The Arrival at Huijia

When you accept a job in an international school, you take a gamble. It’s highly unlikely you have been able to visit the school if you live half way around the world and finding unbiased information online is difficult. I was only able to find highly negative anecdotes from disgruntled ex-staff on the various school…

First Two Weeks

I arrived with a few other new teachers in mid August. During my two weeks of waiting for school to start there were a couple of things teachers needed to attend. The first was a three hour ‘opening ceremony’ with the owner, principal Wang and his second in command Mrs Gao. Mr Wang’s father opened…

The Students

The students at Huijia are largely friendly and polite. Outside of the classroom its very easy to interact with them. Given it’s a boarding school you’ll bump into your students often when walking around at the end of a school day. Before I continue talking about the students, I will say that there are a…

Living on Campus

There are several (as in four or five) long-time teachers at Huijia who seem to enjoy the quiet isolation living at the school brings. However, they range from late 40s to mid 60s. Absolutely none of the people under 40 I came into contact with enjoyed living there. Most people were simply there to save…

Life in Changping

I’ll get straight to the point; I didn’t like Changping. In fact, I despised it. Changping is exactly the type of town I moved abroad to escape. It’s insanely boring. If you have lived in a big metropolitan city before you will probably hate it too. The town spans a wide area but has very…

Working at the School

The school is a 5 minute walk from your on-campus apartment. The school consists of primary, middle and high schools. Depending on which section you work in and subject department, your experience may be very different from mine. What I can say is very few foreign teachers I met would claim to enjoy working at…

Management

Management at Huijia can be a mixed bag. As previously mentioned the owner and his second in command are clueless about teaching but there are some very good and hardworking supervisors and HR staff. The problems you may encounter with management are usually caused by the extreme top-down rule of the owner and Mrs Gao.…

What did I like about Huijia?

I have to admit there were some plus points of living on campus and things I liked about working at the school. They include: No commute. You are 5 minutes walk from your classroom. China is a difficult place to be if you don’t speak the language. Living in Building 10 means there is always…

Should you work at Huijia?

If you managed to make it through to this point, well done! You are probably now wondering if everything you read is true. Yes, it is. You are also probably thinking I didn’t enjoy my time at Huijia that much. I didn’t. But there were some good times mixed with the bad. Professionally I felt…

A Few Other Stories and Details

The School Bar The school has a bar next to the staff living areas but until recently was rarely used for anything beyond entertaining visiting officials with hot pot. Given how remote the school is the staff asked for it to be opened up to give them a place to go after work, get a…