Co-teacher pairings, at last...

This past week is at the top of my list for "most stressful weeks of my life." It was the end of a three-week period in which we were meeting and visiting with all of the co-teachers. The first week was a lot of fun. Meeting new people and getting to know them is always exciting, even if it is extremely tiring for me. The co-teachers were all so wonderful, and I just enjoyed hanging out with all of them, without the pressure of feeling like I was being "interviewed" or "examined" like several of the other ETAs felt. The second week began to be slightly more stressful, because although we were no longer with the LETs every day, everyone was picking their favorites while trying to judge which were the favorites of everyone else. The LETs also began applying a lot of pressure to certain ETAs, inviting them out to dinner/lunch, singing at KTV or shopping etc. Now I love being wined and dined, but I must admit that the stress of trying to weigh schools - which liked me the best, which I liked the best and which I knew my friends liked the best (therefore, schools I would rather not pursue so they could have them) - really got to me by the end. Last week was the culmination of all that pent-up anxiety. My problem is really that I want everyone to be happy. I am a people-pleaser by nature, so if everyone around me is happy, then I know I will be happy too. I would rather not get my first choice, just so that someone else will not be miserable for an entire year. However, I also do not like to let people down, which means that if a school really wants me, I have a hard time telling them "no", even if I would prefer not to go there.

In the process of trying to avoid drama and to make everyone else happy, I failed royally. The problem, as my roommates all told me, was that I was sadly one of the most popular ETAs. I do not know why - I mean, I might have the least teaching experience of all 12 of us. If I was an LET, I do not think I would pick me. But apparently, my blond hair and "American body" (yes, I do have a good story to explain that one - check a future posting) and winning personality (?) made me quite popular with all of the schools. I believe that I just fit the stereotypes of what the Taiwanese perception of an "American" is. There are three blonds in the program, but Kevin is a little too over the top (the LETs say he talks too much...) and Kaitlyn is quieter (comes across as more shy). Many schools also were blatantly discriminatory, making it subtly known that they did not want an Asian (two ETAs are ABCs) or only wanted a girl. Whatever the reason, for the first time in my life, I was the "popular kid." And being popular is only fun when everyone wants to be your friend, not when it means they start fighting over you. Then it is stressful.

The last week was also very tiring because we visited all of the schools. The fun part about the school visits was (a) seeing the schools (some of them are so beautiful! and they are only elementary schools!! makes me want to see the high schools...), (b) getting free stuff and (c) the children. The schools showered us with gifts, each determined to make a lasting impression on us. We received several baseball caps, a shirt, flowers, chocolate, food of all kinds and lots of bubble milk tea (珍珠奶茶 - my favorite!) and juice. While I love bubble milk tea, juice with jelly in it is not my favorite, especially when it is the sour plum juice. Think salty, sweet and sour all simultaneously. If it was just sweet and sour, that would be fine. It is the salty flavor that repels me... None of us have figured out why it is such a popular drink here. The other fun part of the school visits was seeing some of the children. The schools would show us all around their facilities and had asked some of the children to perform. We were entertained by school bands (way better than most middle school bands I have heard - and these were only 5-6th graders!), singing children, and demonstrations of swimming (yes, the school had an indoor pool), volleyball, table-tennis and gymnastics. Of course for each of these schools, they were number one in some area, be it an athletics team (the principals' offices were usually lined with trophies), astronomy (one school had an entire astronomy museum on one floor with a telescope in a special viewing room) or creative arts. Additionally, the schools had amazing technology, with special media viewing rooms and smart boards in the English classrooms. Wake did not get smart boards until last year, and even then, they were only installed into library study rooms! The architecture of the schools was also very impressive. My favorite looked exactly like a fairytale castle. The designated English classroom for the ETA even had a tower with a spiral staircase! We were all blown away by the quality of the schools. I kept wondering what education in the States would look like if our government took education as seriously as they do here.

The schools were all so sweet to us, but the process was still very laborious and exhausting. We spent long days riding a bus around Kaohsiung and tramping up and down stairs at all of the schools in intense humidity. The biggest flaw of Taiwanese schools is that there is no air-conditioning - truly unacceptable for the climate lol.

Last Wednesday afternoon was speed-dating, and on Thursday, they revealed the pairings. I would say that Fulbright did everything in their power to make an already stressful process more stressful. Knowing and loving all of our Fulbright staff as I do, the only thing I can think of is that they did not fully realize how stressed-out and angst-filled we all were, despite the fact that we were repeatedly telling them... Even though most of us knew that all of the schools and LETs were all wonderful and that we would all be happy at any of them (well, almost all of us would be), we were all still incredibly stressed-out. It was all we could talk about with each other for the past two weeks, all any of us could think or dream about. *[footnote]* Visiting the schools the final week was fairly pointless, because although I enjoyed seeing each of the schools, by that point in the process, most of the schools were already spoken for by 1-4 of us. Certain schools were clearly off-limits, either because the school had made their preference obvious or because an ETA had chosen that LET as their best friend the first week. The rest of us would just trail behind, admiring the school, yet kind of wishing we could have stayed on the air-conditioned bus. I for one, was terrified to as much as smile at certain LETs, for fear of encouraging even more schools to think I liked them. Then by the time we reached speed-dating on Wednesday, a good third if not half of the schools already had their ETA picked-out, making some of the conversations rather awkward. Both of these activities were good ideas - it was important to see the schools where you might be teaching and it was also nice to finely see all of the co-teachers who were paired up for the year (remember, there are so many schools in the program this year, that most ETAs will be switching schools with the new semester, and a few will even have two schools they commute between during a single semester) together as a unit where you could ask them questions one-on-one. However, the sequencing of orientation could be improved upon by switching around some of the activities. In my opinion, we should have visited all of the schools first, so that we would have started out with our impression of the teachers being linked with their schools. Then I would have had speed-dating to ask all of the important questions from the start and to actually have the opportunity of meeting and talking with each of the schools (most ETAs never met all of the schools until that final day - to be fair, it was very difficult with 22 schools and close to 40 co-teachers compared to only 12 of us). Also, several of us ETAs thought it would have been helpful to start the process off with a small pamphlet which listed all of the schools, their key characteristics (student body demographics etc) and what they were looking for in an ETA (teaching experience, non-Asian, gender etc). The LETs could also be given a similar pamphlet about us, with our brief bio along with what we were looking for in a school (preferred age/grade range, low-income etc). If people would have been honest from the start about what exactly they were looking for, I think it would have been easier to match each other up with the best results. Next, I would recommend another 1-2 days of orientation activities where we were all together so that LETs and ETAs could spend more concentrated time pursuing the pairings in which they were interested. At this point, we could do our rankings and be paired up with each other. Then the week of orientation sessions which we started with this year, could be put at the end, and used to actually get to know your specific co-teachers better. I think it would be useful to have time to learn each other's teaching styles and personalities, and to do all of the practice teaching with the person/people you were actually going to be teaching with for the entire year.

At any rate, the moment you have all been waiting for: which school did I end up with on Thursday? I got my favorite - the middle schools. :) I love the LETs so much and am very excited to be teaching older kids! I was not sure I was going to survive a whole year singing the Hokey Pokey... Sadly, there were only two middle schools, and both were paired together, which meant that only one person could have them. Several other people really wanted junior high school, and while I was prepared to let them have it (and even worked fairly hard to get them to become friends with the co-teachers), my efforts were ultimately unsuccessful. By the end of the week, I had realized the junior high schools were not going to pick the other girl. All of the other ETAs kept sitting me down to lecture me about needing to be more selfish and to quit worrying about making other people happy. I had to finally realize that the only person I could be responsible for was myself. People are responsible for their own happiness and for making their own way in the world. While I can try to love and to help others the best that I can, in the end, I can only do so much. By and large, I believe that most of the pairings turned out really well, and I sincerely hope that the more unexpected pairings will also work out well.

I have to admit, though, I am not a complete martyr and am extremely happy with my schools! :) I will be at Minghua Junior High School the first semester with Ellie and Yachi. The second semester, I will be at Minzu Junior High with Anita. The new semester starts this Monday! More details soon.



**[Sidenote: Most of you are aware that I do not handle decisions well. I can track this personality trait of mine developmentally back to the second grade. At a parent-teacher conference, my teacher Mrs. Fendley told my mother that she had noticed that I often had problems making decisions. She would notice me sitting at my desk, solemnly staring at my paper. Upon asking me what was wrong, I would worriedly respond by asking her whether I should color the girl's dress green or purple. You see, I was too terrified of coloring the dress the *wrong* color, that I could not make such an important decision lightly. The past two weeks here in Kaohsiung, I kept asking myself which color I should use for the girl's dress, and I just did not know! It did not matter that I loved all of the co-teachers and would honestly have been happy anywhere, I just could not decide and was so worried about wanting everyone to be happy.]