Taiwan, Teaching, and T

Let me tell you, in one sentence, how busy the past 2 days have been.

I have not taken one, single picture with my camera!!!!

No joke. And I’m sure I don’t need to say anything else to make you understand how busy that means I must be.

I started teaching yesterday. Everyday, we wake up around 6, eat breakfast, take a taxi to the university, and teach until about 5pm, then we have dinner somewhere around, and take a taxi back to the hotel… by then it’s 7pm. That is a LONG day. Thankfully, I like my co-workers a lot.

So, basically I’m teaching at an english camp. It lasts for 2 weeks from 8am-5pm every day. There are 4 classes split by age and english level. Although the teachers do a lot of switching between classes, we each have a ‘homeroom’ where we spend the most time.

Mine is the 2nd level. ‘Lower intermediate’ is what our book is for. I have 27 kids who are all around the age of 9 or 10. I ADORE my class. Not only are they the most well-behaved of the whole camp, in my opinion, but they also speak the best english. No joke. Most of them have better english than the oldest group of 16 year olds. No joke.

Today was only the 2nd day, and each time I return from teaching another class for a while, I am bombarded (yes, that was a vocabulary word today) by all the girls in my class wanting to be part of a group hug. Haha. They are so cute!

The first day was absolutely chaotic… We basically just played games the whole day. Which was fine, I guess. Kids like games. But one of the things that I love about my class, is that they, as a whole, have the same personality as I do. Meaning, they’re totally ok with reading in their seats and participating in a class lesson, but when I tell them there’s a song or dance we’re gonna learn, they all moan. It’s funny to me, because I feel the same way. Let’s don’t do the chicken dance, and say we did.

Which, let me add, I’m pretty sure, that we did the freaking chicken dance enough times yesterday for me to never heard that song again. I mean, I never needed to hear in it the first place, but you know what I mean.

The other thing that made yesterday hard, was that a lot of things are poorly organized… And there is very little age-appropriateness. The camp has kids from age 5-18! And the schedule often has them doing the exact same things! Not ok. The other teachers and I have discussed this with the people in charge, and have sort of started getting creative and changing things up a little as we feel necessary. But I enjoy being able to be creative with that kind of thing.

Today was a thousand times better.

The only thing… is that my TA, T, is already slightly making me crazy. He stresses me out… Let me give you 2 examples of why.

1. Lunch yesterday. All of our kids eat lunch in the classroom. They’re starting to finish eating, and I’m like, “T, we need to get some kind of trash bag or something.” So, he gets 2 bags. And I’m thinking he’s gonna go around to all the desks (they’re in a big horseshoe formation) and collect the trash or something. No. He places the bag in the middle of the floor in the classroom. Ok. Strange. But I’m too tired to care or say anything. He tells the kids they can come throw their trash away.Here’s the thing… in Taiwan, they’re REALLY big on saving the earth and recycling and separating all the different kinds of trash. So, basically, the kids have to scrape all the leftover food out of their cardboard to-go lunch box into the bag, and then place the boxes in a different stack.

Not 5 kids later, we’ve got a circle of food… radiating from around the trashbag. Because everyone keeps missing the bag. I sigh because I’m so exhausted. And Timmy is stressing me out. I look at him, and I’m like, ‘ya, this is gonna be a problem’. So, he gets up, tries to open the bag a little wider… and in doing so, shakes MORE food onto the floor. I just put my head in my hands. After most of the kids had thrown away their lunch, I got some tissue paper and started hopelessly trying to clean up the mess. I look pitifully at T, and he’s like ‘i’ll get it’. But I’m just like SERIOUSLY?! WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!
But that was the first day, and i was exhausted, and hungry, and when i get tired and hungry, EVERYTHING has the potential to annoy me, so no judgment, right?
 
2. He has NO concept of how the flow of things works in a classroom. I know I’m no pro, however, I have learned, that once you have the kids’ full attention, even part of their attention, you keep it while you have it. Stay on the track you’re on, until you need to move on. If you are teaching about animals, and the kids are participating, don’t stop in the middle because you forgot to take the lunch count. Wait until you get to a natural pause. Because if you do, the kids will all get unfocused, and it’s sometimes really hard to regain that. 
Well, T has no concept of this. I’ll be in the middle of teaching. and our kids are great for the most part. And they’re all participating and paying attention for the most part. And in the middle, T will be like ‘um, excuse me, we need to take roll really fast.’ Here’s the thing. I KNOW everyone is there. I’m looking at them in their desks. I can see them all. All the desks are filled. EVERYONE is there. So, I tell him ‘well, everyone is here. just mark them all here’. And he starts calling names one by one anyway. In the middle of my lesson. REALLY? After about 7 names, I can see that the kids have started losing focus, obviously, so I look at the roll, and say the names as fast as I can to him and say ‘here’ after each one. ‘stephanie here. edward here. winson here.’ it took me all of 10 seconds. He’s all like “wow, I can’t believe you know everyones name”. 

So, after I finally get them refocused and engaged again, T remembers that yesterday the kids earned 10 beads because they won the team chant competition… (they win beads for good behavior, participation, and practicing english a lot). And decides that NOW, of all times, is the time to pass them out. Roll call was bad enough. But beads. Do you realize how much kids don’t care about anything else when you give them beads?! I tell him it needs to wait, but some of the kids have heard, and now they’re all like ‘Oh ya!!! Beads! Beads! Beads!’ 

So, now you understand why he is driving me crazy. The thing is. He’s really nice. And is totally a servant. He’ll literally do anything I ask. Like, he really isn’t trying to be a problem. But he just doesn’t understand the flow of things.

Other than that, I really am enjoying things so far. Like, I said, I LOVE my class. I’ll have to take a picture of all of us and post it. But, I’ve been too busy to even think about my camera.

Today, at one point, all the teachers were put in charge of one american game, while the classes rotated through. Mine was Duck Duck Goose. Ok, great. But for 17 year olds? I felt so bad for them. So, I told the girl in charge that I was going to teach them a different game. She said, just teach it to them and afterwards, you can teach them something else. So, I’m like ok. Fine. I KNEW they were going to hate it. So I even told them at the beginning, “Ok, I’m going to teach you a game. If you like it, we can play, if you don’t, we can play a different game.” I taught them. And they wanted to play. AND THEY LOVED IT. It totally made my day. They were so into it! Hahahaha. Who would have thought?

We also went to the basketball court today to learn some english terminology for basketball and soccer. And then they got to just play for a while. I ended up playing soccer for like 30 minutes with some students. It was beautiful. I haven’t touched a soccer ball in over a year. It felt so good… even though schooling 13 year olds doesn’t mean that much. But having played for over 10 years, that sport is in my blood.

Also, I got a huge compliment from one of the TA’s today… The TA’s always stay with the same class, even though the teachers sometimes rotate… Today, I had to teach the oldest group. The topic was “Taiwanese Local Foods”. I know nothing about Taiwanese food. And my material consisted of a list of taiwanese common food. So, I put them in groups and assigned them each 5 different foods. Each group needed to tell me about each food. I told them to do a good job because I legitimately don’t know about the food. I gave them these guidelines:

  • What is the food?
  • What things are in it?
  • How do you make it?
  • What does it taste like?
  • Where do you eat it? When do you eat it?

It was ok when they were working on it together. But it took a REALLY long time for each group to explain the foods to me. They remind me a little of me in Russia when I first got there. They’ve studied the language for a while. And it’s in their heads. But speaking is different than knowing. And it’s really intimidating. So unconfidence causes people to simply be silent…

But I knew that it was important that they get a chance to speak, even if I had to stand right next to their desk to hear, but I also knew the rest of the class was bored out of their minds because they were just sitting there.  So, anyway. Everyone did a great job. I told them at then end that they did a great job, and thank you for working hard, because I know it’s hard to speak in english in front of other people sometimes. But I felt like it didn’t go so well. I felt like they thought it was dumb and that I should try to amend my procedure for the next time.

At the end of the day, I was talking to the TA from that class, (we both love soccer and are planning to watch the world cup final together. Yay! I have a World Cup buddy here!) and she said that she had loved having my lesson. That she was so surprised with how much the students all participated during the groupwork and were willing to tell me about each of the different foods, and that the previous teacher couldn’t get them to answer any of her questions and they slept through the lesson. I feel bad for people that old having to be there, because you know their parents probably made them come. But it made me feel really good to hear that the whole thing hadn’t been a flop. I mean, you’re bound to have those moments where you go “This was a horrible idea, never do this again.” But I try to do a good job. And even though me doing a good job usually equals me drastically amending what my plan was as we’re doing it… just going on what is working so far and what isn’t, I do try to have a plan, and options, and flexibility that will make things effective. I don’t expect to be perfect, but I do want to do a good job. So, anyway, it made me feel really good after a long day, to hear a compliment and get a hug from a new friend.

Soooo anywayyyy, I’ll update you more later…

Oh, I have to say, I’m pretty sure, since I’ve been here, I haven’t eaten one thing that I’ve been completely sure about… While I loved Japanese food, I can’t say the same about Taiwanese food yet. Though I just eat things here without questioning its contents. It’s just… really different. Not bad. Just… not used to it yet.

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