I got my teaching job last summer and I remember quite well how I wished the summer would end soon so I can already start teaching. Haha. That was a year ago. Right now, I wish the summer would stretch longer so I don’t have to go to work soon. I still have a month of vacation and God knows how I savor each day of it whether I spend it somewhere or I spend it at home.
I am still in a crisis. I still don’t know if I want to continue teaching. Thing number 1 is, I need a job and thing number 2 is, it can’t be just any job so more or less, I will just go on with the teaching. Being an immigrant is playing a major part in my crisis and I am slowly getting tired of it.
Why can’t I get a better teaching job? Because I need a nostrification. Why do I need that? Because my degree is not recognized here. Why is that? Because I got it outside of EU. So why not just get a nostrification? Because it is a very complicated and a very long process.
And why can’t you get other jobs like an office job? Because my German is not good enough. And why can’t you get a manual job? Because I am not sure if I want that and my husband definitely doesn’t want that for me.
It all comes down to being a foreigner in this country and the fact that I want to have a baby and be a mother soon doesn’t make things easy for me either. I feel that I am running out of time and my chances are thin. At this point of my life, it is either get a better teaching job or be a mother and that’s unfair because I want both so badly.
But how am I going manage both at the same time?
For one thing, it is noble and that explains it all. I think we could see it better if we put ourselves into the shoes of those teachers teaching in public schools in poor countries. Those who still, even under extremely difficult situation, practice this profession.
True I got this job only after a thorough interview and an intensive training. In a private school in Austria that goes to say something but I still cannot relax. I want to be better in English especially because I am teaching it so I make sure that I do something every day to further improve my English skills. Among these things is reading.
It looks like I am going to get another five groups in addition to the five groups assigned to me last week. That means 10 hours teaching time each week. Not bad. And compared to the 20 hours per week I got back in China, 10 hours should be like a walk in the park.
Honestly speaking I was terrified that the parents won’t like me because I am not an English native speaker and I didn’t learn how to speak English in recognized English speaking countries (like all of my co-teachers).
I somehow know that I’ll do well with the kids but I don’t know if it’ll be the same with the parents. I know for a fact that parents want the best for their children and if they are not satisfied with the way the teacher teaches, they will most certainly complain. I just hope that they will give me a chance by being not so critical in the class. Sure they can be critical because critiques will also help me see the things I need to work on and therefore will eventually make me a better teacher but I hope they will do this after the class and I hope that they will only complain when they really see that their kids are not learning anything. They should give it some time before they give their assessments because learning doesn’t always happen in the span of 45 minutes. I hope they see that in this case of classroom setup, their children’s success will not only depend on me but on their participation too.
I had tried applying for jobs abroad and I was really pleased when I got a job offer to teach in China. Without hesitation, I had accepted it and flew immediately to China. I signed a contract to teach for a year in a middle school somewhere in a third class city near Changhcun, Jilin, China. It was a really tough year but thinking about it now, I am sure that going to China is one of the best decisions I made in my life. It paved my way back to teaching plus I met my husband. Shortly after getting married, I stopped working because the nature of my husband’s work doesn’t allow us to stay in one place long enough for me to teach in a school.
I decided to become a teacher mainly because I find happiness in the company of children so logically, I chose a profession that could give me the maximum exposure to them. I thought that children are the sweetest, that they are the easiest of company, and that as long as you are nice to them, they will all like you. Now that I think of it, that reason is quite shallow because although teaching involves a great deal of spending time with children, it requires more than that.
