Teaching at a university in Shandong Province

After completing our Bachelor's degrees in the US, my husband and I taught at Shandong University of Science and Technology located in an area called Huangdao which is outside of Qingdao, China. I had been to China before and studied abroad with CIEE in Beijing while completing my degree, which is how I learned about their Teach Abroad opportunities.

My husband and I weren't sure what we wanted to do career-wise so we decided to spend a year in China while we figured things out. Neither of us had much teaching experience so we knew we needed to be flexible and open to different locations & age groups. We were excited when we learned of our placement and immediately started to research the area.

The year that we spent in Huangdao China is certainly something that we will never forget. After our year teaching at Shandong University of Science and Technology we relocated to Shanghai where we stayed for the next 2.5 years. We both agreed that the year in Huangdao gave us a much clearer perspective on Chinese students than many of our friends who had only been able to live in Shanghai or Beijing.

We were not paid much while teaching at SUST (roughly 500USD/month, mind you this was 4 years ago) however housing was provided and food cost next to nothing. In our first semester we were able to save enough money to travel around China, Hong Kong and to Singapore for the majority of our six-week summer holiday.

Our teaching load was incredibly light, which allowed us to spend time on self-development (which mainly meant binge-watching Mad Men and and catching up on my long list of novels to read) but we also had a lot of time to get to know the students better and experiment with different lesson plans. We were fortunate to have each other to bounce ideas off of the first semester, because the university didn't offer much support for development. However the second semester we were at SUST we were joined by another group of incoming CIEE teachers that were equally as enthusiastic about self-improvement in the classroom. We definitely bonded with these other teachers, and 3/5 of them I still communicate with regularly.

Overall I loved my experience teaching in China with CIEE. I was grateful for the support that we received before our departure and upon arrival in Shanghai. I don't feel that my local university did an excellent job of setting expectations for us, however I also learned that this is how things often go in China. If you're about to embark on this journey, no matter what organization you go with, I believe the most important thing to remember is that it's going to be different from what you're used to (and that's the whole point of going). Keep an open mind and be flexible.

Have fun, I wish I was about to start this journey again!