hey buddy I'm curious where you are now? how you being? hit me up wechat wuski2 . hit me up say hi

vrik

What a.ridiculous idea, children of highly mixed ages don't even belong in the same class, never mind kids and adults. A more immediate problem is that adults of mixed abilities don't belong in the same class, and this is where you made your first big mistake - students do NOT get to choose their level, the teacher does, normally after a sit down conversation/test designed to see if they can use highly secific grammatical structures. You should have fought that stupid decision when they made it, you're going to have to go back and tell them YOU will be choosing who goes into which class, it'll make your life easier and give you a chance to claw back some control over this situation.

Tell them you have goe away and done research and you have found out how different children's and adult classes are so you will not ve teaching the two together and any attempt to make that happen will result in you withdrawing your kind offer to take on extra duties. You will of course be happy to help interview the candidates for the position of children's teacher.

Also, you now understand the vital importance of placement test interviews so could they please organise an interview schedule for ANY person who wants to be part of YOUR class to be interviewed, in English by you.

You poor Bugger

I would have made HR do the course and give them compulsary home work

on the other hand you could have a lot of fun with this

first teach them soft kitty and make them come to he front of the class one by one to sing it back to the rest

next class will be have

give home work and make them come upfront to put on improvs of daily coversation in English then up load it to the company web page

give it a week and it will just be you the bird and the white cat

Why has no one mentioned the obvious? Find another job!!! Not saying quit right away. Id teach to make my living but the time i was supposed to spend preparing classes, id be preparing my CV.

Fact, your company doesnt respect you.

Fact, if you do this it will never end. People spend years trying to get out of teaching. This is a huuuge step backwards. Once your known as a teacher, you are a teacher thats it. 2 years down the road youll be on echinacities claiming you used to be a project manager making 6 figures while we all roll our eyes.

My advice is the same as everyone's', especially RandomGuy. We are all speaking as people who have lots of experience with the Chinese here. Say 'no,' but do so in a way that allows the management to back out on its own terms (so that they don't go Chinese and hold their own wrongdoings against you). Take the face fall for them (since you are too civilized to give a crap), and explain that you don't feel that you have the ESL skills. Find an ESL teacher for them (it is as easy as posting a message on your local expat forum), and have that person fight their own way through the bullcrap.

You seem to think that this is as far as the BS reaches--Chinese are takers to the core, and will not stop trying to milk you until you put your foot squarely down. They don't have any independent moral code that will stop them from leaching...they just take, and if they see implicit permission to take more, they will. Every newbie in China has, at one point, made the mistake of letting something like this slide to make management happy, and it usually ends in the same way. The next email that you get will explain that it is 'too hard' to study in a class with adults and children, so the classes will be taught separately--on your time.

If you end up teaching full time, you'll be unhappy. It isn't what you signed up for. I'd be honest with your employer and tell them what your happy, unhappy doing. Tell them to employ an English teacher. Threaten to leave and tell them you have another employer interested. If all else fails, just leave. Try to find work for yourself to do in the company. Don't be weak and give in to having to teach.

Teaching adults and and children in one class is impossible. Very stupid to even ask you. Difficult enough to teach different ages of children or ability. Adults and children together means the boss is not serious about teaching English. Would be wasting their time. Are. You going to give the adults silly games too. Teach them at the rate of a child. I find it amazing how stupid Chinese employers can be

Well it seems you have already made the decision to accept the situation and teach the class so maybe I should just keep my opinion to myself, but of course I won't

By agreeing with this business that will end in disaster (no doubt), You are giving away any respect you may have had. Oh, the Chinese will love you. They love to steamroll weak, naive foreigners. Once more, they will back over you again when they think up another scheme they can use you for. They despise wimps, and that is what you are making yourself out to be. You will never be able to redeem yourself in their eyes. But I get the idea that you are used to this. You said you feel like you weren't working for your salary because of the slow business? That's not your problem. That's the business' problem. And your self esteem or self worth is the problem here.

By all means come back and tell us the ending to this story.

Don't leave anything up to Chinese that involves you.

Tell THEM, how it is going to go and give them directions. Never let them organize these kinds of things for you because this is what happens... always some chaotic mess.

If they don't agree, then just say that is not acceptable.

Teaching children and employees sounds like a nightmare and it hasn't even started yet. They are trying to turn you into their dancing monkey. Play ball on your terms or don't play ball at all.

This is what I would do (well actually I wouldn't... but maybe the best scenario for you to keep your job):

I would explain that having both in a classroom is not optimal. It creates a horrible learning atmosphere and may be too crowded to teach classes. If they WANT to teach children, that is fine but that is not what you accepted. You will teach employees but they need to hire someone to teach the children. They may also need to hire an additional person (or just use employees) to babysit and look after the children. Both classes can be held at the same time and you will ONLY teach the employees. Make that may VERY clear as they may try to switch classes on your or something and I doubt you want to teach children.

They will probably accept and understand now that you have done the thinking for them and made your position clear.