Make English Teaching Fun in China

As a MEF teacher I was able to discover my passion for teaching children and being a mentor for young minds across the world. This experience opened some many doors and opportunities taking me to new places. This company provided me with so much support during my transition to a new culture. This company provided me with benefits that extended beyond the pay and the housing allowances, they provided me a new place a could call home and extended family.

I spent a year working overseas with MEF teaching English in a Chinese kindergarten. When I look back on my time with them I have nothing but awesome memories and i'm so glad that I went! At first, when I started to look for teaching jobs overseas, it was quite a daunting prospect - travelling so far and to such an exotic place seemed a bit scary, but I was fretting over nothing. Derek and his team have years of experience helping teachers relocate, and the whole experience was safe and professional. Once I was set up at my school I was kept well stocked with teaching resources which were intuitive, fun to use, and really engaging for the kids. Truthfully, I could have spent much longer in China as it's such an interesting and beautiful country, but I chose to move back to England and enrol in full time teacher training. I would gladly signpost anybody looking to teach in Asia to MEF as I am sure they will enjoy their time abroad as much as I did.

Hey everybody, this is Rachel. I live in China working for M.E.F It’s great here. There’s a lot of other foreigners here. We get together a lot, it’s a big support system. On Sundays we have Chinese classes, because I didn't know any Chinese before I came here but I'm steadily learning it. It’s very useful, and once a month we have meetings to share what we’ve been using in our classrooms, what works well, if anybody has any ideas to share, we do that as well, and it's great here. I really enjoy it. I highly recommend M.E.F it’s a great program lots of support, there’s Chinese teachers here that help you out, if you ever need anything you can reach out to them and they’re very supportive, there’s lots of materials that they have so we have access to, to bring to our classrooms and really it’s just great.

I’m Cherise and I’m from Birmingham in the UK I decided to come to China after I graduated from Uni. I worked in an office for 2-to-3 years and I just found each day was the same and I just needed something more interesting in my life. I Googled interesting jobs for graduates and teaching in China came up. A friend of mine said that she had heard of M.E.F., so I googled M.E.F. and online it was just good review after good review, after good review. I found not a single negative review. Which is kind of being me, as I have never come across any company out there that does not have at least one person moaning online or some negativity online. But no, M.E.F. is just positive reviews all around. So, I contacted M.E.F. and almost immediately got an email back to say they wanted to interview me and the interview process was petty easy. It was just an online interview, it all went really fast. The paperwork at first seemed really daunting.Like, you have to go to various offices and get anything you have ever done officially kind of signed by someone and notarized by someone else. But eventually it kind of all works out and it’s actually a lot easier than it seems. Then it kind of just flew by, M.E.F. really helped. Within a week, it feels like home. Like the street we live on, we now call home. That’s one of the best things about being in China. The sheer amount of funny stories that you would just not get back home. We call it being China’d here. That is the phrase that we use, because you are China’d here all the time in the funniest of ways. I went exploring in the forest the other day. I’m happily going along on my ebike and then my ebike dies. I was out there in China with a dead ebike and then the company came and saved me. So, it all worked out, they came to my rescue. Then I was home with a cup of hot chocolate within an hour. Even though everything might seem scary and China seems really far away from where you are, the people here you will bond with so quickly that it makes it all seem a lot less daunting and a lot less scary then you probably think it is right now, but it doesn’t make it less it any less interesting or fun, or just one of the best experiences. You are met by an official as soon as you get to the airport and they just make you feel really at ease. In the first 2-to-3 hours of being here I had already met 3 or 4 teachers and one of them is now like my best friend here. Yeah, it’s perfect really.

I’ve worked at the company for just over a year now and it’s been a great experience. I had originally planned on staying in China for one year but it’s been such an amazing year I’ve decided to stay for at least 1-2 more years. As a first time teacher it was a great starting point as the company has their own curriculum which requires a lot less preparation than it would working for other companies. The support has been great and I’ve never had any issues/ questions that haven’t been resolved. Now I’m into my second year I am helping out with additional projects with the company and also training the new teachers. There is opportunity for growth as a teacher and I am looking forward to see what the next year has in store!