It’s the summer of 2005 and my days are spent reading, running, spending time with my toddlers, and going to an endless string of dinners. I am by choice unemployed while trying to relax and trying to figure out what I want to do career wise. I am a tech burnout at 39. On one of these summer days, I find myself browsing That’s Beijing’s jobs section. I find one that looked interesting - teaching English for use in IT settings - and I fire off an email inquiring. To my surprise, I got a response almost immediately with an interview set up the next day.
The interview was in a Haidian district office building. These days, I can’t find anything in Beijing without a GPS. In those days, my wife was the GPS and we’d get to places by knowing the plaza or landmark it was near and then my looking/asking our way. In this case, the office building was modern looking from the outside. Not a lot of upkeep inside. I ended up in a conference room and did introductions. As someone with 15 years technical experience with my last title being Director of Engineering at a startup, I more than qualified for the technical part. As someone with no experience teaching, really anything let alone English, I was simultaneously under qualified. I passed the screening interview, in which I had to do a mock training session. Then they brought in the school’s director for final approval and I got the gig.
I got paid 100 RMB per hour of actual teaching time. No pay for prep or materials, just for the actual teaching time. I don’t recall my first class but after it was over, I do remember getting in a car with other instructors and being driven to a weather bureau. Our task that day was to engage in English conversations with one or more weather bureau employees and evaluate their English level. Not having any clue how to do this was not a barrier.
I remember my second and final class for it got me fired. What caused me to get fired? Incompetence. My topic was on how to conduct conference calls in English. The material, which I developed, was decent. The presentation, well, wasn’t good. I was asked to open with an “ice breaker” which I had no clue about. I wanted to get into the material, that was the safe ground. I was presenting to a room full of Motorola engineers so my idea of an ice breaker was to get them to hurry up on that “device convergence” thing. My sense of humor was not shared. In the lesson, I had the students break into groups of four to five and role play a conference call. Then, someone from Motorola HR told me that I should listen into the groups and give feedback. That’s when I noticed the HR staff, and in particular a very sharply dressed woman, observing me. I went from group to to group to give feedback. I was useless. Mostly, I just stared unable to come up with words and certainly nothing constructive beyond a mumbled “that’s good”.
I met my wife after the class and we went to the nearby Shangrila hotel and spent my earned 100RMB on a celebratory burger.
The next day they fired me. I would learn that teaching English is a kind of rite of passage for many foreigners in China. It was not a passage I completed. The school, and in particular the young man who recruited me, treated me with respect. The young man offerned to come across town to buy me a coffee and thank me for the effort. I declined, I was feeling hurt. He insisted. My wife suggested I accept the recruiter’s kindness. Perhaps it was a cultural difference. So, we met, at the Starbucks I normally went to. It didn’t mean a lot to me then, but it means something to me now. 20 years later, I don’t remember much of the details of the job, but I do remember the kindness of the recruiter.
They continued to use the material I prepped and later in the summer when they were desperate for teachers asked if I could fill in. I declined.
I guess there is a lesson in there somewhere. But mostly it’s about the experience. Of trying something new. And failing. And while it bothered me a fair bit at the time, I am grateful for the experience as a failed English teacher.