Teaching in China - The "No Preference" Mistake.

When I applied for my job in China, three of the questions were:

Where would you like to teach?
What age group?
What English level?

which to all three I made the mistake of answering 'no preference'.

I left my fate in the hands of God/The Universe/Whatever you want to call it and if there was ever a mistake to be made, that was it.

I got sent to Xiangnan Experimental Middle School in the middle of bum-fuck nowhere; a low socio-economic region in the Hunan province in the south of China.

The children were poorly (and I mean poorly) behaved, some students had better English than some assistant teachers (and that's not saying much), and Daniel (the other foreigner with whom I was placed at the school) and I were never told anything about when tests/assemblies were held.

If you watch this video:

"From the School to the Bridge and Back Again"

You'll get a general idea of what the area is like (and hopefully, why not to go there).

If you've never been to China before, stay calm and just do some research - do a lot of research.
Do as much research as humanly possible. I didn't, and it was a mistake.

Research into where the best places to teach in China are, which work places will treat you with respect, where the best cities are, and so on.

In hindsight I would've probably made the following choices:
Shanghai.
Teenagers.
Upper Intermediate.

Although at the same time, after having taught at a middle school (ages 11 - 16, roughly), I actually don't mind teaching pre-teens so much.

The company that sent me there, ImmerQi, no longer send interns to that location (as is my understanding).

So in short, know yourself well enough to know in what type of a place you'd like to live while there, what age group you'd like to teach (I'd never taught before in my life, so I didn't really know) and what level of English you'd like your students to have.


Be bold.  Be brave.  Be adventurous.

That is all, thank you very much, good day.

- Ian.