After about a week of getting ourselves acclimatized to Changzhou, it was finally time to begin the work for which we came to China, that of being ESL teachers at C.I.T. The process began with a meeting with the department heads, the collective Foreign Affairs Office (FAO) team, the co-teachers assigned to assist the foreign teachers and the foreign Teachers (FT) for a team-building luncheon. A few speeches were given and many toasts to the upcoming year and the hopes for good working relationships within the team and with the students.
In addition to the luncheon, the department head, the co-teachers and the FTs spent a good portion of the day going over the policies and procedures to be followed and the opportunity to ask and answer questions. Needless to say, friendships began to take shape even though many were a bit overwhelmed with the expectations being put forward. For us, having quite a bit of experience in the field of education and adult training, these expectations based on policies and procedures, weren’t seen as obstacles. If anything, we thought the structure was a bit too loose. But then again, this was bringing in our Western World views and assuming that these views would be universal in application.
We still had a few days in order to prepare to meet our students and begin the teaching tasks.
Now, two more words to consider: teacher and student. A teacher is called Lǎo shī – 老师, and a university (or college) student is called Dà xué sheng – 大学生. There are other words for teacher and student but they are dependent on the teaching situation and the type of student that is being taught. I continue to use the context of where I worked and who I taught. And, as in North America, there are specific words that can be used to indicate whether a student is a freshman, a junior or a senior level student.