I’m still here too! My negativity is at an all time high, actually.
I now work at a school with generally much much much more pleasant students, but people’s fear of covid and vaccine discrimination is giving me a really hard time, and the schools have ridiculous student number requirements that are almost literally impossible to meet right now. My students have to go campaign for people to sign up who never intend to attend the class just to get the school to open tiny short classes. I mean at least there’s people campaigning for me.
Majority of students now seem to like me, but one or two will go complain about the most finicky bullshit. I spent a ton of my free time preparing nice handouts for each class recently but I lost students because I had material on the handouts that I didn’t teach. Specifically, one vocabulary word. The manager asked why I didn’t teach it. I said it’s just extra stuff, because I’m primarily teaching their book. This is just extra in case I have a class that doesn’t want to talk to me or whatever, also, why didn’t this student just ASK me what that word means? The student, instead of just asking me a simple question, complained about me and quit my class. How am I supposed to avoid stuff like that?
My solution for now is to prepare nothing since it not only goes unappreciated, it gets me in trouble.
I’ve worked at some kid schools lately, and they’re a whole separate rant. I’ve had to get the government involved (successfully) several times over their bullshit.
I really do enjoy teaching, honestly, especially now that I have a different breed of student, it seems. The rant you quoted was my life for about ten years, and it’s not exaggerated.
The people I deal with regularly now may be shy, but I can ask them to get into groups without an argument, they’ll answer my questions without a fight… basically they’re people that will actually work with me. I can now attempt to actually do something other than “OH MY GOD WOULD YOU PLEASSSSSSE SPEAK TO ME… YOU ARE NOT PEOPLE YOU ARE INANIMATE OBJECTS!!!”.
That’s for adults. My problem now is actually having classes. The classes I have now are great to teach, but they’re so inconsistent… need to find a better place.
I think I’m banned from kids schools in general because of health discrimination reasons that are none of their business. At the last kids school I worked at the classes themselves were all great except for two. I had one class full of tiny screaming kids that didn’t listen to anything, and a class full of too cool for English class teenagers. Both were with the same Chinese teacher, so although she’s pretty nice I think she’s the problem… the other ones are better at keeping their classes under control. All my other classes there were wonderful though. High fives and hugs everywhere whenever I enter the lobby or walk down the halls.
I didn’t inject myself with the popular injection of choice these days though, and weekly testing isn’t good enough for them, despite vaxxed people catching “it” left and right these days. They told me the vaxxed teachers aren’t tested weekly, so I told them I’m safer than they are. They then said “HOW DO YOU KNOW WE ARENT TESTED???” “Uh… because you just told me, stupid.” These people change their story right in front of me again and again and pretend like they didn’t when I immediately call them out for it.
So… Taiwan is awesome…
My name on here is “Taiwanvisitor” because I made this account to make a quick throwaway post asking about how I could find a video game or something the first time I visited Taiwan. Never thought I’d even move here, but here I am…
The vaccine situation will probably be what makes me leave though, unless I find a way to earn money without these ridiculous schools.
