeah but that that's definitely an invisible an invisible skill of a language teacher that you will never get from getting a PhD in linguistics it has nothing to do with having an academic background or presenting papers that make it in the conference I think it's good for my personal development overall to see what topics and what mode of teaching will engage the different age groups so you know working with kids who are really young I think it's important to play like songs and games but older students even if you do have something really interesting and I this is a lesson that I that I talked tonight I think was the first time I really was like proud of my lesson like I think I did well without asking you for any help but still like some of the students weren't engaged but I just think like you know they're here in a class so many hours I actually asked I know class because I know the sentence structure I was trying to teach them was like I wish I you know I wish I could do yeah and I was like I bet you probably wish that you weren't in class so many hours at school so many hours so I was like so when do you actually when are you in class so they start at 7:30 and they have a two-hour break at lunch but then they said that they end at 10:00 p.m. I was like does because they're signed up for some some classes or program they can't attempt you and a lot of the teachers are on that similarly dehumanizing schedule yeah yeah but it was good to see how like how kids change throat I just mentioned many English teachers in Asia instead take this kind of punitive attitude of like well they don't want to learn yeah well there are students who don't want there are students who were 100 percent don't want to be there don't that is true but a lot of the time what you're perceiving as the student not wanted to learn as they've already been learning since 7:30 a.m. and you're seeing them in 8:30 p.m. and you know you you you got to get real you got to be able to think sympathetically but the position they're in and maybe how you would have felt at that age if you were working those same hours and so on because you know sure thing different age groups like how do I teach them things sure sure but I think you think it is also I mean it's it's a fundamental puzzle how do you teach someone who doesn't want to learn you know with my daughter we don't teach her anything she doesn't we only teacher we only do you think she's interested in doing its you know so she's very happy and positive all right but yeah that's uh that Deb I think that's a hurdle nobody gets over whether at university level or preschool though is that people who watch this YouTube channel once since I've put on it they've probably noticed that I'm not great at speaking off-the-cuff it's really good you know I stumble on my words and sometimes just speak slowly and she cuz I'm trying to think you know gather my thoughts before I say something or I'll just say something that I'll listen back to like why did I say that why did I say it in that manner but anyway um throughout my life I've really relied on written language to communicate with people even even when I like had difficult arguments with my parents or something like a lot of the time I would like syn my room when I feel like okay write out what's going on like write an apology letter like you know I I don't know that's just a way that I've often communicated in my life so having to speak about a subject without preparation has been a new challenge for me and also teaching ESL has been a new challenge for me because you know students will ask random questions you have to be able to speak off the cuff and have something to say in response that isn't just like I don't know you know or like and say it in a way that also the students would be able to understand so yeah that I think it's been a good experience for me I don't know I don't know if I've improved you know maybe maybe objectively the audience can tell more than I can but I you know I think I have gotten better in truth yeah it's a real workout for those improv skills and stations yeah so cool yeah I think it's been it's taken me out of my comfort zone being an ESL teacher and I think I've been growing this person great I think you know if anyone watching this video was actually addressed in teaching ocean in China or all of Asia I guess I mean in the last 17 years between between the year 2000 and the year 2017 we've really seen I think English teaching cease to be an uncredentialed profession it's used to become the last Wild West the last frontier or somebody with no formal education could be great at the job and have a good career and earn a good living that used to be true I mean like as let's say 2005 to pick a year you know that really used to be true I mean I alluded to it briefly earlier because the Chinese government has ratcheted up the paperwork requirements of bureaucratic requirements at one point you're your boss here was offering to employ you on paper as a secretary as an administrative so that like the school would be pretending they were employing an American citizen as an administrator because they couldn't get through the paperwork to to employ you as a teacher ridiculous now you know there are all kinds of you know details that so you know it's really a shame from my perspective maybe someone else I don't see anything positive but I really don't I think is really important in every society that you have fields real fields real careers that people can try and try to end succeed at but not everyone's going to succeed without this pile of credentials and it's funny because just have talk about it so much a lot of the talents you need to be a good language educator are not academic they're not academic in nature I mean what you need to know about grammar you could probably pick up in two months like you know it's probably not that deep now I'm someone who really enjoys you know I'm I'm a very enjoy talking about grammar I enjoy thinking about whether enjoyable grammar in an ancient Indian language like poly or Sanskrit or Latin or Greek or you know or English or you know these these Asian languages have studied or courier but I'm a very unusual person that way but I can recognize I recognize first of all I'm not a perfect teacher I know there are shortcomings but of the skills I have what's important in being a teacher I'm probably I'm not using that academic research side of my brain at all and you know there are these other properties of being warm about being engaging over being sympathetic yes also being analytical being creative you know there's a lot that goes into it and I don't know I feel it's a shame that now that window is closing fewer and fewer people will be able to do what you did which is try it first see if they like it see if they're good at it before they commit to it and instead we're gonna get the the opposite scenario which is I think what most American educators are trapped in Canadian educators dredgen well it's like no no no commit 9 years of your life first to getting a credential so you can do this job even though it's a low-paying job first commit 9 years of your life to this educational getting these traditionally you can't use for any other job or career and then afterwards you'll be trapped in it 1 up a choice that's that's really rough that's really terrible and you know in the past I was able to say to people well give it a try like you know if you do it for six months what's the big deal you know you know you could be a teacher for six months there are a lot of other things you shouldn't just try you know I mean no it's not like we're talking about you know you know racecar driving or something it's not something dangerous it's not something destructive just saying you can have a lot of personal growth but you know if fundamentally you decide you don't like screaming at kids or having kids screaming at you which is part of the job you know you could have that experience and make that decision and now with with it becoming professionalized and credential eyes and so on it's really like the worst of all worlds if you're going to get those credentials if you're gonna put in that many years there are other careers for you that are way more okay there's almost no way to justify doing the job formally and most of the justifications most of us we're doing the job informally whether you do an a try and see basis or you do it like me I'm teaching as an educational opportunity it's really for my own education that I'm teaching so there's a different balance of you know opportunities and you know the difference of opportunity says attach to it from that perspective but yeah it's it's a shame definitely back in the year 2001 that was almost like this gold rush of anyone can buy an airplane ticket and fly to Japan anyone can buy an airplane ticket in fly to China Taiwan it said Chris South Korea South Korea maybe more than anywhere else and cannot just get a job as English teacher but really have a career really over time build up you know a meaningful new life and a lot of people did and a lot of people from diverse you know some of them used to be computer engineer or something some of them had some totally different background they were decisive with and I think right now I think 2017 is really the year that that game has ended and we're now it's like no you're supposed to have a certificate education and a few years experience two years experience in your home country and like preferably a master's degree and so on you know it cannot be justified don't do it if that's the career path we're talking about I'd say absolutely not not for anyone like absolute no no matter who you are the only way to justify that is is if you open your own business and then you don't need the credentials anyway if you're the one who owns the school if you're doing a private private for-profit basis nice so yeah changing world and the changing face face my girlfriend yeah but in some ways it's great to hear that from you babe it's great to you that you feel you you got a lot out of it and you know I mean as with earlier I said learning Chinese it's good to know what you're missing I mean even if you close the door on this if for you this really decides for you that you don't long-term teaching is not what you want to do you take what you learn from this and and then you move on really knowing what it is you're missing