Lets start at the beginning. We went to China because after 5 years teaching in Latvia, I was looking for a new start and Citic Lake Bilingual International School seemed to be a good way for me to further my career. It seemed fine for Robert and Lena was offered a job too.
Lena was also able to do her PGCEi teaching qualification and TESOL while we were there.
In the second year there I was promoted to Curriculum Coordinator for the secondary school and was given lots of support. In exchange I worked hard and with my support and that of my colleagues the school was given IBDP and WASC accreditation.
The biggest problem was that Robert was basically ignored by his teacher in the first year at the school. This teacher who was qualified as an English language teacher in China could not speak English and tried to get rid of Robert whenever she could.
He was passed onto other staff members by his teacher because she could not teach in anything but Chinese.
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| Robert was used in the marketing material for the school |
The deputy head of the school had told us that at this "Bilingual" school it would be 50/50 english/chinese. She mislead us because it was probably 70/30 chinese and they did not really have enough English speaking staff in Primary.
It did improve in his 2nd year. He had a teacher who could at least communicate in English with him but Robert lost maybe a whole year of his education because one of his teachers let him sit on the carpet playing with his i-pad instead of teaching him.
Because of the way Robert was treated is the main reason we left China. Professionally for me China was great, I made a lot of good friends that I value, unfortunately I cannot say the same for my family.
#china #whyweleft
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