lyttled wrote:
> China now requires five years teaching experience to issue a visa.

Where did you get this information? Can you please cite it?

I don't think this is accurate, as I have friends who have gotten visas with 0 years teaching experience...

shadowjack wrote:
> WhoamI - there is no requirement to "declare" non-residency in
> Canada. However, if you are leaving Canada, you must declare that on your
> tax filing for the year in which you left.


Thanks a billion cents, Shad ;)- haha

Thanks for the help everyone!

If I declare non residency in Canada, will my teaching certifications also be removed? I have BC and Alberta. My Alberta cert is NOT permanent.

mp321 wrote:
> Once again, thanks for all the helpful advice.
>
> I'd love to hear from any teachers certified to teach secondary math (or another
> subject for that matter) who got their undergraduate degree in something totally
> different. Is this even possible? As psy_guy indicates above, would somebody in
> that scenario have to go back and take 20-30 credits of math courses before becoming
> certified? I'm assuming yes?

No, you do not need to go back to university and take 20-30 credits worth courses to become certified to teach a subject outside your expertise. My degree is in secondary education, with a major in arts. I have taught the following courses: drama 10, Math 20 ap, Science 10, Biology 20 (11), English 12, English 12-2 (lower stream for kids who want to go into trade courses), English 11 IB, English 12 IB, Math 7, and English 7, health 9, and Chinese 10.

My teaching certification is from Alberta and BC Canada. Neither of these certifications have "limitations" on what you can and should teach. You may be asked what your major was in university, but for this has not hindered me from teaching other subjects outside my area of "expertise."

Part of the reason I've got so much breadth on my resume is because I worked for a few third tier schools, but previous employers have been impressed and coined me as a "dart board" who can teach anything and everything. Sometimes working in the grunt schools with piss compensation and long work hours is worth it.

Ultimately, if you really want to teach a subject outside of your expertise, and would rather get a "paid practicum" in order to gain experience in those courses, why don't you just apply for some third tier international schools? Experience speaks loader than degrees in my opinion (but what do I know)? Yes your life might be dreary for a year, but you'd still be compensated, and gain experience teaching subjects in other fields. I've worked at some schools that will literally give you any courses you want after you stay for the school for 1 semester.

I was lined up to the be the schools programmer, website manager and tech guy, but I only know how to do some C+ from 2 courses on Code Academy, knew nothing about websites, and had limited experience working with projectors, smart boards, and other related educational technology. I took the job, sucked at my job, but gained some super useful experience that I am going to apply to better school's in the future.

hi OP,

I would first start looking into the school's website and learning more about the schools before you interview. My next move would be decide what my special features are... or in other words, what makes me better than the average teacher?

We are all certified educators on here, so all of us (hopefully) can teach, but if you want a school to hire you, you need to play on the skills that make you a valuable asset to the school.

These skills can range from a variety of things. Allow me to please be slightly self indulgent in order to illustrate my ideas more clearly. For me, I like to sell my Mandarin ability, programming skills (which are all self taught) which allows me to run after school "programs" focusing on game development, my journalism skills (I have developed a school wide newspaper which was published every month), and my ability and familiarity with gradebook and other educational related tech. I've also ran pro-d's on most of the programs mentioned above. I've also done all of these things while still fulfilling my professional duties as an educator.

At the end of the day, even back home in the public district, schools are still businesses. An employer wants to see WHAT YOU CAN DO so that you can make HER LOOK GOOD. So ultimately, I'd reckon you flex your special skills in an interview: what makes you better than the average Joe teacher?

As for some of the most difficult questions I've been asked in the past:

"describe the water cycle to me like I am in grade 5. Now describe it to me like I am in grade 11."

"Grab two topics from this envelop. You now have 2 minutes to present the body of your lesson for one of the selected topics. After you teach the topic, we will then discuss how you would run a full lesson based on the topic given." The two topics I got were "why do spiders leg's not stick to webbing, and why do parrots always reside on pirates shoulders." I selected the pirate topic and talked about how the parrot and pirate make a symbolic relationship. Ultimately, this school just wanted to see that I had the ability to present and think on my feet...

Good luck and please let me know if I can be of further assistance!

My school pays for my taxes on my behalf in China... but I'm not sure how that would work for paying taxes back in the USA...

One last question for you helpful ones (or perhaps this is a q for the CRA)...

As you know, I am a Canadian citizen, but I will be working at a school that pays an option of USD, or Rmb (Chinese currency). If I decide to sever ties with Canada, would it be best to request my salary, or perhaps even "argue" a set salary in rmb at my current school on my contract? I'm not even sure if this is an option, because I'm paid in USD at the moment...

My girlfriend is pushing me to put my money into rmb, and invest it into we chat wallet (are any of familiar with this program? Its basically an "at your finger tips" investment fund, which pays high interest. Albeit it is not the safest investment). Another option is that I set up a bank in China, and perhaps open a savings account in the mainland.

What are your thoughts people?

Thanks in advance!

Thanks for the witty insights everyone.

Thanks for the response!

I am now revering you as the "Shenzhen Master"- haha!

The school DOES NOT, at least to my knowledge, enrol students who are 100% Chinese. Students from Taiwan, and Hong kong can enrol, but not anyone from the Mainland, unless the student is a hybrid (for lack of a better term). Here's where we can have a heated discussion about he relations between China and Taiwan too... haha.

The school DOES believe that all students, with any language proficiency can enrol. But with the low teacher to student ratio, I think it actually makes it easier to teach students who may not have super fluent English... But instead of ESL at this school, there are lots of kids who are CSL (Chinese second language).

More positives to say about the school are:

The principal actually has quite a bit of power at the school, whereas at my last school, the principal on the Canadian side was only a manager who enforced the agenda of the Chinese Headmaster.

The class sizes are very small. I think my class this year will have 10 kids. Lots of foreign teachers who work at this school have loads of experience back in the US. Most, if not all of the teachers have enrolled there dependents into the school, which makes me nervous that I'll be teaching the principal's son this year... So I'm not sure again if this is a good thing, or bad, but it seems like the school has a pretty good retention rate for teachers.

The school's compensation is pretty good, and the housing allowance is also a nice added feature. The bonuses on the contract for staying longer are also fairly perky, 2500 if you stay for two years, 5000 longevity if you stay for 5 years, with added pay on the pay scale as well.

Though the pay scale is not really illustrated on the contract, but the pay and the working hours alone are much better than my last school. 830-4 on certain club days (2 times a week) and 8-330 on normal days. The school also absorbs all local taxes for you in China, which I'm not sure if I still need to declare non-residency in Canada in order to gain the full benefit of this perk... So I think a phone call to the tax person is in order!

Anyway, yeah, its definitely not the shekou international school, which is one of the best in Shenzhen (from what I've heard), but it comes off as a well resourced school, with a big focus on creativity and projects. If I were to get out PG's tier list, I'd probably rate this school as a tier 2. But what do I know?

I'm just happy to be --hopefully-- moving up from a tier 3 school!

Bump bump bump??

Anyone? Anything?

My school is going to pay for my taxes while I reside in China, but I do also need to pay taxes back home, correct?

At my last school I paid both local taxes (in Wuhan) and taxes back home.

So my question is this: I'm not actually working at a Canadian school next year, so will I still need to pay Canadian taxes?

I've heard stories of "giving up" permanent residence in Canada in order to dodge the taxes in Canada. Though I've also heard you need to give up your health care, etc????

Can anyone shed some light on this topic?

Thanks in advance!

Interesting advice everyone, and as always, "guy" thanks for your honest opinions. No I'm not being sarcastic, I know some peeps on here hate you, but your posts always make me laugh.

Project Based Learning schools must include some sort of STEM for youth and children as well right? I'm excited to start teaching in a school that's main focus is PBL, I really think it aligns well with who I am as a teacher. I'm moving on from a third tier "testing mill" school, so it'll be a nice change, and hopefully I spend more time prepping, and less assessing the death out of my students.

Since I feel like I'm moving up in the world, I hod have a question about workload in better developed, better equipped, non tier 3 schools. At my old school I was asked to be in the office by 730, ad by 740 I already had to be in homeroom for silent reading. I then taught 4 blocks of classes, from 730-340. You were not allowed to leave the school until 430, and you were expected to run a club once a week from 4-5, and a tutorial from 4-5.

I'm not trying to belly ache about teacher workload, but these hours seem a bit long. I was also teaching linear courses, which means I'd see one group of kids on Monday, another group of kids on Tuesday, and then the same kids on wed, tuesday's kids on thursday etc etc. So if I took in an assessment, I was actually expected to mark 150 essays over the weekend and have them turned over by Monday. It was doable, but I didn't have a life.

My new school starts me at 8:00 and lets me go at 330. I understand that teachers have to work, and I understand that SOME DAYS you will be in your office until 9:00pm, or at home marking. But everyday???

Thanks for your tips all!

My school let me choose:

1)monthly stipend of set dollars (or in my case, ren ming bi)

2) a certain amount if I chose to live with roommates (the school would put us in a 9000-10 000rmb a month flat)

3) or a single apartment allowance, which was the same as the monthly stipend.

I chose the stipend, but as you can see, every case is different!

Good luck

eion_padraig wrote:
> Mandarin is spoken widely as most Chinese living in Shenzhen are from
> elsewhere, so it's much more likely to be the common tongue of folks.
>
> How much would it cost to rent a 1 bedroom apartment? This depends heavily
> on the quality and the area of the city you want to live in. For instance,
> Shekou you could pay a lot, while outlying areas you'd pay very little. It
> would be helpful to know what area of the city you'd be considering as that
> is a big factor.
>
> Do you find the city to be very westernized, a little bit, or not very much
> at all? I think Shenzhen is probably the easiest place to live as a
> foreigner in China. While Shanghai may be bigger with more foreigners,
> Shenzhen is right by Hong Kong so it's easy to get across the border. The
> foreign population is pretty big too. What you don't get in Shenzhen is a
> long tradition of anything, but because you have transplants from all over
> China it's easy to find food types from lots of other areas of China.
> Again, none of the Mainland cities are as Westernized as Hong Kong, but
> Shenzhen is a easy place to live.
>
> How often do you see blue skies? The weather tends to be nice in the Fall,
> but clear days do not necessarily mean pollution free. Shenzhen typically
> has better air quality than Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. From January
> through April you'll get fewer sunny days, and the air quality tends to be
> worse. You might get a good day of sunshine a few days a week. The bigger
> issue for me is how humid and hot it gets.
>
> I would say the downside to Shenzhen is it's lack of specific character,
> but it's also a pretty well designed city. The subway is convenient. You
> get a taste of what the rest of China has to offer, but people are
> transplants. Very few old people in the city, which is very strange when
> you compare it with other Chinese cities.

Thanks for your advice, the school I'll be working for is located in Shekou. Is there another district or "area' that is close to Shekou, but not asking for 15000 rmb rent? Or is that the standard?

I'm coming from Wuhan, so I'm actually worried that Shenzhen will be too westernized.

Thanks for your tips.

chilagringa wrote:
> Yeah, but then you'd have to teach in Alberta for two years. ;)

Or an Alberta certified international school (Alberta curriculum)! ;)