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Posts: 1197

Shifu

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Q: Who's the worst English teacher you've met in China?

I met a Canadian guy who teaches at the New Dynamic Institute. He seemed like a nice guy but he told me that he would make his students play board games every class and he got mad when the students would tell him that they were bored. Didn't know much of anything about how to plan a lesson or how to manage students.

11 years 22 weeks ago in  Teaching & Learning - China

 
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  Well if you'd asked this 10 years ago I would have said me; I had no idea about anything classroom related, having never really attended school myself after age 12, would turn up late and hungover, smoke in class, and play hangman for hours on end; but since then i've met some real doozies: one guy just seemed to pick random passages from books and dictate them to his students, i've met a number of teachers who loved the sound of their own voices so much they would talk about themselves throughout entire lessons and were convinced that if students were listening, they were doing a fine job. There was one guy who really knew his stuff, except for one thing: he was so incredibly dull that I wanted to slit my own wrists hearing his lessons from the next room. Then of course there was the girl who had such poor classroom management skills that a 9 year old actually lit a fire in her class, the guy who hung a small boy out a window until the child wet himself, the violent tempered (pff) 'hippy' who threatened to pull the eyes out of an 8 year old's skull; but I think first prize has to go to the 50 year old pedophile who would crawl around on his hands and knees pretending to be a rabbit in an attempt to encourage the affections of his young students.

  Golly, they don't know how lucky they are to have us.

crimochina:

yes foreign english teachers are bad just the same as chinese teachers. foreign english teachers also abuse their students

11 years 22 weeks ago
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mArtiAn:

  There are also many many marvelous teachers though. I for one, though I got off to a shaky start, am actually a deeply conscientious teacher with a very good reputation. But that wasn't the question, was it? And thanks again for the little friendly thumb, Crimo. I can always count on you. Not gonna start giving them back though, i'll leave that little activity just to you and your girlfriends.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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AdamE:

I like and respect your honesty. I also feel I wasnt/I'm not that great of a teacher. But like you I do actually care. It's the fact that I care that I found other work to do besides teaching.

 

I really can't stand bad teachers who can't admit they need to improve. 

 

Thank god I've never seen/met any pedophiles like you experienced. But I've always been a bit shocked at how easy it is for people to get into China and teach, I wouldn't be shocked if some real creeps make their way out here.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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mArtiAn:

  Unfortunately more than a few real creeps make it into teaching out here. The quality of teacher is something I don't think China is in much of a position to do more about, there is such a demand for teachers and so few trained professionals available, but there could and should be a great deal more done in terms of laying out guidelines of what is and what is not appropriate behaviour. Chinese teachers work under a rule of little or no physical contact with their students and it is a rule that should be enforced upon foreign teachers as well, and it seems it is not. People like Crimochina would have you believe that Chinese teachers are all violent and smack their students regularly; I have just asked my wife however and she didn't surpise me by telling me that in all her years at school she was never smacked, nor did she ever see a student smacked by a teacher.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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11 years 22 weeks ago
 
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I 've only came across 1 truly bad teacher, he was a drunk. didn't show up to class. just played videos in class. 

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11 years 22 weeks ago
 
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A class full of 16 year olds all vying for that precious piece of paper known as the "Driver's Permit".  Mr. James "For Queen & Country" Wilks holds the fragile teenage esteems in the palm of his limey hands.

 

One precocious teen stands up to his tyranny and declares that British people can't possibly judge the road worthiness of Americans since his kind can't even manage to drive on the correct side of the road.

 

The wrath of Mr. Wilks failed life is now squarely focused on the brutally honest teen.  Mr. Wilks abuses his power and automatically fails the poor teen.  On top of this humiliation he adds, "You will never be a good driver.  If I was you, I would invest in a good bicycle."

 

Well... Mr. Wilks, it is over 30 years later and I have yet to get a single ticket, or be involved in so much as a fender bender.  And that includes 6 years of driving in China as well as driving in around a half dozen other countries.

 

So chew on that Mr. Wilks.  Bwahahaha!

mArtiAn:

  You took your driving test in China? 30 years ago? And it was given by an Englishman called Wilks? That's an absurd fairytale, sir! The name Wilks is Scottish.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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Xpat.John:

Actually, I never took the Chinese driving test.  And, I will forgive you for completely reading my post wrong.  After all, you come from a country that can't tell the difference between a cookie and a biscuit.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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Lord_hanson:

This question is about worst teachers not worst students.

9 years 30 weeks ago
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11 years 22 weeks ago
 
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The worst and most depraved was a white American male, of a certain age, from the southern part of the United States.  Drunk nearly 75% of the time, incoherent the rest of the time; spent his drunk and free time trying and often succeeding in getting the male soccer (football) players drunk and then into his bed. His acts and lack of sobriety were well-known.  For whatever reason, he was made DOS of the campus.  All of the teachers left within about two months and things went down hill from there.  His contract was renewed from what I heard but eventually some parents complained and he was let go.  I heard that he left China only to return later.  Truly disgusting.

kchur:

Southern accent? Consensual gay sex? Frequently drunk in China? Wow, that sounds unusual and awful. What a monster.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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crimochina:

was he drunk during class? and having consensual sex does not make him a bad person. this post is actually very vague. it is almost an attempt to make someone out to be a bad teacher for only being gay. chinese are racists and homophobes, so the fact that the parents got him fired has nothing to do with teaching and could be everything about his being gay. and what does him being white have anything to do with it?

11 years 22 weeks ago
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981977405:

Excuse me gentlemen but please reread the post.  The person was drunk 75% of the time and that means 75% of the time, that is 75% of all of the hours in one week and that means cancelled classes because he was drunk, drunk in class to the point of being unable to function, drunk to the point of not being able to be coherent. .

 

Consensual sex with underage minors?  The thought is outrageous.  These were Junior 1, 2 and 3 students and Senior 1, 2 and 3 students. Hardly anything meritorious.

 

The parents were hardly happy with the situation.  And neither were the other teachers.

 

Homophobes?  With under age children involved? 

Do you condone such behavior? In the United States, he would have been remanded to prison as a predator. Here he was just terminated and politely left the school. Eventually he had to leave the PRC. And white is used as a descriptive and as statement of fact, at one's own discretion. I seek no outside permission nor authority nor approval to use polite, non-vulgar descriptives.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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yian:

I missed you. Have a kiss, mwah! We don't come from the same planet but that's okay. I respect your right to be a person of unspecific origin. Possibly Chinese. Actually definitiely from the town of Wu Mao.

11 years 22 weeks ago
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11 years 22 weeks ago
 
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When I was working at a training centre that dealt mostly with young children, about 2008.

 

There was this feller from New York City, and he had this obsession with shock comics. He really idolized them, and could quote 10 minute bits by his favourite comedians verbatim, doing the voices and everything. He really wanted to be a shock comic himself, but he didn't have any jokes, he'd just say controversial things but there would be no punchline or indication that he was joking (aside from his obsession). He burnt his last bridge with me when he did a bit about him being attracted to a student, and thought it was hilarious that I got angry (we were the only two people in the room; no one else was in on the joke). And the Chinese employees didn't like him anyway because I don't even think they know what shock comedy is and just thought he was a crazy man. Anyway, he disappeared one day. The boss checked his apartment and there was just a pair of shoes.

 

Stupid, stupid man.

crimochina:

how does that translate to a bad teacher???????? because his sense of humor was 100 times better than yours? were you jealous? was he taller than you? more handsome? devil

 

 

still thumbs up. 

11 years 22 weeks ago
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11 years 22 weeks ago
 
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Governor

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I'm sure I'm not the worst but I consider myself pretty bad. I do care about helping people and I'm sure I've had some positive influences and helped people,  but I'm glad I got out of teaching and moved onto something else. It really wasn't something for me and it's something I just wasn't that good at.

 

Other than that...the worst I've seen is people who have drinking problems, met a couple of those but they usually don't last in China that long.

 

 

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11 years 22 weeks ago
 
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I forgot! 

 

I try not to hold onto bad memories. 

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11 years 22 weeks ago
 
Posts: 126

Governor

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If you can't write a lesson plan or prepare a lesson , why are you here.

Too many foreign  teachers come into China feeling they can change the world and they are God's gift to the Chinese people.

In truth you are not. If you have to stay drunk, party , and not do the basics first then go home. Quit making it hard on those of us who are doing the basics first.

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9 years 49 weeks ago
 
Posts: 126

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The worst I have ever met, thankfully she is still in Canada she never made it out of her practicum.

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9 years 49 weeks ago
 
Posts: 126

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The worst I have ever met, thankfully she is still in Canada she never made it out of her practicum.

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9 years 49 weeks ago
 
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The worst I have ever met, thankfully she is still in Canada she never made it out of her practicum.

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9 years 49 weeks ago
 
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that would be me....I am a construction worker ..I speak construction worker English.....I actually applied for an English teaching job and had an interview (Guangzhou). I laughed all the way home. Expect me to teach proper "shit", that ain't gonna happen.....I teach hard knocks school, bullshit, engineering English.

 

Obviously, I am still unemployed and loving it!!

 

numerous offers though...believe it or not....why don't some of you "real teachers" come here? Zhanjiang, Guangdong

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9 years 49 weeks ago
 
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A 50 year old 300 pound  American man who got lucky with one of his students.  After that, when we went out for beers no female waitresses would come to our table.  I wondered why until I looked over at him.  When he made eye contact with one of the girls he used to stick out his tongue wiggle it around. Sick pervert.

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9 years 49 weeks ago
 
Posts: 827

Shifu

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All this should make it easy to get work next fall. The worst FT I met was always chasing skirts. That in itself isn't so bad. What is bad is he would chase all of them including the ones who didn't like him.  He got fired of course. Last I heard he was still teaching.

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9 years 49 weeks ago
 
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Well China does no care much about the teaching ability of the teachers they hire, except they should be "Native Speaker" meaning "White" with or without a college degree.

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9 years 32 weeks ago
 
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I nominate the lady who picked that kindergartner up by his ears.  Nice that there was photos....   Smile

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9 years 32 weeks ago
 
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I knew a guy from Canada who couldn't spell and was a heroin addict. He claimed he once met Eminem in a hospital in Chicago because they had both accidentally ODed and because he was from Vancouver, he claimed he went to school with Pamela Anderson, and of, course, he slept with her. "She only had small tits then".

 

He had a belly like Santa and the class and sophistication of a bush pig. He worked as an early childhood teacher in Hunan, and was fired from four jobs in three months but always seemed able to find another place which was willing to pay him at least 9000 rmb per month. A friend of mine who knows him confirmed to me that after the visa rules changed in 2013, he had to leave China. Of course, a guy like that could never return to his warehousing or taxi driving job in Canada, so he went to Vietnam. I guess places like Vietnam and Thailand are even more unfortunate as they're the ones getting the real dross of the foreign teaching profession. China should count itself lucky that it eventually managed to get rid of the guy, but a lot of Chinese people seem to be impressed by what we in New Zealand refer to as f&#kwits.

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9 years 30 weeks ago
 
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There was another guy from Brazil who asked me how he could go about obtaining a fake bachelors degree in order to be allowed to teach. I have no idea where to get one as I actually have one. I asked him in return how many people he thought were teaching in the city of Shijiazhuang who had false credentials. He told me that someone had told him it was about 80%. I am sure it isn't that high, but just knowing that it's over 30% is a real concern, because a lot of people running the schools, especially the public schools, which are controlled by - how to I express this subtly - traditional elements who are just happy to have a white monkey dance in front of the kids in return for the children's family tossing money at the school.

 

Anyway, I worked at this level three college for one year, and this bloke (whose wife was working as an actual teacher), was always trying to drink with me to get as much information as possible about my opinions of the city, my relationship with my Chinese girlfriend and other friends, my opinions of the school and my workmates. I stayed quiet and divulged nothing as I had suspicions that he was trying to cultivate relationships with certain people to weasel into a teaching job.

 

One of the shareholders at this school was the former Brazilian ambassador. A man who always liked people to kiss his arse, and because it is so hard for Brazilians to satisfy the demands of the market for English teachers (what with not being able to speak English without sounding like Al Pacino), were happy to oblige him. One day, this former high flyer who couldn't just let the past go and accept he was in his dotage and simply sod off and collect his racket dividend, decided that he would teach a class how to teach Portuguese. He must have gotten cold feet or something, or perhaps even had an epiphany which showed him what an absurd man he was, because he called this sycophantic Brazilian guy and asked him if he could take over the lesson for him. The guy said yes, but he asked if in return the ambassador could help him to get a job as a teacher. He is now a teacher. He doesn't know how to write a lesson plan, but he now works in the Portuguese department evaluating the "dissertations" (more like rants) of fourth year students, when the guy never even went to university himself.

 

Being an arsekisser and a loudmouth made more of an impression on the Chinese managers and department leaders right the way to the very top of China's education and political system. There was another teacher at this school, who, along with myself, worked hard to create quality lesson plans. We attempted to discuss methods of implementing our ideas to make our classes more successful for our students - appreciating that Chinese girls don't tend to open up and criticize authority figures, which we indeed were. Every time we tried to ask for feedback we were simply complimented on our diligence as they very quickly tried their best to get us out of the room before we noticed how ignorant they were about anything pertaining to pedagogics or even the subjects the students themselves were studying. It seems many leaders of the types of schools which are entwined with the "traditional" elements of the Chinese government are classic products of guanxi and entitlement devoid of talent or ability, and for the unfortunate students who had to put up with this monkey in a mortarboard, blindly leading them to a bachelors degree, they've created a foreign guanxi case too. Hopefully with mass media and the internet in particular, Chinese people can see these backward practices for themselves and finally release themselves from the shackles which hold them down as one of the world's educational and cultural basketcases.

sam239:

haha, classic.

9 years 30 weeks ago
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9 years 30 weeks ago
 
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The worst teachers in China are Chinese, period.

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9 years 30 weeks ago
 
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A guy/teacher I knew, who'd get shit faced everyday and beaten up at least once a week, in a 2nd tier city where I used to live, once proudly told me that one day after he'd had a big night out, one of the kids in his class said "Teacher, you smell like my father"

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9 years 30 weeks ago
 
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At the university there was a perpetually drunk German teacher who showed movies every class. Not English movies and not Chinese movies but French black and white films. He always showed up for class and he was never fired.

 

Another guy came to do summer classes one year at the training school. On his first day he showed up hung over, wearing sunglasses and a punisher t-shirt. Later he was teaching a lesson about weather and he asked each of the kids in his class "do you eat yellow snow?" He told me that he was into martial arts and had a hero complex.... yeah my f**king hero.

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9 years 30 weeks ago
 
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Chinese TA at a training center in Nanjing. She tried to sleep with every male at the center, then when she was rejected she would try to sabotage the foreign teachers' lesson by telling the students (in chinese) that whatever the foreigner was teaching was wrong. Unfortunately for her, some of us 'stupid foreigners' can understand/speak chinese. I am told that she was fired.

This is the same woman who tried to start a rumor among my students that I was gay, because I didnt try to have sex with her.

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9 years 30 weeks ago
 
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