0801071930 Teaching English at a Chinese Catholic Girls School.

Teaching English at a Chinese Catholic Girls School.

The first day was harrowing - Although I knew what to expect, I never expected this. The children were quiet, polite and can already speak English.

If there is anything that growing old and grey has taught me it is that anything can happen. My Palm T5 reminded me the other day that it has been a year since I started my next-to-last job at Telstra as the strategic planner. I had no idea that I would read that entry sitting in my classroom as a teacher at a Chinese Catholic Girls school.

My role is to give them confidence when speaking English so I constantly ask them what their name is and how are they today. I ask every student in the class and listen to the reply which rarely varies from "I am fine thank you". I hear that about 1000 times a day.

During one of my lessons, one of the Chinese Catholic girls started to cry. Apparently projecting my voice like an army officer in a weapons lesson is not a good idea for the classroom. The poor little kid thought that I was angry and scary. Her friends all tried to reassure her but to no avail - everything I did made it worse, so I asked her friends to take her to one of the kind lovley nuns. They are expets at this sort of thing.


The children are delightful. They are bright, intelligent and polite - they already speak three languages.

I am not sure what will become of this job. I think that I might get away with acting like a teacher for a few more weeks.