Teaching in China: Getting Burned by a Friend

4:30 p.m. - 2005-12-26
Getting Burned
Okay,
The first thing that I want to put on record is that I DID NOT recommend this guy get the position. In fact, I recommended that they NOT hire this person. I knew him from the states and I knew what he was like. He is not a people person and he is not a responsible young adult. In fact he is one of the most irresponsible people that I know. However, They did not ask me for my opinion and chose to ignore it when it was given. Then he arrives in China. He begins teaching and while he is not bad at teaching, like most teachers in China who are untrained he is an inexperienced novice who is more interested in learning Chinese and traveling than in doing the job. So when things started to go bad for him in this environment I was not unprepared for it. However, he chose to attach himself to me as a person to go to for advice. In that action, he allowed other people to believe that I was telling him to do the things he was doing. I really hate that. He never came to the seminars that I give, although he always said that he would. Worse, when he started messing up in the classroom the administration started coming to me to talk about him. I had to explain that I had nothing to do with him. And yet, because of his comments they have chosen to believe that he is a puppet for me to speak through. I hate that more!

And then he decides on the last week of classes to duck out without turning in his grades. He leaves for Beijing with the grades undone and leaves me with mud on my face for being a friend.

I am a bit livid. I had to call up the people I know in Beijing to hunt him down before he left the country to get his grades in. Worse, I had to fight with the administration to get them to get off the phone long enough for the grades to get turned in on the fax machine (now that ticked me off royally, since it was a bunch of student office workers instead of the real admin. guys).

Now I not only have to prove that everything I say is valuable, but I also have to fight against the stigma attached to this one bad apple of a teacher. Worse, I have to fight that stigma in the hopes of being able to recommend future teachers here.

I am so mad, so very mad. I could just see the administration justifying not inviting me back because I was "friends" with this guy.

I have just been burned.