Last Thursday, I found a job advertisement on Meten, formerly known as Metro, language center in Chongqing, and I emailed an application to Kiko, the contact person on the posting. 10 minutes later, I received a phone call as I left my own phone number on my application. Kiko asked me to come for a personal interview on Friday, the following day. When I arrived there, I believed it was the right place to work in, and even the fine female receptionists looked right.:)

However, the moment of truth came after the short but quite enjoyable waiting period in the school's reception area, and when Kiko seated me in a small all glass windows placement test look like room out of which I could see a couple of all glass window classrooms where the classes were in session. I reached out to shake Kiko's hand (Hi I am Matt), which seemingly made the young Chinese woman feel uncomfortable. Three fingers opened on her hand leaving her little and ring finger folded, when we were shaking hands(Hi I am Kiko). Our interview lasted about 45 minutes and our discussion was mostly about my current job and reasons for leaving it. The little she said about Meten and its academic product, which I was much interested in, was that they had lesson plans prepared for their foreign teachers and the school gave its students classroom topics for lessons ahead of time prior to the classes. No books were mentioned and after I got about four pages of a lesson plan to prepare for my IMMEDIATE DEMONSTRATION CLASS that was to begin in 20 minutes, I suspected they had no course books.

So, my first in China demo class began just about 20 minutes later. There were 5 adults out of which two were allegedly students and the three others were two Meten young female employees, Kiko inclusive. Right on the beginnig I noticed that none of the "students" had a blank piece of a paper to write on, although they had one A4 page with questions on both sides of it, which was the student feedback on my demo class.Not that I went nervous or anything like that, I tried to help with paper and so I quickly began ripping my lesson plan pages off as the other side of each page was empty. That spooked one student(employee) and Kiko in the classroom as they did not expect I would dare to "damage their lesson plans". After we settled the "students paper issue" (i wanted them to have their role plays and write notes from each other), we began.

My demo on Cultural Differences went on for about 30 minutes where Kiko stopped it.

As the "demo students" could not (had no time) to write notes (about me) or answer any questions pertaining my "performance" during my class, they started right after I finished and while I was still in the classroom...trying to say good bey.

Leaving the classroom, I had some indescribable feelings and as Kiko informed me on the way out that she'd let me know within three days, I felt I failed the test/demo.

Today, I received an email from Kiko, informing me they had a part time job at Meten in Chongqing. Feeling better, I've realized I have not failed completely, but I can't help thinking why we need all these credentials or experiences for our jobs, when these young intermediate level of English students can make a much better judgement about the RIGHT TEACHER than any qualified and experienced foreign academic.

Cheers and beers to Meten Masters :)
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Why does a Canadian have a British and a British an American accent to some Chinese students?