Work as a teacher in an international school
Experience like waiters
A word of incompatibility is complained about
There are also students who call the police and ask for a lawyer
This group has experienced too many magical moments
The following is a teacher's self-description of his experience -
In the summer of 2020, I graduated from university and worked as a chemistry teacher at one of the top ten international high schools in Shanghai.
In Shanghai, international schools can be broadly divided into three categories: schools for foreign children, international departments for public schools, and private bilingual schools regardless of nationality.
My school belongs to the third type, the students in the class are like fake Chinese, studying AP courses certified by American universities to prepare for studying abroad.
In recent years, schools like ours have been favored by more and more middle-class families: without the need for foreign status, children can bypass the college entrance examination, enter a relatively easy track, cultivate thinking and vision in line with international standards, and naturally enter famous American schools after graduation.
Although the tuition fee is as high as 200,000 yuan a year, many post-70s parents who have experienced the pain of exam-oriented education believe that the money is worth it.
The school is well aware of the minds of these parents, and does its best to let students have an "international" experience, foreign teachers, all English teaching, overseas summer camps are only standard, but also opened baseball, piano, French and other special courses, to create a middle-class "elite dream".
On the other hand, this group of Chinese parents in the "inner volume" of the big country, can not really get rid of the anxiety about the test and score, in the process of educating their children, into the "not in the middle of the ocean" dilemma.
When parents and children struggle in the cracks between Chinese and Western cultures, as a teacher, I was inevitably impacted, experienced many magical moments, and even gradually found that I became a role with awkward positioning.
01
"Teacher, wait for my lawyer to come and talk to you"
Each family's reasons for choosing an international school may vary from person to person, but at its core is the promotion of Western education.
One of the biggest characteristics of Western education is the respect and publicity of individuality.
The children I come into contact with rarely take learning as the whole of life, but devote a lot of energy to developing interests and specialties.
The school atmosphere is free and gives students full autonomy, such as they do not have to stay in the classroom for evening study, they can go to the library, café, small garden and anywhere else.
School rules do not prohibit perming and makeup. When students in the system are still being asked to "not have bangs above their eyebrows", many of my students are already well-known beauty bloggers.
Most of the parents are enlightened and avant-garde, the mother of a high school boy in the class once asked me for the child's "emotional problems" to understand the situation, I thought she was worried about her son's early love, but I did not expect this mother to say to me with a sad face: "Teacher, my son has not been in love until now, should he be GAY?" ”
Children who grow up in this environment are generally energetic and confident, and "everyone has a face that has not been bullied."
But the drawbacks are also obvious: their understanding of Western culture is too one-sided, sometimes misunderstanding the meaning and limits of "freedom."
The first time I learned about students was in a chemistry class shortly after the start of school.
Halfway through my class that day, I saw a student playing switch under the desk, reminding him that he hadn't listened once, so I had to take away his game console, put it on the podium, and let him get it after class.
This was originally a very ordinary and trivial matter, but the students were not convinced, and I must return the game console to him immediately, and I never gave in.
He suddenly returned to his seat, took out his mobile phone, dialed 110, and called the police in front of the whole class, on the grounds that "the teacher embezzled my private assets."
The policeman came to the school, listened to the incident, looked at me with extremely sympathetic eyes, turned to the student who called the police, and asked: "So what do you really want?" The student's righteous and stern words: "I ask the teacher to apologize to me and return my personal property." ”
In our school, such absurd stories are not uncommon.
One exam week, there was a serious violation of discipline in the examination room, and one of my colleagues felt the need to remind the students in his class, so he posted this matter in the class group and deliberately withheld the name of the student concerned.
Within a few minutes, the teacher received an email from the student concerned, asking him to retract the message and apologize, because although the student's name was hidden, all the students knew that it was he who violated the discipline, which violated his "right to reputation".
My colleague refused.
The next day, the boy walked into our office with a man: "Teacher, this is my lawyer, let him talk to you." ”
The school invited parents to deal with the matter, only to find out that this was a scam: the "lawyer" was the boy looking for a friend to pretend.
The subsequent development of the matter is even more bizarre: parents think that their children have a strong sense of law and know how to use legal weapons to protect their rights and interests, they decided to support their children, so they hired a real lawyer to continue to negotiate with the school.
After more experience, I also gradually understood that the "preaching and teaching" I once believed in may not be suitable for international schools. Here, there will always be some students and parents who believe in Western education, who see teachers as beasts of repression of individuality and human rights violations.
In the end, I still have the wrong positioning of myself, always thinking of myself as an "educator", in fact, I am no different from those AI robots that help students do problems.
02
"Teacher, won't your conscience hurt?"
In addition to showing personality, less homework and no ranking are also characteristics of Western education.
Although many parents choose international schools in the original intention is to reduce the pressure on their children, after all, in the context of education, they are vested interests in "reading to change their destiny", and it is difficult for them to really let go of the obsession with "high scores" and "famous schools".
Under the international curriculum system, the role of the teacher is very different from that within the system: we are not only the "coach" who improves the student's performance, but also the "referee" who scores the student. These scores will eventually be used to apply to foreign universities, and the importance is self-evident.
When the rules of the Game in the West are copied to China, everything becomes "Chinese characteristics": students and parents will do everything they can to "ask" the teacher for points, falling into another form of anxiety.
These families often have high social status and rich network resources, and in order to brush up their children's grades, they almost "do whatever it takes".
There are countless parents who come to me for a share, some of them moving out of the principal, some of them moving out of the directors. The most exaggerated is a mysterious father who has never appeared, perhaps proud of his status and precious, do not want to add weChat casually, his and my conversations are carried out in the WeChat group pulled by the child's mother, in order to persuade me to give the child more points, the father specifically mentioned: "The child's grandfather and an academician have slept on bunk beds." ”
In the face of the "siege" of parents, I often feel very helpless: although the score is made by the teacher, it does not mean that it can be changed casually, and there are objective and strict scoring standards behind each grade.
In contrast, the gesture of the students to divide has become much more cute.
A boy chased after me to give him an extra point, and after I refused, he angrily asked: "Thanks to your role as a teacher, give me such a low score, won't your conscience hurt?" ”
There are also girls who directly blocked my WeChat because my class performance score was too low.
At first, I was irritated by the attitude of these students, but now I seem to understand their subtle mentality.
I remember when I was in high school, the teacher always said, "If I know what the college entrance examination is, I will tell you the answer and let you all get full marks." ”
Now, as a teacher in an international school, I do know what the "college entrance examination" is, but I can't give all students full marks.
The teacher-student relationship in traditional Chinese education is more like that of comrades in arms in the same trench, fighting side by side, unifying goals, and facing an enemy called "Gaokao" together.
In international schools, teachers are both responsible for teaching knowledge and evaluating students, but students and parents are clearly not used to such a relationship, they can accept a strict "coach" but can not understand a cold-blooded "referee".
03
"Waiter, call your manager"
In the international school, each role seems to be torn apart by the difference between Chinese and Western values, and I have slowly explored my own position in the process of being impacted by the three views again and again.
Rather than being a teacher, it is better to say that the relationship between me and the students is party A and party B.
The school is open to business, parents and students are supreme customers, teachers are waiters, and the attitude towards students should be based on the principle of "customer is God".
Some parents asked the teacher to write a letter of recommendation, asking the teacher to highlight the three advantages of the child, the teacher asked whether he could write another advantage that he felt more, and the parents lightly refuted it: "I have 'arranged' other teachers to write other advantages." ”
In the process of communicating with parents, once the teacher cannot meet the requirements of the parents, he can always hear such a sentence: "Then I will talk to your principal." It's like talking to a waiter in a restaurant, without saying a word, "Then call your manager." ”
The school is well aware of this, and whenever there is a conflict between a teacher and a student, the grade group leader will bitterly advise the teacher: "We must smile and serve." ”
The first time I heard this sentence, I felt humiliated, but my colleague comforted me: "Working here, you must always remember that as long as you do not receive complaints from parents and students, the school will not find you trouble, why should you care so much about other things?" ”
Of course, this year as a teacher, I also left many good memories, sixteen or seventeen-year-old children are simple and lovely after all, no matter what kind of education, there is a unique vitality and rebellion of this age.
International students, caught between Chinese and Western values, are often more mature, confused and vulnerable than their peers.
As "studying abroad" has become the standard for more and more middle-class homes, many of the parents I have contacted may not be ready to accept the impact of different cultures and curriculum systems, and send their children to international schools.
In fact, this road is neither a shortcut to escape from test-oriented education, nor is it necessarily a bright and bright road, on the contrary, it puts forward higher requirements for both family and school education.
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