If you’re thinking of teaching in China, or just wondering what I’ve been doing for the past two years, you probably want to know what an average day as an English teacher looks like. I spend my weekdays doing what most people do – working! My day-to-day teaching schedule differs, but here’s a general idea of what a Tuesday can look like for me.
7:30am – Wakeup, eat a bowl of cereal while checking emails, and spend no more than 15 minutes washing my face, brushing my teeth, applying zero makeup, and putting on an outfit that goes well with chalk dust.
They are so ready for this.
8:25am – Arrive at the classroom, plug in my USB, and get ready to teach. Today I teach listening and speaking for the freshmen English majors. I always begin these classes by teaching American slang – someone has to teach them what “throwing shade” means!
Important English Lessons.
10:10am – Finish my first class and head to the foreign language office to hold my official office hours. Usually I have somewhere between one and six students come to practice speaking, but on a slower day I may read or grade papers for the next two hours.
12:15pm – Go out to lunch with the other foreign teachers for an A+ lunch that ends up costing each of us about 12 RMB or about 1.75 USD. Talk about our classes/travels/Bob’s Burgers/the fact that Donald Trump really has made it this far/etc.
土豆片，豆花 <33333
1:15pm – Make a cup of coffee and review Chinese vocabulary for my class later that night, finish up any lesson plans for the weeks. EVERY student has a break from 12:00pm to 2:30pm so that they can have lunch and take a nap…yes really, there is designated nap time.
2:30pm – Teach my second actual class for the day, which is a repeat of the class I taught in the morning, just with different students. I will teach the same material 5 times in one week, which I am not crazy about. Need a bit more variety long term!
4:10pm – Head back to the office to meet with a student who wants to practice her spoken English. This is one of my FAVORITE parts of my job, working with students who are taking the time and effort to work and improve outside of class. It is so cheesy to say, but helping a student become more confident and having any part in this process is just the coolest thing.
5:00pm – Hang out with my BFF Jillian Michaels, the NYC Ballet Youtube video, or do some sort of physical activity.
6:15pm – Grab a bag of 12 shāomai, 烧卖, steamed dumplings, for 1 USD! Flip through my vocabulary words one more time before….
烧卖
7:00pm – CHINESE CLASS! Chinese language/culture students teach these classes and I am definitely the best student in the class because I am also the *only* student in the class. My teachers tolerate me asking 18,000 questions that range from fairly relevant/appropriate questions to less relevant ones, like why the term is “green tea bitch” rather than “black tea bitch.” Someone has to ask the hard questions.
Fun fact: This is the same room I teach in on Tuesday afternoons.
8:30pm – Sit down for five minutes and feel really tired all of a sudden. Grading or productive things might happen here, but what usually happens is that I watch three episodes of House Hunters on Netflix and fall asleep before 11:00pm. I used to be slightly cooler than this, but I think this is part of having a “routine” and a “job.”
There’s always the possibility of other adventures like breaking an appliance, going out to a new movie, going to English Corner, or surprise food poisoning, but that’s a decent sketch of a typical teaching day! You can check out what a typical weekend for me looks like here.
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