Society

Tired, stressed and 'fed up'

By He Na (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-09-10 08:25

'Granny blamed me for bites'

Editor's note: Li Huan, 27, is a teacher at a kindergarten in Beijing.

Playing with children all day probably seems like a great job but it's not as easy as it looks.

Although there's a lot of work pressure, the hardest part is really child safety.

The students are all between 3 and 6 years old and, like most children, they're prone to injuries. So you need to keep an eye on them every minute of the day.

Just a couple of days ago, one of the children's grandmother pointed her finger in my face and accused me of being an irresponsible teacher in front of all the other parents - all because she'd found mosquito bites on the child's arms.

The children often play together in the yard and there are about 30 of them. How would I be able to notice that a mosquito was biting one of them?

Luckily, that's an extreme case. Most of the other parents are reasonable and are nice to us.

My friends call me a combination of teacher, nanny and cleaner but my salary is less than 3,000 yuan ($440) a month.

Since there are no uniform textbooks for kindergartens, we have to prepare teaching materials by ourselves. This takes up a lot of time, including my leisure time.

Our kindergarten is one of the best in the capital, so almost every month we deal with various examinations, visits and learning groups from management departments or officials from other kindergartens. That takes a large amount of energy.

My bosses also demand we write observation notes and show progress reports of every student once a month. With almost three dozen children, that's a lot of writing. We're required to talk with each parent at least once a month.

When I'm really tired after a hard day at work I do think about changing jobs, as the results and rewards are just not enough compared to what I devote to it.

In the end, though, I always put the idea out of my mind. I love the feeling of being with the children too much.

Li Huan was talking to He Na.