Sighman's Story
Hello all!
My good friend Sighman has written a story about his experiences as an expat teacher!
Sighman's Story:
The problems with taking up an overseas teaching gigs are easy to list: culture shock, homesickness, insurance, housing, yadah yadah… One, though, that you don’t tend to hear as much about – at least not until you’re in the thick of it – is the isolation. And it’s something it’s worth bracing yourself for because it might be a particular problem with an OS position that you end up taking.
In my case, isolation led me to making a decision that had some good consequences but also brought me a lot of bother as well as financial and emotional hiccups.
I’d become a Hong Kong NET Teacher – one of the more lucrative gigs in international teaching. It had started out okay and I’d counted myself lucky; it gave me a good salary, I was in a place in which mainstream western culture was still accessible and I was comfortable and mostly happy.
Gradually, however, the particular foibles of being the one of only two westerners at my school began to affect me badly. I became paranoid about people talking about me in Cantonese - which I didn’t speak a word of. I became paranoid about students talking about me. Looking back and now being able to contrast that position with others that I’ve had since, I wish I could go back in time and tell myself to chill the f**k out. I think it was these initial bouts of paranoia that sowed the seeds for my falling out with my colleagues. Hong Kong Teachers work formidably fast and hard and I was always struggling to keep up with them. Also, the curriculum in HK has a strong grammar focus – something that is NOT my forte! Consequently, my already burgeoning paranoia began to grow. Both in my classes and in the staff room, I began to present the visage of someone who was perpetually pissed off. Things snowballed – a parent sent an anonymous letter to the principal complaining about the lack of grammar in my lessons and how I was making my kids afraid with my bad moods and yelling. This was overstated, and the anonymous part was just cowardly. It wasn’t, however, complete bullshit, so I had some self-reflection to do.
I could’ve quit but I’d lumbered myself with a mortgage before I’d left Australia – the kind that I’d never be able to afford the repayments on with an Aussie teacher’s salary. I felt stuck, which of course compounded my unhappiness. The school, slightly oddly, renewed my contract when the time came and I hoped I could just hunker down and plough through this last contract.
When the God’s seek to punish us, they answer our prayers!
In the midst of all this crap, I got a phone call from a recruitment agency. They were looking for an English teacher to take up a six month contract at a British International school in Shanghai. It meant teaching literature – something that I’d gotten into my pretentious head was what I was REALLY made for instead of this grunt work grammar stuff. I had some concerns but I don’t think I ever really contemplated not taking it. Once I was there, I would work hard and make them love me and that six month contract would INEVITABLY become a two year one. He who risks yaddah yadddah, right? You can see where this is going really, can’t you?!
I couldn’t make them love me. My status as a ring-in ESL teacher that they’d simply have to put up with till they could recruit someone proper was something I never overcame. There were many unforeseen pitfalls to uprooting mid-contract from Hong Kong and plonking myself in Shanghai. It is complicated and time consuming transferring money in China. Consequently, I kept missing payments on my HK credit card till it was cancelled -it’s a big stain on my credit rating to this day. I also fell behind on my mortgage payments and had to do some tricky negotiating with my bank.
I’m back in Hong Kong today in a very similar job to the one I was in when I freaked out and took the first opportunity that I found to escape. I know from my own experience now the consequences of allowing your paranoia, disappointment and sadness dictate your actions. Decisions like this rarely turn out to be good. If you find yourself in an international position and begin to feel isolated, estranged from your colleagues or whatever else, you need to always remember that switching countries is a complicated process and not something to jump headlong into. You need to, as much as you possibly can, examine your situation and think of ways that it could possibly get better before you even contemplate doing something rash with consequences you can’t even foresee yet.
Don’t let culture shock consume you. Of course, you need to get out of situations that aren’t doing you any good but you also need to do this in a considered and clever way!
I hope my silly story of floundering is useful.
Sighman
It's more than useful my dear, thank you!
Cheers,
HB
