A Tale of Two Teachers

It was the best of classes, it was the worst of classes. It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness.

I started teaching ballet to little girls last March. It has almost been a full year. That is pretty amazing. To me, at least. When I took the job, I assumed I would do it for a month, maybe two. It was something temporary to put a few dollars in my pocket.

Before this, I had absolutely no teaching experience. I am also not a ballerina. There are a million reasons I was never qualified to do this job, but here is the big secret that everyone in Hong Kong, and probably most of China, already knows: none of the after school teachers around here are qualified to teach. The qualified teachers teach in the actual schools. Those of us in cram schools or buxiban or tutorial schools, whatever you want to call them, are simply foreigners who are young enough and look right for the job.

My sister, Lily, has been teaching English at a cram school for almost three years. For a real teacher in a real school, three years would still be a rookie. Lily has been at her school longer than any of the other foreigners. That is because in the cram school business, foreigners come and go quickly. You would think schools would not want to hire foreigners since they are not steady employees and require work visas and a ridiculous amount of government paperwork, but schools want white faces because that is what the parents want. In the case of English, the assumption among parents is that someone who was born and raised in English will know it better than someone who learned it as a foreign language. Clearly, these parents have not been reading Facebook. The irony is that Lily, and every other foreign teacher, is not actually teaching their children English. The purpose of a cram school is to help students pass tests. It has nothing to do with actually learning how to speak, read and write English. Parents know this and don't care. Some students take English classes at their regular schools. This is where they are supposed to learn the language, even though almost all of their teachers in their real schools were born and raised in China and learned English from Chinese teachers.

My teaching job is less complicated. My students have no regular ballet teachers at their regular schools. I am not helping them cram for any tests. I teach what is essentially a hobby to children who have the spare time. That might sound like I have no job stability, but this is a rabidly competitive culture. Any parent whose niece or friend's daughter just won a ribbon at some dance competition is going to want their daughter to take dance classes. Because, obviously, their child would be so much better at it.

This brings up a question I get from time to time. Why are only girls allowed to take ballet lessons? They are not. This rule does not exist. Boys are more than welcome, but they never sign up. In almost a year, I have never had a single boy walk through the doors. Why is that? I don't know. Machismo, video games, peer pressure, lack of interest. At this young age, it could simply be a case of too many icky girls in the class. I might be better off with just girl students.

Lily teaches boys and girls of all ages, from first graders who write the letter R as if it were V, to seniors in high school stressing out over college admissions. Since her students come in for a specific test or a series of tests, they come and go almost as quickly as the foreign teachers. Some stick around since there will always be more tests in the near future, but most are temporary. She can't count how many students she has had in almost three years, but she can tell you that the troublemaker in each class is almost always a boy. At every age range, except high school, the girls are better behaved and more respectful of their teachers and fellow students. By high school, any student that still takes extra classes after school probably wants to learn. Or at least wants to do well enough to go to a decent college. Fifth grade boys would rather play with insects.

All of my students want to learn and please their teacher. At least until they drop out. When it comes to ballet, students give up quickly. That's a shame, but there are plenty of new students waiting in the wings. My school actually has a waiting list, so when someone drops out, their place is immediately filled. As long as the demand is there, I will have job security, even though I take a lot of time off for other jobs. It would be difficult for my school to find a young, white, female dancer with teaching experience who speaks Chinese and does not need a work visa to replace me. Somehow, I became their ideal.

Lily is easier to replace at her school. There are plenty of younger, white females coming off the boat every day. Her job requires no knowledge of Chinese. In fact, some schools want the teachers to only speak English. She needs a visa, which is actually in her favor. Getting a new visa for a new employee is always a hassle. Especially if they leave the country in a few months. Renewing a visa for someone who has already been government approved is infinitely easier. Schools want experience more than they used to. Her almost three years is better than the zero experience all the new arrivals have. Her school also expects her to work more than four hours a day. For too many foreigners, that is too much. Cram schools can spot the slacker foreigners a mile away. If you are only here to party, you will not last. Cram schools are big business. They are far more interested in how much money they can make than in how drunk foreigners can get.

One thing Lily and I have in common is the parents. Whether dancing or taking a test, every parent knows that their little angel is the best student in the history of the universe. Every little girl who does not know her left foot from her right is more graceful than a swan. Every little boy who eats chalk and thinks English words are written vertically is a genius. In fact, everyone's child is a magical genius. It is kind of remarkable that every single parent has a genius child with incomparable talent. The worst aspect of any teaching job around here is never the students or even all the government bureaucracy. Any teacher I have ever spoken with would agree that it is the parents. My solace is that, without any boys in any of my classes, I do not have to deal with little emperors. Just like the United States, China favors boys over girls. The difference is that a son is always his parents' favorite, regardless of birth order. A son with no brothers will be the sole inheritor of whatever his parents have, even if he has older sisters. This helps turn spoiled little boys into entitled young men.

Most cram schools don't let parents sit in the classroom, but for some reason, parents were used to sitting in on dance classes before I got here. I had to put a stop to that. The parents were too disruptive, especially since every one of them knew that their child was a great ballerina and I was making them learn the fundamentals. Even worse, I was not focusing only on their little angel. It was as if there were other students in the class.

The last straw was the parent who told me, in front of my students, that I was wrong and that she knew better. Just looking at the way she sat and stood, I knew she had no dance training whatsoever. I told her that if she could do a single pirouette, I would let her take over the class right then and there. She had plenty of excuses, of course. She was not dressed to dance, she had not warmed up, her schedule was too busy. Even some of the students rolled their eyes. A pirouette does not require pointe shoes or a leotard. If you can do one, you can do one in practically anything. Warming up is always a good idea, but far from required for a single pirouette. And if she had enough time to sit in on the class, and interrupt it, she had more than enough time to do one simple turn. I had another student, whom the parent considered inferior to her daughter, do a basic pirouette as I had taught her. It was not flawless, but it was good enough to prove my point. This class was a few decades away from flawless anyway. The parent huffed and puffed when I kicked her out of my class, but, revealingly, she did not take her daughter with her. From that point on, parents had to wait somewhere else. Where they spent their time was none of my concern, as long as it was out of my classroom. I was prepared to quit over my new rule. Amazingly, the school took my side. There are benefits to a waiting list and being harder to replace.

During the Lunar New Year, every school, whether cram, dance, state or other, closes for the holiday. Before the break, Lily got a few cards and small gifts from a few of her students. She says that is standard. This is her third New Year as a teacher, so she would know. Since this was my first New Year, all I knew was when the school was going to be closed. What I did not expect were the gifts, flowers and cards from every single student. I don't know if the difference is in the type of school, that I have fewer students or that I only have girls, but I like to tell Lily it is because my students like me more. Since we have no written tests, maybe they do.