How To Fail As A Foreign Teacher

Thinking about how to begin this blog I remembered this. It previously appeared on my other blog in June 2012 and as soon as I remembered it, I realised that I just had to repost it here. Many of the themes will be revisited later.

Remember one thing – if you actually want to succeed all you have to do is THE EXACT OPPOSITE of all the advice given below.

It really is up to you.

How to Fail As A Foreign Teacher In China
It's very easy to be a success as a foreign teacher in China. Look at me. My school loves me. My administrator literally begged me to stay on for another year. My pupils mob me to ask for my phone number, my email, my autograph. Chinese families ring me up to go for dinner. I'm a success.

But you don't have to make my mistakes. It's just as easy to be a failure. It takes a little effort but it's not at all difficult. Here are some top tips for "How To Fail As A Foreign Teacher In China".

10 Turn up, Do Your Job, Go Home

By itself this won't make you a failure but it's a good foundation to build on. The trick is to spend as little time in the school as possible. On a good day you will be able to turn up, go straight to your classroom, teach your lesson and be out of the building before anyone notices that you are there. Don't get involved in conversations with teachers in the corridors and always be in and out of the office as quickly as possible. You'll probably have to go in from time to time which will inevitably lead to having contact with other teachers.

Try to minimise this. Reply to greetings with grunts. When anyone asks you a grammar question, a curt, "I don't know" is the best response.
Try to cultivate an exasperated "why ask me" expression.

9 Insist on sticking to the timetable

Chinese schools rarely let the teachers know about timetable changes more than a day in advance. Even holidays might be announced as you are leaving the day before they happen. I have been rung up at eight O'clock on a day when I don't teach and asked to be in for nine. Don't put up with this. Inflexibility is the key. Work like you would at home. The timetable is the timetable carved in stone and handed down on the mountain top. Turn up at the scheduled times whether or not your class is taking place. Don't let them get away with changing things.

8 Mumble, Mutter and Speak Quickly

Classroom technique is vital and it all starts with your voice. Talking in a clear, loud, slow voice with lots of repetition and paraphrasing is the way to success.

If you want to fail these are habits you must get out of. There are various techniques you can use. Mumbling is good. You'll know you've got it right if the first few rows are leaning forward to try to hear you and the rest are playing cards.

Muttering is similar but trickier to manage. Muttering must be just audible but, and this is the important point, on any subject NOT related to the lesson. If you have ever listened to an old woman with dirty clothes and a shopping bag that clinks as she moves then you'll know how to do it. Nothing throws the students as much as trying to work out why their teacher just said "Lemon Cheesecake*" in the middle of a lesson about the passive voice.
If these techniques aren't for you then try speaking really fast and never repeating anything.

Like this –

"Ifthesetechniquesaren'tforyouthentryspeakingreallyfastandneverrepeatinganything"
Adopting a monotonous drone and never varying the volume or pace of your voice will also work.

The key is to remember that to the kids EVERYTHING you say is equally important. They have no way of knowing if what you just said is a vitally important piece of information or just a random thought that popped into your head and then out of your mouth.


7 Teach From The Front

Chinese classes are big. Fifty students is a small class. Eighty is not unusual and there might in some places be as many as a hundred students. The classrooms are big and crowded so you should stand at the front and use a lecturing style. Never get out in the class to talk directly to the kids at the back. You will just be interrupting their attempts to do their geography homework, read their comics or carve their names into the desks. If you teach from the front and avoid eye contact with everyone then you won't need to deal with any of these things.

6 Let the kids do what they want

In such large classes the students are often inattentive. They will read, do homework, play games and talk. Boy, will they talk. You should completely ignore all of this behaviour. After all you don't like being bothered when you are chatting with your friends. Just carry on teaching your lesson as if nothing is happening. It doesn't matter if no one is listening to you. Ideally the noise level will get so high that teachers from another class will come to complain. They probably won't speak English but you will know that it's working when they scream at the class in Chinese and everyone falls silent for the next five minutes.
Always do your best to let the noise level build back up as quickly as possible after this happens.

5 Write small. Don't use pictures.

Visual aids? Who needs them. Some teachers prepare interesting and complex visuals for their classes. Pictures, posters, games, song sheets. Why bother? If you really want to fail this is an area where it literally needs no effort. Don't make anything in advance. They won't thank you for your elaborate resources and they will probably fall apart before the end of the week anyway. It's wasted effort.
Much better is to just use the board wisely. And by wisely I mean without any organisation. Write things in random places - and you must write small. There are a lot of kids who have quite poor eyesight and you should aim to get your text at a size that is just too small for them to see.

Once again it's easy to know when you get this right because they will start borrowing each other's glasses and squinting through the lenses at odd angles as they try to work out what you have written.

4 Go To School Functions

You will be invited out to dine with the teachers from time to time.
You should go. This may sound like it's a strategy for success and it's true that refusing to go will win you no friends but going can be even better.

To really fail you need to do a couple of things. First of all turn up in your oldest T-shirt and jeans. If you have any trousers or jeans that are old and thin and patched in various colours, that's even better. Shorts are another good option, especially if the meal is in a hotel with a dress code. Then at the meal you should instruct people loudly about your multiple allergies and digestive problems. Descriptions of the symptoms, particularly the ones involving bodily functions are always good.

Complain about everything you are served. Tell everyone that Chinese food is giving you irritable bowel syndrome and you want hamburgers.
Then leave early and in a bad mood.
They will talk about your behaviour for days.

3 Under-prepare or Over-prepare?
There are two strategies you can use when preparing your lessons. The easier one is to under-prepare. At its extreme this can mean not preparing at all. You can, if you wish, think of a topic or a name for the lesson, but you don't need to do more than that. Go in and make it up as you go along. Over-thinking it will simply mean that all those little hesitations, awkward silences and spelling mistakes on the board are eliminated and that will create the wrong impression. If you are observed, and you often will be, you want it to be obvious that you have given no thought to your lesson before entering the classroom.
A trickier, but ultimately even surer, strategy for failure is to obsessively over-prepare. For example, spend days, weeks even, drawing a detailed but inaccurate map of the world, tape it to the board at the start of every lesson AND THEN NEVER MENTION IT. If the students ask what it's for just glare at them and say "Isn't it obvious?"
If an observer sees this they will certainly be impressed by your attention to detail.

2 Teach the ones who want to learn

You may have eighty kids in your class of whom fewer than ten actually want to be there. The others would rather be outside playing basketball or at home sleeping. You will be able to pick out the keen ones in your first lesson because they will be near the front, looking at you and prepared to answer questions. If you ask a question in that first week and are met with a blank look, write off that kid and never interact with them again. Once you have established which kids want to participate, teach only them. Ignore everybody else. Let them do whatever they want. Ask questions only when you know you will get an answer. It's just not worth your effort if they don't want to participate.

You get paid either way and why make life difficult for yourself.

1 Never show enthusiasm

The number one tip is to never show enthusiasm. Never let anyone think that the job is anything more than an unpleasant chore that has to be done. Shuffle around the room. Try to slouch. If you can't fake tiredness then go for the real thing by staying up until three a.m. watching movies.

Keep reminding yourself that your course is not important. You set no homework. There is no exam. Nobody cares. Why should you try to look interested when nobody else is?
The number one thing that the school will be looking for in a teacher is a lively, enthusiastic attitude – the kind of inspirational approach that communicates itself to the kids.

As a potential failure, what you want to communicate to the kids is lethargy, apathy, listlessness. If you can do that you will have it made.

NOW GO OUT THERE AND FAIL! 

(* "Millennium hand and shrimp**" is even more puzzling but remember to credit Sir Terry Pratchett who coined the phrase.)

(**This level of muttering is probably better attempted only when you are fully confident with the technique.)