I'm still shaking...

I teach at the Beijing campus of a US school (the US campuses are K-12, my school only has grades 7-11). All of our students are Chinese and they will complete their schooling at one of our US campuses before going to university somewhere in the west, most likely in the States. These parents are not only spending a lot of money, but they are also taking quite a risk. Let me explain.
Chinese education is all about tests. Students take a high school entrance exam to determine which high school they can go to. They are further arranged in classes according to their test scores (the students take all their classes together as a class). Every so often they take exams, the results of which are used to rearrange the classes once again putting those with the best results together and so forth. This grading of both schools and classes is important because the best schools are allotted the most resources and the best classes are given the best teachers. It's also really important because university admissions are based solely on the students' results on the college entrance examination. These exams require students to memorize massive amounts of knowledge (However, the Chinese education system is entirely focused on memorization and includes almost no higher order thinking skills). By choosing to attend an international school like mine, the students are not learning (memorizing) the information on the college entrance exam and are therefore precluding themselves from attending most Chinese universities. While the 7th, 8th and 9th graders could still leave our school and attend a Chinese high school, the situation is further confused by a system called the Hukou. Hukou is a family registration system which determines a number of things, including where you can go to school. If your Hukou is not in Beijing then you cannot attend a Beijing public school. Also, not only are the college entrance exams different in different provinces but if your hukou is in a province other than Beijing you are required to get a higher score to qualify for a Beijing university. Many of our students are from Beijing (i.e. their Hukao is in Beijing), but some of them have lived in Beijing for most of their lives, but because their Hukao is not in Beijing they either have to attend a private school or go back to the province of their Hukao (they also have to return to the city of their Hukao to renew their national ID cards, get a passport and my other things). A few of our students are even from entirely different provinces and only get to go home during breaks. Thus, these parents, and of course their children, are taking a great risk. If they do not do well they will have trouble getting into a good university (and in China, it's all about the ranking). Even if they get into a good university they need to be well prepared enough for the university and to be able to complete their education in English.
This takes us to this afternoon. Today after school we had a parents' meeting. The purpose of meetings like this is to educate the parents on what we do, introduce them to the foreign staff like myself and answer their questions. Because they are taking such a risk with their children's education the attendance rate at these meetings is very high. After a school-wide meeting where the administrators spoke to the parents, we had grade level meetings. There were 1-2 foreign teachers, 1-2 translators, and the class advisor in each grade level meeting (along with the parents of course). I was assigned the 10th grade because while I do teach 7th-grade general science, I mostly teach 10th grade. I teach 10th-grade chemistry and 10th-grade calculus. The other teacher who mostly teaches 10th grade had to be out all this week so I was the only foreign teacher (which also meant we had only 1 translator). The class advisor greeted the students and began to introduce me, but I told him I could introduce myself. I introduced myself in Chinese, as I had planned, and then gave some explanations of the chemistry and calculus courses. I gave the explanations in English, but when we got to chemistry some of the translation was incorrect. So I re-explained, in English. The translation was better, but it was still a little bit off so I explained in Chinese. At this point, you could tell the parents were impressed. When I had given my introduction in Chinese they were impressed, but this of course went well beyond introducing myself. After the introduction of the courses, I opened it up for questions. Some of the questions I understood and some of them I needed a translation. I answered the questions in English initially, but as the time went on I was answering more and more of the questions in Chinese. It sort of felt like an inquisition. I know the parents were curious, and I know they are very concerned with their children's futures, but man oh man some of the questions. I got questions about how do we teach chemistry without a laboratory (this is one of my biggest issues), will we learn the whole textbook, and how does this course compare to the Chinese national curriculum. The last question was challenging because I've never taught in a Chinese public school. It was also a question I had to answer carefully so as to not insult anyone. Remember the Chinese curriculum focuses on memorizing. From talking to my previous students I'm quite sure the Chinese curriculum requires students to memorize a lot of useless information and to doesn't work much on analyzing and other important skills, but I couldn't say that. I had to simply speak about the differences diplomatically and avoid any sort of judgments. Even though I could not address every question and topic without a translator, I'm quite sure the parents were very impressed (matter of fact one of my colleagues, who doesn't speak English by the way, told me they were really impressed). I, on the other hand, was so anxious I didn't even realize until I finished, how much I was shaking!