Ayeesha's job log: 7
Ayeesha Shahani
- July 2008.
The story so far...
After graduating last year, Ayeesha found it hard working out what to do next. Finally she decided to return to her Hong Kong homeland to teach.
Since arriving in Hong Kong and starting my job as a Montessori kindergarten summer school teacher, I have been looking for a full-time job to start in September as well as part-time work around my summer school hours to supplement my income and help me save up for a flat of my own.
I have mainly been looking in the local papers and online at some of the many websites dedicated specifically to teachers in Hong Kong. Also, I have contacted a few schools that I hear have good reputations as employers and enquired about any upcoming vacancies. As I’ve said before Hong Kong is a small place and it doesn’t take long to suss out the job market, especially if you know what you are looking for.
I managed to get two interviews in a week and got them both, so now I have three jobs! One at the Montessori school and two at smaller schools/learning centres which I do on my free weekday afternoons and Saturday mornings. In the two other schools I teach English (phonics, reading and grammar etc) to kids under 7 and occasionally teach a playgroup class for kids under 2 ½ who are accompanied by a parent or helper. Unfortunately, because the children are so young and barely speak, playgroup classes involve a lot of singing and talking AT the kids rather than TO them. Come to think of it, it kind of makes you feel like a clown at a kid’s birthday party!
It's easy really
I have to admit that although it sounds like I have been super productive and run off my feet getting jobs here and there, in actuality, due to the truly huge demand for NETs (native English teachers) in Hong Kong, there are an abundance of teaching jobs available here. Therefore it really doesn’t require a great deal of effort to quickly find one that is going to match all of your criteria in terms of location and wages.
For me, it’s finding a place I want to work permanently that is the problem. The Montessori school I work at now is amongst the most reputable in Hong Kong. It’s a big company with quite a few schools around the island, meaning that if I was here permanently, there would be plenty of room for change and promotion. When I arrived here I immediately interviewed with them for a long-term position but I haven’t heard back yet. My original plan was to get this summer job and impress the pants off them so that they insist on me staying on full time!
The small call
Finally the day came where I actually got a call from them offering me a full-time position! The job was to teach playgroup (the one where I felt like a clown) for one year, with the promise of being moved to the job I actually wanted after those 12 months was up. It wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for but it’s all they had. They didn’t have positions available to teach the age group that I was being trained to teach (3-6 year olds) instead they wanted me to teach playgroup (under 2 ½) and they didn’t have any positions in the Montessori school, only in the regular preschool.
The more and more I thought about it, something inside me told me to hold out for more. Agh! I couldn’t believe what I was thinking, how could I turn down a full-time job? Was I crazy? This was what I had been waiting for for months! But I couldn’t help feeling irritated at the thought of doing this godforsaken distance learning course that requires a great deal of discipline and commitment on my part, only to get a job that doesn’t even require me to have the qualification at all. And just then I suddenly realised that as desperate as I have been over the last year to sign a contract with someone who promises to employ me for a whole year, I was finally in a position where I knew what I wanted and I wasn’t willing to settle for anything less. And so… I turned it down. I suck to my guns and hoped that I hadn’t just royally screwed up!
The second offer
After that commotion, I received yet another permanent job offer to work at one of my Saturday schools. As nice as it was to feel desired as opposed to ignored like I did in the UK, there was something about this schools that gave me what my boyfriend and I like to call ‘bad juju’. Bad juju is the feeling you get when you can’t really describe what is wrong/off but you know that something definitely is! Maybe I was overreacting but I just didn’t get a positive vibe from this place. Perhaps it was the surveillance cameras and microphones in all the classrooms which I thought was quite annoying and implied that they didn’t trust their own teachers. A little too big brotherish for my liking I think, and so needless to say, I ran away as fast as my juju-fied legs would carry me!
Luckily soon after I started questioning my recent decisions, my supervisor at the Montessori school told me that she liked what I was doing there and had put in a request for me. I almost peed with excitement!
The big call
The phone rang the very next day and I prayed it was the call I’d been waiting for. And…IT WAS!! I was told that they had found me a full-time position and wanted me to start in September and sign a one year contract! WOOOOHOOOO!!! Paychecks just started flashing before my eyes! Now finally since I knew I was going to have a job in September and I knew where I was going to be working for the next year, I could start seriously looking for a flat of my own and start stabilising my life! It was all of a sudden just then that I began to feel something I hadn’t felt in a really long time…relief!
Read Ayeesha's previous job logs
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