Member-only story
I Got a Crash Course in For-Profit Education in Shanghai, China
This is what it’s like on the front lines
From 2008 to 2010, I worked in what is easily the strangest job I have yet to claim on my resume; Foreign Language Trainer for Disney English. If that sounds like corporate-speak for English Teacher, it is. But Disney liked to do things their own way at every turn.
To start, the company insisted we all look the same. Each trainer needed to come early, clock in, then get changed into a blue, company polo, slip into some polyester pants posing as khakis, and black shoes. Lined up like low-rent soldiers, we stood watch until the students arrived with their parents clutching their child’s tiny hand.
We didn’t have to wait long. Parents walked in the doors the moment they opened. Our center happened to be in a location called Sky Mall, a newer shopping center in Shanghai. Despite the locked front doors, a few parents discovered the service elevator open only to mall workers and rode it up to bang on our center’s glass doors until they were let in well before we were open.
I’m a rule follower and an American, so to me the idea of sneaking into a mall in order to be early for an English class seems completely unnecessary. But moves like that showed me I had a lot to learn about Shanghainese parents…
