By Corey Pyke. Corey is Impact Teaching’s China Program Coordinator

 

I never wanted to be a teacher. China was never really on the list of destinations that I
wanted to go to. But for whatever reason, I took a risk, and it ended up being the best 6
years of my life.
From when I was young, I was doing a lot of travelling to different countries. I knew I
wanted a job that would let me keep doing that. Teaching, though, never appealed to me.
I’d worked with kids for years as a track and field coach, and while studying sports coaching
at university, and by the time graduation came around, I was sure I wanted something
different.
I started searching for jobs that would let me travel, but everything I found involved too
much office work and not enough actual travel. I eventually started looking at TEFL jobs. It
wasn’t exactly what I wanted to do, but it ticked the travel box. The company I chose was
Impact Teaching (no surprises there!), I completed the 120-hour TEFL course, sorted all of
my paperwork, and then I was off.

It didn’t take long to get stuck in. I had never been to China before, but I fell in love with it
quickly. The mega cities, the cleanliness, the transport, the technology, the people, the food
– it was very hard not to be completely amazed by it all. I started in a small local school in
Suzhou, teaching grade 2 English and maths. It was all quite overwhelming really, I had 38
students in a class and 4 classes, but with support from the co teachers and other foreign
teachers, I slowly got the hang of it. 1 hour lesson planning sessions turned into 10-minute
planning sessions, and instead of taking 20 minutes to think of games, it now took 5.
Over my 6 years in China, I had 5 jobs, in 3 cities. Some were amazing, some were most
definitely not. But luckily for me, China has so many jobs available and a real need for
English teachers, so it was never hard to find something new. And the bonus for me, it
turned out I loved being a TEFL teacher.

I was very lucky that in every city I ended up in, I met incredible people. Whether this was
from bonding through stress at work, or meeting friends of a friend, connections are one of
the most important things that will help you with living abroad.
I’m not going to lie and say everything was always easy, it definitely wasn’t. Covid made
travel abroad impossible, and travel within China extremely restricted for almost 3 years. I
had a boss who didn’t want to apply for visas because “it was too difficult”, I had a parent
complain after I sent their child out of the class for punching another student in the head, I
had violent students. Honestly, pretty much anything you could think of that could go wrong
in China happened to me. But did I ever want to leave because of it? Not at all.
I said earlier that I never wanted to be a teacher. So why did I stay after all of this? Because
none of it mattered when I looked at the bigger picture. For every useless boss, I had coworkers

that became incredibly close friends. For every violent child, I had 10 who would
run up to me to talk every time they saw me. It was worth it just to stay a bit longer. For
most of my time in China, I saw myself staying forever, so why was 6 years my ending point?
There was never a big catalyst that made me decide to leave. I had many friends go to new
countries over the years, but I was still happy in China. The reality for me was that I still
didn’t want to be a teacher. Sure, I absolutely loved doing my TEFL teaching, but the
progression to become a fully qualified teacher did not appeal to me at all. There were
other TEFL jobs in different cities with higher pay and nice benefits, but for me it was all the
same – I didn’t want feel stuck in a TEFL loop forever.

6 years was definitely the right time for me to go. I had become frustrated by little things
that had never bothered me before. Speaking to friends who had also been in China for a
long time, some for decades, they all had similar feelings. It was pretty simple to leave my
job – the owner of the company was very willing to help, and is keen to meet up in the
future. Saying bye to friends wasn’t easy, but I’ll be able to see them all again, so that made
it a bit better. My final days were spent saying goodbyes and packing up 6 years of stuff into
2 suitcases and 2 carry-ons, and then it was off to the airport to return to the UK.

It has been a bit strange coming back, I had been to the UK on holiday when I was living in
China, so I’m not sure it’s fully hit that I’m not going back. The weather has also been a
shock, going from 28 degrees in Xiamen to 2 degrees in my hometown was… a lot. However,
it’s nice to be able to catch up with friends and family, some that I haven’t seen since I left,
and be able to have some great English food – Greggs was my first stop!

The UK is just a quick 3 week stop for me before I head over to South Africa for the next 6
months. After being in China for so long, I realized that the UK isn’t the place for me, so the
next year is all about trying new places until I find where I want to be long- term. Vietnam is
up after South Africa!

Of course there will be many things that I miss about China, mainly the convenience of my
life there, and the people (but probably mostly TaoBao!). No doubt I’ll be booking my flight
to visit soon.

I am incredibly grateful for my 6 years in China; it completely changed me as a person. I’m
more confident, I know how to deal with stressful situations, I can communicate better, I
gained valuable experience working with different types of people, I could go on. I know
that moving to China was the best thing I could have ever done for myself.

 

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