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The story of how I ended up teaching in China isn't particularly exciting, however
the decision was completely out-of-the-blue, even for me, so I thought it would be worthwhile
to explain how it is that I came to be on the other side of the world for a year.
In January of 2005, the Faculty of Education at U of M held an Education Expo where schools
from all over the place came to start recuiting teachers. As I was looking at all the booths, I
noticed one for teaching in Thailand. This piqued my interest as Thailand has been on my list of
places to go for the past couple of years. So on a whim, I took an interview with the guy. He
explained to me that the school in Thailand was a Manitoba school, it teaches Manitoba curriculum
to Thai students so that they can receive a Manitoba education for the purposes of coming to Canada
for university. This sounded very interesting to me, and for a brief moment I was seriously considering
applying for a job. Then however, I found out the school in Thailand does not as of yet have an established high school. It
only has kindergarten through grade 9. The prospect of teaching grade 5 didn't really appeal to me,
so I walked away thinking that was it. But clearly, it wasn't.
It turned out one of my friends had taken a similar interview for teaching in China. He was
incredibly enthusiastic about the schools in China (there are three) and if it wasn't
for his persistance, I probably wouldn't have given it a second thought. But after a little bit
of consideration, I took a meeting with the recuiters. I figured I wasn't committing to anything yet
because I would still have to get hired by one of the schools, and I had no idea what the competition
would be like. Well, it turns out I was the only person with a computer background who had applied
and it just so happened that one of the schools needed a computer teacher. The recuiters sent my
application to the school and by mid-February I was offered the job to teach grade 7 & 8 science, grade 7 - 12 computers as well as serving as tech
support for the school.
It was definiately an implusive decision to come here, but at the same time, I know this is where I'm supposed
to be this year.
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