For: The Adelphean , the magazine for sisters of the Alpha Delta Pi Sorority

You too can teach…in China.

When Alpha Delta Phi sister Jennifer Heale graduated from Bishops University in 1999, she knew two things: she wanted to work for a year before going to graduate school, and she wanted to travel.“I thought I would probably do SWAP (Student Work Abroad Program),” she says, “but looking into it, the thing I didn’t like was they provide minimal support, and you have to find your own job when you get there. And wherever “there” might be, a lot of the jobs aren’t that great, like waitressing. I really wasn’t interested in waitressing.”

Jennifer wanted to be sure she had a job before moving half way around the world and was adamant that she didn’t want to teach English. And one more thing, no way was she going to Asia. Still, she went along when her best friend suggested they check out a school where you can earn a certificate in teaching English and be guaranteed a job overseas. A poster on the school’s wall was a turning point.

“ A poster of a Chinese junk ship caught my eye and I just couldn’t stop staring at it,” she recounts. “The guy who ran the school noticed and started talking to me. Not so much about the program, but about the people and their experiences. I wasn’t in the room 5-minutes before I decided I’m definitely going to do this…and maybe I’m going to China.”Jennifer borrowed the $600 course cost from a relative and began what she calls “Potentially the worst excuse for a course I’ve ever taken. It felt like a two-week long sales pitch.” The advertised job guarantee also proved to be ambiguously described. “They give you the tools to find a job,” she says. But it wasn’t a total loss. “The binder had lots of great teaching tips, and lots of helpful web pages, but not $600 worth.”

Jennifer soon discovered that as long as you are a native English speaker, you can probably find a job somewhere. She narrowed her choices, in order, to Budapest, Hungary, and China. The long process required to get a EU passport put Europe out of the running, so she posted her resume on a site dedicated to recruiting teachers in China.
It was about a day before she got a response.

“ One guy wanted me to leave that week, but you have to be careful going overseas. You can wind up at the equivalent of ‘Bill’s Language School’,” she warns. “The Sichwan International Language University looked interesting. They were an accredited university and had a French department, a German department, a Russian department…I knew this was a legit school.”

Jen and her family went to the Canadian Consulate and checked to see if the University was on any “grey lists”- lists of schools which had gone back on contracts, not treated people well, etc.- which they weren’t. She also checked with the Chinese Embassy to get some information about the school’s geography. It turned out to be in Chongquing, a small city in the centre of the country. She decided to go ahead. “I wanted to be in the real China, not in some enclave in the middle of Shanghai where everyone was Canadian,” she says. “Also, I was absolutely terrified, so that was a pretty strong indication I should do it.”

In addition to a salary of about $300 CDN a month, (“Negotiate. You can get more,” she says), teachers from abroad receive a furnished apartment and are told all their meals will be included. Neither turned out to be quite as advertised.
“ The bed was a bunch of ropes tied to wooden frame with a small piece of cotton on it,” she says. “The next morning I couldn’t find my ‘free breakfast’ so I went downstairs, not knowing a word of the language and with no sense of direction. I saw some Chinese students and asked them if they spoke English. None of them did. So I said “parlez vous Francais?”, and they did! They led me to where I needed to go.” The free meals turned out not to be, and Jennifer ended up paying for her breakfast, still, she didn’t starve. “My first morning in China was spent speaking nothing but French. I was really grateful my parents put me in French immersion that morning.”

Her first day as a teacher was a bit shaky too. She was given no class list or materials and had to improvise. “My first day, I go in with my plan which I think will fill the day. It fills about half of it,” she says. “I generally made an ass of myself. That night I went back to my apartment and cried and considered using my open ticket home.”

Though she admits she was not a great teacher the first term, Jennifer connected strongly with one of her classes. “They were the advanced class. They seemed to understand that this was hard for me and they went out of their way to look after me,” she says. She knew she’d made a difference on Moon Day, a Chinese festival that takes place in October. “I hadn’t made any friends yet. All the other teachers were literally nuns. They gave me a bunch of moon cakes and flowers and I just broke down. It was the first time since I got there that anyone had done anything nice for me.”

She also began to adapt to life in China and has advice for anyone considering the move. “Bring medical supplies, creature comforts, teaching materials, and a laptop,” she says. “Internet cafes are few and far between and email is your lifeline to the outside world.

She notes that she became a better teacher second term. “By that point I had people sneaking into my class,” she says. “I was out of place in China like they were out of place with the language. We were teaching each other.”

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