First Two Weeks of School

It has recently come to my attention that I am quite far behind in my blog, so I will try to make amends and do my best to catch everyone up on my life. This was my second week of teaching, though only my first full week, as last week I spent a few days in Taipei at a Fulbright conference. I love my job so far - the kids are so sweet, my co-teachers are great and the school has gone out of its way to make me feel welcomed and at home.

Two of my co-teachers: on the left is Anita (Minzu) and the right is Yachi (Minghua). This picture was taken right after they announced the co-teacher pairings, and sadly, Ellie (my other co-teacher at Minghua) was not able to be there that day.

I mentioned last time that I am teaching at Minghua Junior High School this semester (next semester, I switch schools to Minzu Junior High). Supposedly, each ETA should work 20 hours a week - 16 at their school and 4 at English Village (EV starts next week). However, some of us seem to be working way beyond those hours, while others are only occupied by their schools for 11-12 hours, so it is a broad spectrum dependent on the school. Schools are not technically allowed to make us teach over 16 periods, but some schools have gotten around this rule by spreading out the hours so that the ETA is forced to be at school all day long. For example, one girl was told that she needed to be at school every morning by 7:40am, regardless of whether she is teaching then or not, and then they expect her to stay until the end of the school day. The complete contrast is one of the guys who was told by his LET to "flee" school as soon as possible after the principal falls asleep, getting him home every day by lunch time.

My schedule is pretty much amazing. I teach 19 classes of eighth graders every two weeks, and each week I have 2 resource classes, 2 hours of office hours to talk with English club students, a one-hour "tea time" with the other English teachers where we have conversations in English and a one-hour language exchange with the principal. This means that I have one real prep every other week. The two resource classes are extra tutoring classes for slower learners. Tsuili, the academic director, told me that rather than focusing on grammar rules or even trying to drastically improve their English, the school is just hoping that I can help the students to learn to enjoy English. These kids are so far behind that they have given up on their English classes. The idea is for me to make English fun for them, and to make them interested and excited to learn. So if anyone has any fun, interactive activites for junior high ESL students at an elementary level, let me know!! Tsuili originally suggested that I review phonics with them, but after teaching each class for the first time this week (one 8th grade and one 9th grade), I think I will try to use their English textbooks as a jumping off point. If I can pull a few basic ideas from them and then simplify the concepts, the students might be able to gain some concept of what is going on in their daily English classes and not be so lost. The best part of these classes is their size. Each has 6-8 students, which means I can do lots of fun games and give them lots of personal attention, unlike my other classes which have about 40 students each.

My 19 eighth grade classes are also fairly unique. Minghua decided to invent a new class for me to teach, so there was no curriculum or previous lesson plans for my class. They wanted me to see as many students as possible, and in order to see all of the eighth graders (here they are called second years; 7th grade - first year, 8th grade - second year, 9th grade - third year), I teach each class once in the period of two weeks. The downside to this plan is that I have over 800 students, each of whom I only see once every other week. Wish me luck learning names. The students, though, still have their normal English class four days a week, so this just means that for one of those class periods, they are pulled out to have a supplementary "fun" English class with me. The school told me that I could do whatever I wanted for the class, and I was like ummm - did I mention I have no teaching experience? Good good. So Ellie, Yachi and I went out to a bookstore the first week in order to find some type of textbook which I might want to use as a resource (notice: we went out the "first week of class" and not before school started; I asked them if it was important that we should know what we were teaching before the semester started, and they were like "oh no - whatever is fine..." so the class is pretty laid back lol... they just want me to make English "fun" for all of the students). We picked out a book based on English conversation. All of the lessons have a three paragraph summary about a topic (such as sports, American holidays, movies, traveling etc) with related vocabulary the students would need to discuss the issue. We chose eight lessons to use, and then I came up with discussion questions for each one. Tsuili also had the inspired idea that I should draw clipart on all of the worksheets - yes, she wanted me to personally draw the pictures and not just find images online... Therefore, I spent almost my entire Thursday this week drawing little pictures all over my worksheets. They are planning to make photocopies of all of the lessons and to then give bound copies to each of the students over the course of the next two weeks. Oh I almost forgot the best part! Ellie, Yachi and Tsuili thought it would be "cute" if my picture was on the front cover of the book. Oh yes. So now about 800 junior high students in Kaohsiung, Taiwan will have a picture of me with them always. How sweet.

For my first lesson over the past two weeks, I did a very simple get-to-know-you lesson. First, all of the students had to make namecards with their English and Chinese names on it. In each class, about 2-6 students did not have an English name, so I either helped them come up with one, or they chose one themselves. While I was giving out lovely names like "Sarah" or "Jenny" or "David," a few of them decided they wanted to be more unique with names like "Corn" or "Oh Hey" or "Fredders" (I tried to convince he he meant "Freddy," but he would have none of it) or "Handsome Man" (though I insist on calling him "Handsome Boy," much to his chagrin). Some of my favorites were a group of girls who called themselves "Pear," "Apple" and "Banana."

After coming up with English names and making their namecards, each student had to pick a partner and inerview them. I wanted them to ask: (1) What is your name? (2) How old are you? (3) What do you like to do for fun/What are your hobbies? (4) What did you do over the summer vacation? The biggest challenge of this activity was getting them to do it all in English. The mere fact that this is *English class* does not signify to them that they should only be speaking in English. Normal English classes here are taught mostly in Chinese, so my demand that they speak solely in English - no Chinese, no Taiwanese - is rather unique and very hard for them to comply with. Nonetheless, they must speak in English. Because I say so. I have discovered that being a teacher has its upsides, such as the power to force students to do whatever you want. :) It does require a lot of patience, though, as I must repeatedly explain to them that they must ask the question in English, answer the question in English and then write down their partner's response in English. For the last 10-15 minutes of class, I then had students come to the front of the class to introduce their partner to the rest of the students.

I hope that, despite my only being with them for one semester, they will be able to learn something in my class. As I mentioned before, my class is taught very differently than a normal Taiwanese English class where the teacher would lecture in Chinese for most of the period about English grammar and sentence patterns. I do not care so much about the students using perfect grammar (even when I speak, I rarely have correct grammar!), but rather, I want to boost their confidence in communicating in English and also help them to improve their pronunciation.

My classroom: I actually get my own classroom, which is a big deal. In Taiwan, junior high teachers float around to the various classrooms, while the students stay in the same class the entire day (except for music, art class, PE and other special subjects). However, the school decided to make my life easier, so they gave me my own classroom - yay! The room is fairly sterile at the moment, but I am hoping to decorate it festively for various holidays. And if any of you have fun "teacher" posters lying around your house, you should mail them to me! Another thing of note about my classroom is the lack of technology. When we visited all of the elementary schools, I was so impressed by the level of technology in the classrooms (smart-boards, flat-screen TVs etc). Not so at the junior high level. This is one of the best and wealthiest junior high schools in Kaohsiung, yet none of the normal classrooms come with any such technology (an "abnormal" classroom being a computer lab or screening room)! After talking with multiple teachers about this including junior high English teachers at other schools, this seems to be the way things are. Junior high schools do not have much technology, yet elementary schools are all trying to become more edgy and advanced in their teaching instruction. Rather interesting, yes? You can see the amount of resources poured into the elementary school system with such projects as the English Villages, the ETA program (this is the first year the program has been in the junior high schools, and even so, there is only one ETA position compared to 11 who are teaching in elementary school) and the technology used. My classroom does not even have a projector screen. This mean that should I want to use a powerpoint or to show videos, I would have to borrow both a computer/projector set and a portable screen. I find it strange that, considering the quality of the school in general (it really is amazing - I will try to take pictures soon so you can see just how beautiful the building is; it was just built 7 years ago), that it would not have higher standards for individual classroom IT equipment. I should also mention that *NO* school in Kaohsiung has air-conditioning, other than in the principal's office and in official conference rooms. Did I mention how humid it gets in Kaohsiung?...