I don't know if I'm the only one who've experienced this. Maybe you did, maybe you didn't.
I'm teaching in Taiwan in a government school (junior high) and also government program (ESL). To my surprise when I came here, there was already seven Taiwanese teachers teaching English.
Little did I know these teachers would become my co-teachers in class. (I just thought I would have an assistant.)
So I thought at least there are people here that I can have a conversation with, this is much better!
Unfortunately not....
They ignore you like the plague. Just sit in the back of your class marking scripts, not helping if kids don't understand you. Why doesn't kids understand you? (you might ask)
Students don't understand me because their Taiwanese teachers have been teaching English in Chinese/Mandarin. Thus, me speaking English all day in class only get response from one or two students who might attend cram school after hours.
Remember this is public school and not all parents can afford to send their kids to cram school.
So this is my situation.
I'm only to teach conversational English and the 'domestic teacher' teaches theory.
"Domestic teacher' evaluates my classes on forms that's only in Chinese.
I get asked to 'judge' a performance of the students with my domestic counterparts and all the forms are in Chinese.
Timetables/ memorandums everything sent to me is in Chinese.
Whenever you are at your wits end and ask your domestic teacher for help with translation (because the students just stare at you) you get answers like "you're the native speaker, think of something".
I swear I've never been so down in my life.
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