Teacher Training in China

Ni Huaying (English name: Susan), lecturer in Shaoxing University, China. Exchange teacher at JAMK University of Applied Sciences, Teacher Education College in Spring 2010.

After graduation from senior middle school, since we have taken the college entrance examination, we need to decide what university we will attend according to the result of the exam, if fortunately not failed, and interested in becoming a teacher in the future, we can choose Normal Universities.

Take my experience for example, I chose to become an English teacher as my profession, so I went to Foreign Language College of Zhejiang Normal University. There, skills of English are taught as well as literature, translation, and linguistics .Knowledge of the profession occupies one very important part in teacher training, besides that,  psychology, pedagogy are also what we should learn, since as a teacher, we must be totally aware of these. For another, skills of teaching, such as calligraphy, teaching methods are also taught during the university. At the last semester, we practise teaching in different schools.

Before we teach, we must acquire Teachers’ Qualification Certificate, otherwise we are not allowed to teach in any school. During the first year of teaching , in order to guide us in our teaching, schools will help us to find tutors, who will observe our lessons frequently and put forward suggestions of improving the way of teaching. At the end of one year, we have to have a public lesson to see whether we are qualified as a teacher.

Learning never stops in one’s life, this is especially true to a teacher, since we have a saying in China that if you want to give your students a bottle of water, you first should have a bucket of water, which means we should never stop learning in order to sustain enough knowledge. That’s why we have teacher training centers everywhere in China, different training programs are provided so that we can choose the most suitable one for us.