Pros
I worked as an ESL teacher in Keyword right after I graduated from university and this working experience is perfect for me to equip some essential and basic skills to further develop my future career as a teacher. Despite my lack of working and teaching experience at the beginning of my employment, Keyword had provided a series of training sessions for me to grasp the fundamentals of teaching English to the young kids and I have also learnt a lot from the senior teachers. Keyword often conducts regular training events, in which they had invited different guest speakers to share the latest information and trend in the field of early child/ English education. I wouldn't have been able to teach the young kids on my own without the training from Keyword and the help from my local colleagues. Speaking of my local colleagues, they were amazing in being my tour guides in Shenzhen and showed me the best part of the city. I also made great friends with foreign teachers in other centres and I never feel alone even when I had relocated to live in a foreign country. What I like most in this job was the work-life balance as I never needed to use any of my free time for work and I can easily ask for holidays to go for a short trip to the neighbouring countries. This experience is like an extension of my uni life while equipping me with some essential working skills. I highly recommend it to those who want to go for a cultural experience and get paid at the same time.
Cons
Working in China can be very overwhelming because of the language and cultural barrier. People always stared at me when I was walking on the street and some of them have even approached me to ask for taking a photo together. It felt surreal and awkward at the beginning but the locals there are generally very friendly to me so I get used to it pretty quickly.
