Most Canadian teachers would find it strange to spend time with their students on weekends or be included in their family outings, but it was a common experience for Richmond teacher Jennifer Kugelman while on exchange in China.
Kugelman, who spent two years in Shenzhen, said students there tend to think of teachers almost like surrogate parents.
"The bond ... between teachers and students is so strong that (after graduation) they come back just to visit," she says.
The Richmond school district hopes that bond is strong enough to reach across the ocean and attract international students willing to shell out tens of thousands in tuition for an English-language education.
The district's exchange program with Shenzhen started seven years ago with a single teacher and this year has expanded to 15. Teachers are paid by Richmond to give instruction in English to Chinese students and the schools there reimburse the district.
It is not a direct peer-to-peer exchange in that there are no Chinese teachers in Richmond classrooms. However, groups of students and teachers from Shenzhen visit the city and its schools each year. The district's international programs director, Richard Hudson, describes it as more of "an exchange of ideas."
The Chinese students benefit from a higher standard of English instruction from the Richmond teachers, and in time, Hudson hopes the district will benefit from international students with a better grasp of English.
Richmond charges the Chinese schools for the teachers' services, so the district ends up with a small return on the program.
"This piece of what we're doing isn't a huge revenue generator for us. It's the long-term program we're focused on, which is working quite well I think. In the long-run I expect to see more and more students coming to us."
The program has the added benefit of giving Richmond teachers a better understanding of Chinese culture, an advantage given the relatively large proportion of Chinese students in the district.
Kugelman says she understands now why Chinese parents push their children so hard in their studies and why students who recently immigrated from China are so fixated on their numerical grades. It's because Chinese students take a huge, multiple-choice test in Grade 9 that determines whether they will be allowed to continue in high school at all and if so, which high schools they can attend.
"A lot of teachers find that it's the Chinese students who always care about the marks and come report card time they want to know if they can bump their mark up maybe one per cent, two per cent, because it makes such a big difference. And I can understand why they do that now, too, because of course in China, the mark is everything," she says.
"They need to stand out. They need to be exceptional to even make it into high school, to make it into Grade 10."
It usually takes a couple of years for these students to understand that Canadian colleges and universities look for well-rounded candidates who are more than just strong academic performers, she says.
Kugelman also learned in Shenzhen why Chinese students are generally less likely to ask questions in class or participate in discussions. When she arrived in China, she was surprised to find her students were largely silent and expected her to lecture the entire period.
"I learned at the beginning of my first year there that students are silent because it's not good to ask questions ... because it means you weren't paying attention or you weren't understanding, you didn't know the answer," she says. When she took a more interactive approach in her class, she was frequently told by her students: "This is not the Chinese way." She would then explain that she was trying to prepare them for a Canadian classroom environment.
Fellow Richmond teacher Jennifer Vi, who spent nine months in Shenzhen, said she found the Chinese school system more restrictive of teachers than its Canadian counterpart. Vi said there were strict rules about what to teach and how to teach it.
For English, she says, "Everyone (across the country) was using the same text book and probably on the same page."
Internet restrictions in China also posed teaching challenges for Kugelman.
"Last year I was in charge of the school's first English debate team, so we had to do a lot of research on some pretty controversial topics like euthanasia or performance enhancement drugs in sport and there was a lot I could not find using the regular Internet in China," she says. She had to use a UBC Internet portal in order to access the websites she needed.
Kugelman has been back in Canada for six months and recently celebrated her 29th birthday. Despite the time apart, many of her Chinese students remembered and wrote her letters. It meant a lot that the students cared enough about the relationship to make the effort, she said.
"You don't always develop that here, as a teacher."
BY THE NUMBERS
Many school districts are increasing their efforts to attract international students, in part because of the tuition fees they pay to the district. Here is a breakdown of the number of international students in a selection of districts, what they pay and what administrators are doing to attract them.
Vancouver
Number of students: 1,561*
Tuition: 13,000 per year
Marketing initiatives: Overseas agencies, working with trade commissioners at Canadian embassies and partnering with provincial and national associations to promote Canadian public education abroad.
*Vancouver data is for the 2012/2013 school year, as numbers for the current year are not available.
Richmond
Number of students: 625
Tuition: $13,000 per year
Marketing initiatives: Online advertising, overseas agencies, direct contact with schools, education fairs. Sends teachers to Shenzen, China on exchange. International education team travels 70-80 days a year to countries including Brazil, Mexico, China, Japan and Korea.
Coquitlam
Number of students: 1,150
Tuition: $13,000 per year
Marketing initiatives: Online advertising, education fairs, overseas agencies, building relationships with schools and districts abroad.
Surrey
Number of students: About 900
Tuition: $12,100 per year plus $800 for medical insurance
Marketing initiatives: Online advertising through videos and social media, overseas agencies, establishing relationships with schools and districts abroad, meeting parents in client countries, attending embassy-organized education fairs.
