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Q: Working in China versus in your home country...
Just curious for all the board peeps out there, do you feel like you work harder/more hours in China than you would in your home country, about the same, or less?
I personally feel like I'm working more intensely here, but then again, the whole recession thing really mucked up the jobs market in the US (hence the reason I moved here in the first place) so who knows.
thoughts?
11 years 25 weeks ago in Business & Jobs - China
Well I'm a teacher and I've just renegotiated my contract up from 100 hours a month to 120 hours a month teaching AND office time. That is about the same as I would work in the UK but in the UK that would be almost entirely teaching time, marking, lesson plans, schemes of work, all would be done in my own time.
Here I can get all my planning done in the 'office hours. Of course the pay is considerably less but then again so is the cost of living. Overall I think, for me, China has a significant edge, that will only change when family circumstances change, i.e. my daughters education.
:
Yeah, I'm curious how teachers here differ from non-teachers. I've never taught here myself. I've been doing all sorts of "office jobs" instead. Maybe that's why I feel like I'm working more.
Hugh.G.Rection:
To be honest, what I've experienced in China really isn't 'teaching' as we know it in the UK. You're a voice, often you are just reading from a course book. In the UK you would be expected to plan every lesson, (often down to minute detail), you would be expected to design a complete scheme of work, i.e. what you are going to teach, when, how and how you will facilitate underprivileged and lesser able children. Then you would also be expected to set course work and of course do your marking, then the extra curricular activities. In the UK contact time is often less than 10% of your total time doing job-related tasks and that is without taking teacher training time into account, of which you have to do at least 20 hours a year to re-qualify for QTLS.
In my industry working in China was not work at all. I had one job where I literally did four hours of work a week. Sounds great, right? Nope. BORED OUT OF MY MIND.
:
I used to stock groceries at the local market when I was in school. I remember thinking "gosh, this is so physically exhausting and mind numbingly boring, I wish I had an office job where I could be tasked with actually 'thinking'". Now that I'm in that sort of office job, all I wish for is that I could be up moving around getting exercise more often and not having to "think" all the time.
Grass is always greener...
I am a chinese, but I have worked in UK for two years. I was studying in UK for 6 years, and worked for 2 years. When I worked in UK, I only worked 8 hours a day and 5 days a week. Now I moved back to China, I work around the clock..However, some of my foreign friends in China only do a few hours a day and their payment is already higher than their colleagues.
Another ESL teacher.... university level.
I 'work' far less here than I did back home - and even then, I was only part-time. Most hours I was required to do was 23/week. Pay... about 3x the local wage. And that's the difference - foreign teacher pay is always higher, but we live in an area that caters to a lower (Chinese) income.
I'd say, if you're working a lot harder here than back home, you're doing too much!
