About

Hi, my name is Robert (罗伯特 – Luóbótè) and my wife is Maureen (莫林 – Mòlín).  We made our first trip to teach in China in August, 2006, just days before our 35th wedding anniversary.  We began looking for teaching jobs in March of 2006 and soon found them at the Changzhou Institute of Technology in Changzhou, Jiangsu, P.R.C.  We spent two years at the university teaching History, Cross-cultural Communications and Conversational English.  Now, after almost two years of retirement, we decided to return to C.I.T. in Changzhou.

Why?  Well there are a number of reasons.  First, when we left we said we would return.  We had originally thought that it would be nice to return when we could also get to visit Shanghai during the 2010 World Exposition.  A second motivating reason was that we found we were much too young to really retire.  Since we enjoyed teaching at C.I.T. and that they were anxious to have us return, it became an easy choice for a return to teaching.  And finally, our students and colleagues have kept up a thriving e-mail correspondence since we have left and it has helped us to appreciate the real influence we have had in Changzhou.  It’s always good to go where one is truly appreciated.

More about us?  Well, I am a retired teacher and school administrator.  During my career I was involved in teaching second-language teachers and serving on a provincial second language teaching executive council as well as taking part in National second-languages conferences and pilot projects.  I come by teaching a second language honestly.  Maureen has spent a lot of years teaching adults a variety of programs in emergency medical services.  Maureen added a TEFL certificate to her qualifications in order to have a better sense of what would be expected of her as an ESL teacher.   Putting our experiences into perspective, teaching at a university or a college seemed to be what would be the best fit for us.

Now, we have decided to approach the return to Changzhou as ESL teachers here on the WEB so that others might gain from our experiences of the past and experiences yet to happen in the next year of teaching English / teaching in English.