An Introvert's Terrifying Experience Teaching: Kids
Everyone has to start somewhere!
teacher01
Posted on: Jun 30, 2025
Updated on: Oct 8, 2025
My introvert credentials were pretty straightforward -- terrified of public speaking, super quiet in groups (if there are 3 people including yourself: its a group), and really most importantly, happy to be silent.1 There are plenty of situations where I can speak at length, teaching being one, but if the conversation calls for silence, I am the first to oblige. This really puts me on the far end of the "spectrum" so to speak, or differentiates from what I call the moderate introvert.2 For me, teaching as a job seemed legitimately terrifying.
As bad as that was, teaching kids actually exacerbated my worries. The idea of being responsible for a class of little humans and for their English lessons was cause for deep anguish!3 All I could think about was what if I lost one of the kids somewhere, or what if they hated the class and never wanted to learn English again as a result of a bad activity. I still remember when a parent thrust her young son into my hands and I suddenly panicked that I might drop him or injure him somehow and just kept him at arms length not sure what to do, sweating profusely.
If this seems at all familiar to you, then here is what I did to mitigate the absolute sheer panic:
1. Be Upfront About it: When I first interviewed I made it abundantly clear that I was highly motivated, but that I was very shy. I wanted to create engaging classroom environments where learning and fun happen together,4 but I really wanted to take baby steps and ease my way into teaching if at all possible. Thankfully the interviewer was super sympathetic and promised to give me extensive observational training, which they delivered on.5
2. Have a Plan: Having a detailed lesson plan was an absolute game changer, because whenever I would start to feel nervous, I would just focus on what the next step in the classroom activities were. I felt that the lesson plan was my crutch of sorts -- I could never suddenly not know what to do, as I had a set list, and as long as I was following what I had organized, I was going to be okay.6
3. Lean on Your Coworkers: The great thing about teaching kids in a for profit were the presence of Chinese teaching assistants. I was able to ask them for advice and guidance many times and having a great relationship with them meant that each time I went into the classroom I knew someone in there had my back. I found this wasn't always the case with some foreigners, who surprisingly were either condescending or outright rude. Similarly, some of the assistants were fresh out of college, thus equally unsure at times, but setting up a shared goal for both of us and creating a unified vision helped create a true team dynamic instead of a boss/assistant approach.7
4. Understand the Assignment: I realized as a male teacher, especially when at a for profit, that the parents really wanted an outgoing boisterous environment. Where I was teaching, there was a prevailing stereotype (however inaccurate)8 that female teachers were more quiet / soft and in some schools this is preferred (in fact some job ads will specifically say they want women only),9 but whether these stereotypes are true or not, I understood what the school was asking and made sure to incorporate as many out of seat activities as possible. Seeing the kids, the parents and other staff really embrace my activities, gave me huge confidence to continue growing and experimenting with new things.
5. Work With the Curriculum: I found utilizing the provided teaching materials as a guide worked quite well and gave a routine structure. This might seem obvious, but I often saw teachers do the opposite. To be fair, they had valid complaints -- the material can be boring, often times years or sometimes decades old, poorly thought out or too academic for the age level, etc., and I didn't disagree, but I also felt the school ultimately paid for this, used it in their sales pitch to the parents, and these were the resources provided to us. Refusing the school's materials and writing my own curriculum from scratch would have been a huge undertaking.10
Even with all of the above, I still started off very rough. I remember the sales team being so annoyed with me during my first demos, because they felt I ruined their commissions, but over the course of the year I improved dramatically and when I let the school know I was turning over, the administrator offered me anything to stay -- literally asking point blank: What's your salary number?11 I felt sorry to leave them, but accomplished that I had overcome a huge fear. Obviously this is super ridiculous to a normal, non introvert but if anyone out there happens to feel how I did, hope this can help you too!
The better model is probably the energy model, but that seemed to take this to an academic place, definitely something to revisit since I want to cover introversion / extroversion in other posts.
A person who actually enjoys extroversion as a trait but feels uncomfortable expressing it due to reasons, and who might be perfectly fine with teaching. Another name for this might be "extroverted introvert".
I knew many other teachers who saw it completely the opposite, i.e., teaching kids was the lowest stakes since none of the kids would remember anyway and the job was more about pleasing the parents -- at least at a for profit.
This was for a private, for profit kids school, so fun, was of course, paramount.
At the time I had no idea how lucky I was that the school provided this training and also glad that I was willing to ask. I cover this in more detail in an upcoming post. It's worth noting that this is one advantage of catching a school in the right place, right time, where they were willing to accommodate me because they desperately needed to fill open positions.
This does sound really ridiculous as I type it out, but it's true so, yeah.
Working with the Chinese assistant also goes both ways as they may have their own ideas on what they think the class should cover or what activities the students should do, so it's definitely something that has to be negotiated, but the benefits to me were extraordinary relative to any minor disagreements, but again I knew foreigners who saw it very differently.
This was actually a topic of discussion among the foreign teachers. The parents overwhelming believed this though and because it was a for profit, if they wanted a teacher of a particular gender because that led to an "ideal" class, then they were going to get it.
There's a cynical take here. I personally never saw that myself, but have heard many stories.
There is an argument for a teacher to do this, if they feel that the material is factually incorrect instead of being simply older, or if they are going to be teaching at the school for years, or even if they themselves will be a career teacher for life. It absolutely makes sense to create all of this material, but otherwise, it just seems like additional work for modest gains. I also always added additional activities on top as the school curriculum is never enough to cover the class at any age level (in my experience) - and I do cover this more in an upcoming post.
There are other examples I could give here, but will leave that for another post I think.