Teaching in Shanghai

My brief time playing tourist is over and now it's time to get to work, work I extremely under-estimated when I decided to come to Shanghai. My teaching week is pretty full from 8:40 - 4:10 Monday to Friday. I'm generally out the door by 7:30 and back after 5:00. I teach 5 Pacican classes (one of each grade level) at Liang Cheng Primary school and 2 Grade 5 classes, 1 Grade 2 class, 1 Grade 3 class and 2 grade 4 classes at ZhongZhou school. My classes at ZZ have over 40 students in each, at Liang Cheng they have 20, so if you've done the math, I have 11 classes in total and teach around 340 students. My classes tend to be a bit of a mixed bag, some of them are great, smart and delightful to teach. I also have classes that don't have any motivation or drive to be there.


I've also found some difficulties at Liang Cheng primary school. It's unfortunate, because it makes my job very hard. My classroom is on the top floor of the school, down the hall on its own, away from the rest of the classrooms and goings on in the school. The teachers that once in a while sit in to TA my class don't take it seriously, conversational English isn't important in their eyes. Their attitudes are often reflected in the students attitudes and I find it difficult to keep them on track and motivated. My classroom is also dreadfully cold, with no heat, windows that let so much air in they are pointless and a door that won't close. My room is often more cold than the actual air outside. The other day when it was raining it was so damp in my room when I went to erase the board and seared it with damp water. I couldn't write on the board for the rest of the afternoon because the chalk wouldn't stick!

My days off are Saturday and Sunday. This weekend we went for a little shopping Western style. I picked up some pants and a jacket at H&M (thank god they have one here!). It was nice to not have to barter for once and I was able to try things on without feeling pressured to buy. We also went through a nice walk through the French Consession. Sometimes when we visit certain areas of the city it doesn't feel as though we're in China at all. It could really be any major city, anywheres in the world. We went to an Indian restaurant for a late lunch and found ourselves being serenaded by a remix of a Snoop Dogg song. It's weird. Just when you think you've got the place figured out, there's something in the way that throws it all off, I guess that's the draw of the place though - it always keeps you guessing!