{"id":689,"date":"2010-10-21T11:27:13","date_gmt":"2010-10-21T03:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/laowaiteacher.wordpress.com\/?p=689"},"modified":"2010-10-21T11:27:13","modified_gmt":"2010-10-21T03:27:13","slug":"learning-from-co-teachers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/2010\/10\/21\/learning-from-co-teachers\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning From Co-Teachers"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last night we took our co-teachers out for a dinner. \u00a0Typically there is a co-teacher for each foreign teacher. \u00a0But this year, due to a number of other circumstances, there are four co-teachers being shared by the seven English-speaking foreign teachers. \u00a0The eleven of us enjoyed a good meal out to a restaurant none of us had ever visited before, one quite close to the apartment. \u00a0The idea was that we would take advantage of the co-teachers’ ability to communicate in Chinese in order to allow us to enjoy the meal in this restaurant where communication would otherwise have been a barrier.<\/p>\n

Of course, it is always good for relationship between co-teachers and foreign teachers to socialise and leave school issues aside. \u00a0We get to know each other differently. \u00a0One part of the socialisation process that caught us by surprise was having me sit at the “head” of the table. \u00a0As the oldest male person in the room, it was expected that I would take this position of honour. \u00a0Of course it made for some hilarity among the foreign teachers who are more into “equality” in all of its forms.<\/p>\n

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Being in a comfortable location, away from the hustle and bustle of offices and main restaurant serving rooms, we were able to have some decent discussions. \u00a0The young teacher next to me asked all kinds of questions about being a principal in Canada and how staff are evaluated. \u00a0The reason behind his questions was due to the fact that we all will be “evaluated” in the coming weeks, Chinese teacher and foreign teacher alike. \u00a0Maureen got to talk about parenting with the woman she sat beside, a woman who has a young child at home that is becoming, in the mother’s words, “a bit naughty.”<\/p>\n

It is at times like this that barriers between cultures and races are broken. \u00a0For example, one topic was about stereotyping. \u00a0Our co-teachers assumed that people in Canada are all white people. \u00a0Since one of the foreign teachers was from Alberta and was half Chinese, that stereotype was challenged. \u00a0We explained how as foreigners, when we walk down the street in Changzhou or anywhere else in China, everyone knows we are foreigners. \u00a0Yet, if they walked down the street of any Canadian city, everyone would assume that they were Canadian.<\/p>\n

Besides building better relationships, these kind of gatherings help to cultivate friendships that are real. \u00a0We still maintain friendships with co-teachers of the past and with other Chinese colleagues that we have had the opportunity to spend time with over a good meal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last night we took our co-teachers out for a dinner. \u00a0Typically there is a co-teacher for each foreign teacher. \u00a0But this year, due to a number of other circumstances, there are four co-teachers being shared by the seven English-speaking foreign … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[23,28,33,38,48,50,75,100,103,123,217,238],"class_list":["post-689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-c-i-t","tag-changzhou","tag-china","tag-chinese","tag-co-teachers","tag-communication","tag-esl-blog","tag-foreign-teacher","tag-ft","tag-jiangsu","tag-teaching-esl","tag-xinbei"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rglongpre.ca\/pilgrim\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}