Teaching at Kunshan International School

Kunshan International School

I have been working at the Kunshan International School for over 6 months now.  It has been quite exciting, but far different from my experiences in American schools.  Come take a closer look at a typical school day with me.

I'm up by 6:30, shuffling around our apartment, lost in my morning routine.  I must make sure I get around on time because I have a 10 minute drive to work.  No, I don't own or drive a car, I catch the school bus... yes, a school bus!  It comes every morning at 7:50 to the gate of our apartment complex, Yong Jing Wan.  I have three alarms on my cell phone that let me know when I should leave.  When the third bell rings, I lock the door, ride down the elevator, and make a brisk walk to the gate where I meet 3 mothers, waiting with their children at the bus stop.  There is a set of Taiwanese twins in middle school, a young girl from Malaysia in 5th grade, and a 2nd grade Chinese girl whose hair is always in pigtails.  On occasion, a bratty boy runs up with his IE (nanny) who trails behind him carrying his book bag.

The school bus I take to work.

We stand near the busy street of Bai Lu Lu.  I position myself at the edge of the sidewalk, watching for the top of our yellow school bus through the bushes.  The bus is coming.  It quickly takes a U-turn around the center divider and pulls up after nearly being struck by oncoming highway traffic.  (This is typical:  cars will turn into traffic, regardless of what is coming.  It's just the rules of the road to slow down.  For a first-timer though, it may feel like a near-death experience.)  Our bus parks along the side of the road, which means we are still in the street where traffic continues to flow.  There is no stop sign on the side of the bus to warn others to stop and take caution.  Instead, cars, buses, and mopeds zoom by us in the left lane as we board the bus.  The door slides open and a Chinese teacher greets us from inside the cabin.  She offers her hand to help the little ones climb the steep steps to the aisle, where they find their seat. Once everyone is situated, the bus driver closes the door, and we are off.

Now compared to the big yellow school buses we have back in The States, these buses are SMALL.  The one I ride holds only 15 people at maximum capacity, and that wouldn't be a comfortable ride.  Our route has three stops and carries 8 passengers, including the Chinese teacher and myself.  I always sit in the back seat because I have a little more room, and I get to be alone in my thoughts... but it is the bumpiest!  We have driven over bumps and potholes that have sent me airborne for at least 3 seconds.  The students and I have timed the bumps and look forward to them.  Some start a countdown "3...2...1...WHOA!" they'll scream, while the others laugh hysterically.

Get this--I am the only international teacher that has chosen to live off campus; therefore, I am the only one who gets to experience this early morning thrill!  Everyone else lives at school in furnished, two-bedroom apartments.  (They don't know what they are missing!)  But, if I had gotten this job before signing our lease at Yong Jing Wan, we most definitely would have done just that--it's very convenient to live on campus.  Location-wise, we are 6 blocks from the nearest full-size grocery store and three blocks from the high speed train station.  It's also very cheap.  Since we are international employees, our apartment is provided free of cost.  The school also supplies free internet, free gas and electric, oh, and did I mention?  The school also provides you with free meals three times a day!

We reach in 10 minutes.  It is at this time our horn peaks its highest usage.  Beeping at cars and mopeds congesting the parking lot, we finally reach the security post outside the school.  The guards have opened the collapsible gate, and we park the bus near the entryway.  I gather my bags and walk to my office.  Usually, Nini (a piano teacher and Kindergarten coordinator at our school) is sitting inside, with the heat already on.  The office is nice and toasty. 

Yes, I have an office, along with all the other teachers at school.  All students, from grades K-12 stay in one classroom all day, and it is the teachers who move around each period.  There are no lockers (not in elementary, middle, or high school).  You also may have noticed that Nini is not only a teacher, but she manages certain activities at school.  This is the case with every teacher I know.  Teachers will give instruction typically 20-25 hours a week, and the other 15-20 hours are spent in their office grading papers, preparing lessons, and caring for other managerial tasks.  So teacher friends, you must be asking, do they ever take work home at night or on weekends?  HEAVENS NO! 

My office.

Something I really enjoy is hearing the students come into school.  They run down the tiled floors, laughing, giggling, and talking with each other.  There is little supervision, and might I say, very little trouble.  If the weather is nice, students will make their way out to the track and complete morning exercises.  Teachers lead them in structured motions, and after 15 minutes, the students walk back to their classrooms.  

Afterwards, I sit at my desk and prepare for my kindergarten classes.  I teach two kindergarten classes, which are an hour long each.  I pack a shoulder bag with flashcards of pictures and vocabulary, then saunter up to the third floor.

Morning Exercise

My kindergartners are always excited.  English is considered the "cool" subject here, much like PE when I was there age.  You must be wondering how I communicate with them, considering many are beginning to learn English with me… well, I don't run into too many obstacles.  The kindergarteners are very eager to learn, and I am assigned a Chinese teacher who helps me with translate my instruction and deals with disciplining students.  But on occasion, the teachers will leave the room; it usually happens more frequently as holidays come up.  Then, I am left with 30 wide-eyed and extremely excited kindergartners jumping all over the place.  The problem is—I don’t know enough Chinese, and they don’t know any English.  It can be an intimidating language barrier!

Kindergarten--Galaxy Class Teachers

Kindergarten--Universe Class Teachers

I must point out that our kindergarten teachers are kept very busy.  If they leave the room, it is usually to prepare for other projects they are mandated to complete.  Even though there are 3 teachers assigned to each Kindergarten classroom, each teacher has different responsibilities.  I always see them working, even in my class.  They usually will be flipping through assignment books and writing notes to the parents.  Now that the students are familiar with me, the Chinese teachers typically never intrude on my lessons, even if things are going wrong.

My lessons are pretty intense.  If you watch me, I have about as much energy as a monkey on Red Bull.  I am bouncing around the classroom with over exaggerated gestures, songs, chants, and expressions.  The students sit in small wooden chairs organized in two long rows with their palms down on their thighs.  They giggle, watch, and practice along with me in English.  We usually have time for a game at the end, like Marco Polo, Duck Duck Goose, or relay races where students practice the words they have learned.

I do have students in class that would be considered for Special Education.  I have a student in kindergarten that is particularly a handful.  He can't sit still, won't listen to teachers, and is always being naughty to other kids.  Teachers were concerned about the boy and told his parent’s they must take him to a doctor for a diagnosis (a lawsuit waiting to happen in the US).  They did.  The boy went for a full day of testing in Shanghai and was diagnosed with ADHD.  Labeling does exist in China, but there are definitely not as many here as you might find in the US.  There is no special education teacher in our school to carry out accommodations.  No IEPs.  No RTI.  The teachers inform parents that they must take care of it, and whether or not the parents follow through is their responsibility.  

Next is lunch.  The school offers free meals to all teachers.  The first few weeks I ate at the cafeteria with fervor:  I didn't have to be organized, and most importantly I didn’t have to cook!  I enjoyed getting to know all the teachers in school and listened as they spoke to each other in Chinese.  Now I bring meals from home and eat in my office where I catch up on my work.

Otherwise, you would have caught me eating at the teacher’s lounge eating Chinese food.  The teachers’ lunchroom is separate to that of the students.  It has its own queue where you retrieve your meal.  When you arrive, you stand in line, tell a cafeteria worker which food you wish to eat, and then you take your thin, tin tray to an open table. 

The room is bare.  There are no TVs or microwaves; no carpeted floors.  It is a tiled room with long brown tables.  You must fold down the chair if you wish to sit down.  Flavor pastes and large stacks of napkins are stacked in the middle of each table.  The food tastes good for the most part.  I liked the curries, but thought the vegetables were very bland.  Every meal has rice, a bowl of soup, a piece of fruit, two vegetable dishes, and two meats to choose from. 

After indulging in my home cooked meal, I sit at my desk and check emails.  I do my planning and grading for my three-hour high school class.  This is also the time I write magazine articles for the Kunshan Expat magazine.

My afternoon class is three hours long.  It is mostly comprised of 17 year old Chinese students, but there is one Korean girl who is 18.  We focus mainly on discussion, but also do a lot of work in grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension.  At 4:00 class is over.  There is no dismissal bell, but I know it is time for me to leave them.  I gather my things, say goodbye and walk back down to my bus who is waiting for me and 5 other students for our voyage home.  (My high school students remain in their classroom and wait for their next teacher.  They finish school at 5:00.)   


Some people are surprised I can teach kindergarten AND high school, but I think it is the perfect mix.  I get to be silly in the morning, and have a decent conversation with young adults in the afternoon.  The longer I am here, the more I enjoy it.  Maybe I will go back for my ESL License after all!

More pictures to come!

If you are interested in learning more about my school, you can visit their website at http://www.ksis.org.cn/.  Make sure you have Google Chrome, or an Internet browser that will translate Chinese to English!  

Book Adoption

A small conference room in a Shanghai hotel was crowded with a mix of Asian and Western educators attentively watching a presentation.  The speaker, an animated, middle-aged Irish woman proudly displayed the newest teacher and student text book editions from Pearson.

And where were we?  We were late, very late.

The early morning rain had made traffic irritable.  The clouds gave way to rains as thick as monsoon season.  It felt like the first day of snow in Indiana as we sat stuck in traffic on the interstate.    

Fortunately, we made it to our text book adoption meeting only 15 minutes after it had begun.  I accompanied my principal, along with two others from our school administration. We quickly made our way to the back of the room, where the remaining vacant chairs stood.

We had missed the entire introduction of the newest reading series of Scott Foresman and Language Central.  This would have been excellent to watch!  I thought, thinking of all the assessments we could use to track our students' progress.  The speaker changed to the next slide, the Envision math series.

I critically watched as the speaker brought up videos, games, and other interactive manipulatives that made their curriculum much better than their competitors.  There is no doubt that Pearson is an excellent book publisher with quality resources and curriculum, but I was very conflicted:  do Asian international schools really want a western approach to education?

We were given a short break to discuss some of our noticings.  I walked across the room and spoke with a Chinese group of individuals.  One man brought up the issue that all textbooks were in American English, not British English—this poses a problem, many Asian students choose to study in countries other than America because the requirement for college admittance is lower.

This was not the only issue concerning the American book publishing company today.  I walked across the room and spoke with an American whose teaching situation is similar to my own.  She told me, "Only Chinese teachers teach math at our school."  Yes, it's true.  Even in my current school, Kunshan International, only Chinese teachers teach math.  This is because many Asians think the American curriculum is not challenging, especially when it comes to math instruction.  

So, I guess math isn't Pearson's strongest selling product in China.  

I also noticed that the text book's use of vocabulary is very dense, something that a non-native English speaker might struggle with.  For example, my group of kindergarten students are learning basic English words like coat, shoes, and food (this is our word this week).  They do not speak English at home, or for that matter, any time outside of my class.  I can’t even imagine using Pearson's kindergarten material with my students.  It would be like handing them Shakespeare and expecting them to recite pages from memory. 

For me, the meeting was useless, but it got me thinking—What kind of curriculum would best suite a non-native English speaker in the early grades?  And, how can we take the strengths of both the Asian and western educational systems to improve our education in The States?

For further reading...

I found this interesting website that talks about what we can take from Asian teaching.  What do you think?  Check it out:  http://www.tdl.com/~schafer/Asian.htm.

Braving the Dentist

After many nights of prodding, nagging, and complaining, I finally talked Chitrak into visiting the dentist.

After writing about my dentist experience, Chitrak told me he took a photo of me to add to my blog... thanks, honey....

OK.  I won't lie, it took a little self-prepping.  I have personally been dragging this out for over a year now.  In the US, we were lured into Aspen Dental, which was covered by our insurance provider.  At the time, it seemed like the perfect match for us.  Chitrak was searching for a new job, and we wanted a dentist that could easily transfer paperwork.  Unfortunately, we learned far too late that the dentist was more eager for our pocket book than fixing tooth problems.  Young and naive, we listened to the hygienist and dentist, and we were convinced that all of our treatments must be done immediately.  Fix your cavities, scrape your gums, clean with fluoride, buy our special toothpaste, brushes, and mouth rinse...  our bill was enormous, and we hadn't even spoke of pulling out our wisdom teeth.


You must have this done if you want us to work on your teeth, they told us.

And who refuses a beautiful, healthy smile?  So, we gave in, and completed most of the treatments.

A "fishbowl dentist"

Now you are probably thinking, you have been living abroad for 7 months, why haven't you been to the dentist?  Well, besides the terrible experience we had encountered with Aspen, I have been a little cautious of jumping into the whole China-dentist experience.  First of all, I am not particularly fond of people working on my teeth.  Secondly, I would be lucky to find an English speaking doctor.  And most importantly, the dentist offices I've seen in China have "fish bowl windows" where patients are put on display for all passerbies to see.  It is almost like watching a live television show where the characters perform opposite a thick piece of glass.  Picture this:  blonde girl, ghostly white, clenching her fists in painful anticipation, while a large audience gathers outside the window.

I don't think so.

If this wasn't bad enough, there are many dentists like the one near our apartment complex.  The man is not only a fishbowl window dentist, but he is also a part-time electrician.  I want my dentist to be an expert in the field of tooth work, not a jack-of-all-trades.  I was beginning to think I would have to research a western dentist in Shanghai... this might turn out to be more expensive than dental care in the US...

About a month ago, a friend had told me about Asia Dental, a Taiwanese company located on the east end of town.  She told me that almost all the foreign teachers go here to get their work done.  I wasn't going to take any chances though, so I took a trip to personally inspect it.

It wasn't too far from our home, but most importantly, there was no NO fishbowl window.  Also, the dentist and nurses could communicate in English.  What a relief!  When I arrived, the receptionist greeted me with a smile, and after asking her some questions about my teeth, she sent the dentist to speak with me.


How much is it to clean my teeth?  I asked.  100 rmb, he said.

I almost fell over.  Can you imagine only paying $15 for a dental cleaning?  But wait, it gets better.  How much to pull all 4 wisdom teeth?  

Now remember, these figures are all without insurance......  

......400 rmb.... That means, to get all four wisdom teeth removed would be a whopping $60.  Think about it:  it is actually cheaper to fly to China for vacation, get those pearly whites pulled out of your mouth by Asia Dental, and then fly home.

Oh, yeah.





So, we planned last Monday night to get the cleaning.  Chitrak picked me up from school, and his driver took us across town to Asia Dental.  I gave the business card to the driver so he could read the address and take us to our destination.

A "taxi card."  This tells the driver in Chinese where to go.

On the back of taxi cards, there is usually a picture of the streets to help the driver.

Although the buildings were lit up in neon lights as if we were on the Vegas strip, I had a difficult time locating Asia Dental.  By this time, Kunshan was pitch black, and it had been raining for quite some time.  I squinted out the window to see if I could recognize the area, but all the shops looked the same.

"It's there!  Ting, ting!"  I yelled to the driver.  (In Chinese, ting means stop.)  We had almost passed the office.  The only way I had identified the shop was seeing "Asia Dental" in small print on the name board.

We got out of the car and opened the door to the waiting room.

We had not made an appointment. Our procrastination had gone on for quite some time now, why not a few more days?  Content with just scheduling a cleaning, we walked up to the receptionist.  Nihao, can we have our teeth cleaned?  She asked us to wait a moment, gave us some paperwork to fill out, and not more than 5 minutes later, we were escorted to the back room and given a chair.

There were at least eight work spaces, each equipped with flat screen TVs for patient entertainment.  It was well staffed, mostly women in blue outfits, black shoes, and uniformed buns.  The decor looked like a flashback from the 80s, but the equipment was modern and sterilized.  The walls surrounding each stall were about waist high.

The chair reclined, and the hygienist got to work.  First, she got out the drill and ran along the tops, bottoms, and insides or my teeth.  It was very scary, not because she was sawing my teeth into short stumps of nothingness, but for the mere fact that I had no idea what was going on, or what would happen next... and I'm a little afraid of the drill...

When the drill runs, it squirts water into your mouth.  The dentist usually lets you hold an instrument that will suck all the water out so you can breathe.  I call this contraption "the sucker." I realize how childish this might sound, but I always look forward to holding the sucker in my mouth so I know I won't choke, because of instances such as this:

So I'm sitting in the chair, and the nurse bends "the sucker" into a candy cane shape and hangs it on the outside of my mouth.  It is evident that "the sucker" was not functioning properly by the noises it was making.    Because it was bent, hardly any of the water was allowed into the tube to be sucked up the pipe.  Water began to fill my mouth, without any opportunity to escape.  I couldn't hold it anymore, choking on the water, I quickly sat up and spat in the sink.  Why did I wear mascara today?  Water was now all over the towel they had laid across me, in my hair, and all over my face.

But, everything from then on was easy.  She glossed my teeth with fluoride, I rinsed with water, and was done.

How many cavities do I have?  I asked, hoping she will tell me that the tooth bothering me needs fixed.

She looked at me and said, Just little cavities.  Little.  Her index finger met her thumb with an almost nonexistent space in between.  I dropped the conversation after trying a few different ways to explain to her why I wanted to know.  Chitrak had his cleaning, a much stronger person than I, and finished.  When Chitrak asked how many cavities he had, the woman responded, You have more cavities than her.

Our reciept, about $40 US Dollars.

We paid and left.  It was then that I realized we hadn't discussed our next visit.  When must I return for another cleaning?  When should I have these cavities looked at?  Should I get an x-ray?  What about these wisdom teeth?

I have come to realize that a dental cleaning in China really means just a cleaning.  There's no x-ray or discussion on how to care for your teeth.  There was no discussion of options and payment plans, no special toothpaste or brushes that are clinically proven to work.

The staff was very nice, but as it is, communicating in English will continue to be an ongoing struggle.  Unfortunately, I know must go back, and  brave the dentist again for cavities and wisdom teeth.  Eck...