Hello from China!
Hey everyone!
Very interesting reading about all of you…quite a diverse group. My story is that I am from Richmond (noticed that a couple people teach there) and went to UBC where I studied Geography and International Relations. After about 4 years of work and travel I decided to get into education and have thoroughly enjoyed myself thus far. The job market sucked in BC when I graduated, so I packed my bags to move to Wuhan, China. Most people look confused when I tell them where I work and live, and even though most of you haven’t heard of it (I hadn’t either) it has over 10 million people. I have taught Geography, History, Social Studies and PE while here and this year I have shifted gears and now work as an academic advisor. Before I got into education I worked as a stock broker in Vancouver. It is a sad story, but I’ll give you the coles notes version. I got licensed to trade in September 2008, about a week before the global market collapsed. My dad blamed me, even though I assured him I wasn’t that important. It was real tough working on commission and trying to build a client list when the last thing people wanted to do was discuss their sinking stocks. I hated it. Remembering the last time that I really enjoyed myself working, I thought about when I taught in Mexico my first year out of UBC. I applied to the BEd program and the rest is history. This course looks really cool and am looking forward to the readings and the input of all of you.
Mike Rae
Posted in: Week 01: Introductions
teacherben 12:58 am on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Mike! I’m in Hong Kong–not too far away. I’ve been in the area for a while–Beijing before this and Taiwan before that. Has Wuhan been a good experience for you? I just Googled your name and Wuhan out of curiosity (hope that wasn’t prying too much) and it looks as though your school is somehow accredited by the BC Ministry of Education or something like that. What’s that all about?
mikerae 3:26 am on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
yah its not a bad deal. they pay BC salary and cost of living is pretty low. we deliver a bc curriculum and at the end of grade 12 the kids get a bc diploma which obviously helps them do post secondary over seas (mostly in Canada). Wuhan is kind of a dump, nothing compared to HK. your gig sounds pretty good too. You guys get holidays off like mainland China? I love the holiday structure, it sucks working over xmas, but it rocks having 5 weeks off in february and january.
jkotler 2:49 am on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Mike,
Interesting story about how you got into education; I actually have a similar one in that I was working as an event planner for a few years but after a while the hardships in the industry got the better of me and I decided to back to education; since then I too have been happy with it.
I am always interested to hear about teachers experiences abroad and would like to hear more about what its been like for you in China.
Julie
mikerae 3:31 am on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Yah Julie, sometimes you just gotta go with what works. Event planning is a very cyclical type of business too. when the economy is down, they tend to throw less parties. It is frustrating with the lack of upside economic rewards in education, but there sure are a lot of other rewards. China is kinda crazy, tonnes of people, tonnes of cars, all that. The language is super tough to pick up compared to other ones. The school I am at is a BC school with about 70 western teachers so I am certainly not lonely over here. I was just back in Canada for the summer which was great and we get a holiday over chinese new year where we gallivant around asia for 5 weeks, which of course is great. Students are very different as a whole compared to Canada, in good ways and bad too.
Im gonna creep on your intro now to learn a little more about you!
kstackhouse 8:20 am on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Mike. That is an interesting story. I did a round about way into education…but all during my undergrad. Started in Science, then Psychology, then a BA in Arts, to then take my BEd at Queen’s. How far are you in the MET program? Best of luck this term.
Ken
Doug Connery 6:18 pm on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Mike I too fell into education as one of many side tracks in my career. This is my third time at post secondary: first as a lab tech, second as a remote sensing scientist through geography and now working in education and taking MET as an educational catch-up to the position.
Doug.
jenbarker 10:11 pm on September 6, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Hi Mike,
I’m Jen and have just begun my first year as an FA at UBC. I was happy to read your story because today when I met my group of Teacher Candidates that I will be supervising they asked if any of last year’s group had been hired. Unfortunately none were… not because of lack of skills but lack of jobs. Our CITE cohort mentioned to them that there are many opportunities abroad so I will be happy to report back to them next week that there are some BC run schools in China that have hired many Westerners. Do you use the BC IRP’s? Best, Jen
Jonathan 12:42 am on September 8, 2012 Permalink | Log in to Reply
Jen —
I graduated from the CITE cohort! You’ll have to say hello to Steve for me. Catching up with graduates in the past 4-5 years has been a bit depressing. I know there are great candidates going through the program but I know that the hiring rate has been less and less. Those that have been unsuccessful have definitely gone abroad to find other opportunities and have been successful in their endeavours.
— Jonathan