Teacher Name: Rowan Kohll

Nationality: British Education: 3 A’s at college in English, History and Fine Art and a 2.1 degree in Medieval and Modern History from the University of Birmingham, 2002. Certificates: A CELTA qualification in English teaching from SwanseaUniversity in 2003.

Teaching experience:
Apart from a large amount of volunteer work before and during University, my teaching career began in China in September 2003 where I worked as an English teacher for St. Giles English School Nanning. I worked as a teacher for beginning to advanced levels of English, both at the school and at a local university and was also active in promoting the school at local events. I left Nanning after four months due to a change in ownership and radical changes of working conditions (all the other teachers resigned or were let go before me) and moved to Taiyuan to work for a branch of EnglishFirstTraining School. I stayed there for ten months (January-November) until the end of my contract (I wanted to get back to Britain in time for Christmas) and enjoyed my time there very much, working as a teacher for children, teenagers, kindergarten pupils, adults and conversation classes with sometimes as many as sixty students. I also worked to interview arriving students and test classes, and again, I was active in promoting the school and took part in a number of public relations activities. Finally, after a Christmas holiday in Britain, I returned to China in January 2005 and, after a year and a half working in small cities decided to see a big one: Shanghai. I began working for Kai En English school and have so far finished one contract and begun another, very happily, working with Kai En levels 3-7 in addition to conversation classes and interviewing new students.

Language and Cultural Experiences
Prior to coming to China I had a smattering of Welsh and was pretty good at French, and had been lucky enough to take trips to South Africa and France. Since coming to China, I have been working on my Chinese on and off and I think I’m now at about level 3. Culturally, coming to China has been a fantastic experience and these last two years have definitely been the most exciting of my short life so far.

About Myself
I come from a family of music lovers; my father plays the flute and saxophone, my brother the violin and my mother is a school music teacher. I did play the tenor horn for several years and even got quite good at it, but my heart was never in it; however, I’m happy that my artistic side has come out in my being a juggler and brilliantly creative balloon modeler.

Why I came to China.
I came to China because everybody told me it was the best place for a young teacher to start out working; but more importantly, I stay in China (now that I’m an experienced teacher with scars from three different schools to prove it) because it’s been a totally, magically wonderful experience, for two years of wonderful memories.

Why I chose to work at Kai En?
When I began looking for a school to work in Shanghai I came across Kai En soon, and it impressed me as the best place to work It is well-established and still expanding, with high standards, a specific market that didn’t need to compromise and excellent terms for its teachers.