What the heck I'm doing in Hong Kong

Hey now! A couple of people have been asking me exactly what I'm doing in Hong Kong. I always roll my eyes and say, "Jeeze just read my blog don't make me TALK to you god ugh."

I was hired by a company that I can only refer to in outside media as "Shmatteris." They're the ones who hired me, flew me out to Hong Kong, and put me up.* Upon my arrival, Shmatteris "trained"** me and placed me in a local school, Loi Kwuk Pat Fung College.

LKPFC is a Band 2 Secondary school located in Kwun Tong, Kowloon. In Hong Kong schools are classified as either Band 1, Band 2, or Band 3, with band 1 being the highest rating. Our school is considered a high Band 2, or as my school officials like to say, "Band 1.5." Secondary schools are a lot like middle school and high school. Primary School runs from P1-P5, and Secondary School from S1-S7. I teach S4-S7, which is like 9th-12th grade.

So even though I technically work for Shmatteris, I spend virtually all of my time at LKPFC. I sometimes have to attend Shmatteris "training" workshops and events at other schools that have Shmatteris employees, but on a day to day basis, all of my work is at LKPFC. While you may be able to tell that I have some issues with Shmatteris, I'm happy to say that I love working at LKPFC. What is it that I do, exactly? Let's find out!

My job*** in the school is divided into two main parts, teaching and ELEEP****. Our school runs on a 6 day cycle, and I teach the oral lesson for every S4-S7 English class on even-numbered cycles. On odd-numbered cycles, I assist the Local English Teachers, or LETs, deliver their oral lessons. Sound confusing? It is.

The style of teaching in Hong Kong is much different than that in America, with a much lower emphasis placed on interactivity. Because of that, students' interest in English is often quite low. In the classroom, my job is to trick them into thinking that English is so much fun to learn. So every other cycle, I prepare a few different games and activities for the classes met with varying success (my baseball-inspired trivia game was a "hit," get it? An activity where they created their own countries was not).

Outside of the classroom, which is where I spend most of my time, I mingle with the students and try to get them to speak English. I'll play basketball, table tennis, badminton, etc. with them, ask them questions about their personal life, you know, things that teachers do. Actually, they're supposed to look at me like I'm not a normal teacher, which is good since I'm not a normal teacher. I also organize small and large-scale events designed to both promote English use and cultural exchange. These could be something like a Thanksgiving Celebration or a huge Christmas Party (my school is Baptist). During lunchtime every day, I organize a small event. For instance, Wednesdays are "board game days," on Mondays I screen Seinfeld, and on Tuesdays, I give them an article from the NY Times to read.

I'm also in charge of running the English Ambassador Team, or EAT. The EAT is a group of student volunteers whose job it is to assist me in promoting English throughout the school. They mostly help me plan, promote, and run our events. Next week, two EAT members and I are going to do a lunchtime radio show. Since I only see most students once a cycle, it's nice to have students that I see all of the time. Even better, it's nice to have students do work that I'd have to do if they weren't around.

That's the end of my most boring blog post ever. I hope it clears some things up.


*By "flew me out to Hong Kong and put me up," I meant, "Made me buy a ticket within one week of offering me a job and made me find an apartment within two weeks of arriving before kicking me out of temporary housing at a YWCA."

**My training, while a lot of fun, consisted of playing a lot of games and delivering lessons with up to 4 other teachers to classes of 15 students.

***My job title is "CNET," which stands for "Shmatteris Native English Teacher." While there are many different ways to explained the job--I usually use either "Teacher" or "Glorified Camp Counselor"-- I believe fellow CNET John said it best on his business school apps when he described it as, "A Program Coordinator for a non-profit in China." See, "China" sounds cooler than "Hong Kong," and "Teacher" doesn't adequately explains our multiple functions in the school. John's so good at resumes.

****I'm not sure what ELEEP stands for, but if I had to guess, I'd say, "English Learning English English People." It means extra-curricular junk.

Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.