news

한어Русский языкEnglishFrançaisIndonesianSanskrit日本語DeutschPortuguêsΕλληνικάespañolItalianoSuomalainenLatina

author | monet

editor | zhang lai

the popularity of recruitment has been rising in recent years, and recruitment for kindergarten teachers is one of the less discussed categories.

in 2023, the number of applicants for the teacher qualification certificate reached 12.65 million. judging from the data, being a teacher has become a very popular choice. among them, some graduates who have passed the qualification certificate will choose to go to kindergarten and become a kindergarten teacher.

it is not easy to pass the exam to become a kindergarten teacher. not long ago, some clips of a mock interview for kindergarten teachers were circulated on social platforms: a group of students preparing for the exam spoke to the air - bowing, squatting, waving, and paying attention to facial expression management, while reciting children's stories in a high-pitched voice. this is the trial teaching part of the interview, and some commentators joked that it was like a large-scale performance without props.

a clip of a mock interview for kindergarten teachers circulating on social platforms / source: internet

although this is just a joke among netizens, there is no doubt that the difficulty of civil service examinations is increasing, and the difficulty of interviews is also increasing. more and more recruitment requirements list the condition of only recruiting postgraduates.

the trend of civil service examinations has spread to kindergartens, but the work of kindergarten teachers is more trivial and difficult than imagined. regardless of their academic qualifications, they need to start from the most basic work.

"social phobia cannot make you a kindergarten teacher"

li dongdong's first reaction after seeing the popular interview video online was that this is a very daily part of the job, "for normal school students, you have to get used to it and it is also a hurdle you have to go through." in her opinion, this is not an exaggeration, "because children just need you to attract their attention, so whether it is the voice or the expression, the amplitude needs to be a little bigger."

li dongdong majored in early childhood education (teacher training) in college. after graduating in 2023, she successfully passed the exam and got a job as a staff member in a kindergarten in the pearl river delta.

the work in this kindergarten is stable and the atmosphere among colleagues is also harmonious, but she still feels that as a fresh graduate, she needs to experience some challenges and growth. this year, after preparing for the exam for a period of time, she landed a job in another kindergarten in guangzhou and started a new job.

stills from goodbye our kindergarten

fortunately, it was not too difficult for her to take the civil service exam. objectively, she had the personality traits of a teacher: she was rational and logical in her expression and spoke in an infectious way. her friends all thought she was born to be a teacher. she told southern window, "teachers rarely have social phobias, but social phobias are not acceptable in interviews."

however, whether it is a certification exam or a civil service exam, not everyone who prepares for the exam knows how to get into the right state before the interview and quickly switch to "teacher mode".

zhong yi is a full-time teacher at a kindergarten in the yangtze river delta and has been working there for just over a week.

before getting her current position, she had taken exams in nanjing, yangzhou and other places. looking back on the preparation experience along the way, it was not an easy process.

before entering her current position, her previous written test scores were not very good, and she did not get the opportunity to enter the interview, and she was one-third away from the effective ranking. for a period of time, she felt very anxious, so she forced herself to calm down and analyze the reasons for her poor performance in the written test.

stills from return

before deciding to take the civil service exam, zhong yi planned to take the postgraduate entrance exam. she wanted to study educational psychology and had been preparing for a long time. however, she failed the postgraduate entrance exam and changed her goal to taking the civil service exam.

she thought that after the test of the postgraduate entrance examination, she would be able to handle the civil service examination smoothly, but she still had to memorize much more than she imagined. "i thought that since i had memorized so much knowledge for the postgraduate entrance examination, the civil service examination should be easy, but i found that i had thought it was too simple. although preschool education does not have a lot of specific subject knowledge, there are still many policy documents in recent years."

after a final round of sorting, zhong yi found that there were ten documents that had to be memorized, plus some documents that were often tested in multiple-choice questions, such as the preschool education law (draft), the family education law, etc., a total of twenty documents were sorted out. "the test was very detailed, i would recite them over and over again, and sometimes i would collapse."

stills from "okja"

in order to improve her test-taking skills and abilities, zhong yi enrolled in a tutoring institution. during the period of preparing for the exam, she went to the institution for classes at 8 a.m. every day and returned home at 10 p.m., excluding lunch and rest time at night, "she practiced in the institution all day long."

the most difficult part of the interview is the trial teaching session, which is also what zhong yi finds the most difficult part. "the videos on social platforms show that the teachers have adjusted themselves. it was difficult for me to get into this state at the beginning."

she concluded that there were two reasons. on the one hand, it was her personality. zhong yi thought she was not introverted, but she was not very extroverted either. when practicing, everyone would sit together and practice in front of the mirror. with other people around, she always felt that she couldn't get into the state.

later, she slowly observed and learned from other teachers and adjusted her rhythm. the tutor also instructed them: slow down the movements, and don't move left and right at the same time. with such guidance, she found her own speed.

on the other hand, she found that she lacked frontline experience in practice. before preparing for the exam, zhong yi read a lot of textbooks, but still hadn't formed her own teaching style. the interview involved a segment where she had to give a themed lecture. taking the theme of "i love my family" as an example, most people would think of how many people are in the family. as a qualified teacher, you need to expand on this basis, from the home to the entire community, so that the children can understand that there are also laborers such as food deliverymen, couriers, and sanitation workers in the community. zhong yi told southern window, "it is also difficult to accumulate experience in this area."

stills from "lovely you"

after a period of training, only a few kindergarten teachers can finally land a job. the kindergarten where li dongdong works has about 80 employees, of which only six are regular teachers.

in fact, the work content of regular and non-regular kindergarten teachers is not that different, but their salaries and benefits can differ a lot, even by multiples, which is why regular employment is popular.

the challenge begins after landing

while preparing for the exam, both li dongdong and zhong yi felt the fierce competition.

li dongdong told nanfeng window that when she took the exam for this position in guangzhou, although there was no clear official data, she saw posts on the internet that mentioned that there were more than 500 recruitment vacancies for the entire district, and the number of applicants was said to be 30,000.

she accompanied her friend to an interview at an ordinary county middle school in hunan. judging from the school conditions, this is not the best middle school in the area, but in the final interview, she saw graduate students from wuhan university, nanjing university, suzhou university and other schools. she believes that "in the current environment, everyone wants stability and hopes to have a regular job, so many people will flow into this track."

at first, zhong yi hoped to take the local job exam in her hometown.

stills from dinner for six

"everyone says that you don't have to move to a different place to take the exam, and i had never thought about leaving my hometown before. but by may, there was still no news from my family. in previous years, the announcement would usually be made in january." as the two-year deadline for graduation was approaching, zhong yi was afraid of losing her status as a fresh graduate, so she decided to take the exam for a kindergarten job in another place first.

this decision was a wise one. zhong yi later discovered, "the announcement from our hometown was only released in july, and the entire region only recruited one person. last year, there were probably more than a dozen vacancies in several districts combined, but this year there was only one person."

in addition to fewer positions, many places now limit the educational level to postgraduates in their recruitment requirements. although some places do not limit educational level, in fact, most of the candidates who enter the interview are postgraduates.

whether in terms of academic requirements or the number of people, the difficulty of taking the exam is gradually increasing. after landing the job, the true face of the work gradually unfolds.

stills from "lovely you"

in the interview, different teachers mentioned that kindergartens do not have fixed, universal teaching materials like primary schools, but children's learning courses still need to be planned and carried out in a project-based manner, so teachers need to give full play to their subjective initiative. for example, if teachers find that children are interested in a certain activity during daily activities, then teachers need to do a lot of homework after class to guide them to have a deeper understanding and complete the project.

li dongdong said that one of her friends in the same industry once took her children to explore the production and processing process of fabrics, allowing the children to explore various types of fabrics. to this end, they would also visit factories and hold theme exhibitions.

she and other teachers in her class have organized an activity to hatch chicks. before that, she had no idea how to hatch chicks, but she found that many children were very interested in chicks, so she bought an incubator and nurtured them in the classroom for more than 20 days. in the end, seven chicks were hatched. "in the process of raising chicks, we also learned little by little, such as how to light the eggs, how to care for them, how to grow the chicks, etc."

li dongdong mentioned that different kindergartens have different requirements, but the kindergarten she is in needs to have a wonderful project-based activity every semester, and each class also needs to have its own theme.

stills from goodbye our kindergarten

at present, since the entire education system has certain requirements for teachers' research capabilities, kindergarten teachers will also need to undertake certain scientific research tasks. for example, they will help the kindergarten write teaching materials, and the education group of zhong yi's kindergarten requires that teachers publish a publication every year. she was very nervous when she heard the requirement at first, but later she asked her colleagues and found that this requirement was not strictly followed, so she was relieved.

the special thing about the work of kindergarten teachers is that they need to maintain a full working state every day and respond positively to every child. at the same time, the social status they get is not completely matched.

li dongdong has a former colleague who has a postgraduate degree. when she takes a taxi to work in the kindergarten, if the taxi driver asks about her academic qualifications, she will often choose to give a lower level of academic qualifications, otherwise she will be asked by the other party: why does a postgraduate come to the kindergarten?

become a responsible kindergarten teacher

as undergraduates entering kindergartens, their advantages are not obvious at the beginning. for example, teachers with a college degree have more experience in leading classes and internships, and are quick to learn. in comparison, the abilities of kindergarten teachers who graduated from universities are not particularly outstanding.

however, li dongdong believes that the educational theories she has learned will gradually play an impact in the development of her work. she gave an example, "the view of children determines our attitude towards children. for example, when teaching children to paint traditionally, the teacher draws one stroke and the child draws one stroke, and the "likeness" is very important; now we know that children can also express themselves, and can draw a blue sun, and no longer stick to the issue of whether it looks like the sun or not."

stills from restarting life

influenced by professional educational concepts, she knows to pay more attention to children's feelings during the learning process. "we have the concept of children's philosophy. in fact, children are really philosophical. they can say some insightful truths." li dongdong's understanding is that by learning about children's views, we can respect children and adapt to their nature.

when talking about professional traits and personality, zhong yi mentioned another point. she believes that meticulousness is also important.

it is necessary to pay attention to the physical condition and safety of children. in addition, they need to be particularly careful in communicating with the children's parents. in the daily activity records, they will involve feedback and communication with parents. she was taught that if you want to post photos of children, "if you want to post, then everyone must be photographed, and the angles must be the same. you can't have one child with a front face and another with a side face."

in actual teaching, li dongdong believes that early childhood education is a process of rapid renewal. "sometimes it is a course story, sometimes it is project-based learning, and sometimes it is various case games. teachers need to constantly learn new teaching models. some of my friends who work in shenzhen will not get off work until 8 or 9 o'clock in the evening, because only after school do they have time to arrange various environmental creation work in the kindergarten."

stills from "lovely you"

in recent years, the entire social background related to the development of kindergarten teachers has been changing, which has invisibly affected the stability of this profession.

first, the decreasing trend of newborns year by year has led to a decrease in the number of children enrolled in school. in 2023, the number of children enrolled in preschool education nationwide decreased by 5.34 million to 40.93 million.

correspondingly, the number of kindergartens has also decreased significantly. the ministry of education’s press conference mentioned that in 2023, the number of kindergartens nationwide will be 274,400, a decrease of 14,800 from the previous year. in other words, in the past year, an average of 40 kindergartens were reduced every day.

the decrease in the number of students and schools has led to staff reductions in some places. taking jiangxi province as an example, data released by the education department showed that in order to reasonably arrange the recruitment plan for primary and secondary school teachers, the province plans to publicly recruit 4,968 primary and secondary school and kindergarten (including special posts) teachers in 2024, a decrease of 54.7% from the planned number of 10,967 in 2023. after the release of this data, it attracted social attention.

in the kindergarten where zhong yi works, there are many teachers who are not on the payroll. when they have dinner together, they will talk about this topic. "if the situation is not good in the next few years, the work of non-payroll teachers will be affected, and they need to think about their future. for me, the first thing is to improve my work ability."

in the future, she plans to take a postgraduate degree while working, hoping to improve her professionalism. "but when i first started working, i felt very tired after a busy week."

(the interviewees in this article are pseudonyms)