It’s been almost a month since I last wrote a post and like always a lot has changed. However, not all the change was for the best this time.
For starters I finally had the English speech competition that I have preparing my students for all semester. Every day during nap time for months on end I worked with two students, Ethan and Izzy, on a script I wrote based on Jumanji. As 7th graders they had mastered saying words like “adventurers” and “expedition” which I thought would put them heads and shoulders above the other teams competing. I hadn’t told the students my hopes or that I thought they had a chance at placing. No, my LET happened to do that though. When my LET watched our skit for the first time. She was able to hear their pronunciation and see the props I created (a box for the board game, a big die, and large game cards with pictures), she point blank told the students they would place. Not if, but will. I trusted my LET because she used to be a judge in Taoyuan, a west coast county with students of a higher English level.
Upon the day of the competition, I met the group at the school gate, running into the two other junior high ETAs while I walked in. Like in Destination Imagination (DI), the acting and improv global competition I used to participate in as a child, the hallways of the school were littered with small pairs practicing before the event started. Some were in costume. Some kids even carried large props I could only guess as to what they’d be used for. I ran through my students' performance and after 2 run throughs we headed inside the library to sign them in. They were the last students to take a seat at the table with their number, 6. Teachers were directed to another room to observe the performances. This all made sense, however, someone didn’t hook up the camera equipment right leaving the teacher observation room with no audio. We could see our students on the TV screen, but couldn’t hear their pronunciation. I was disappointed. I had been looking forward to videotaping their performance just to keep for myself to remember the experience.
Sitting with the two other ETAs and their LETs we then took turns as it was our schools’ performance to say the lines our students were saying. It was very telling that the three of us could repeat the scripts word for word without a script while the LETs sat there. I didn’t even think about it, but I realized at the competition that the students I taught last year as 6th graders were now at the same age as my students this year. My friend, Camilla, is even their ETA.
Following the competition, we waited and waited for news on the scores. I was thinking potentially top ten out of 30. Aaron had said his students forgot a part of their script during the presentation and as sad as I was for the group not doing their best, I was excited that my students had not only remember every bit, but that their actions looked great on stage. Nevertheless, my LET came up to me three days later and looked apologetic. After all the hard work our students weren’t even ranked. They ranked the top half of the performances and didn’t even mention our students. I was surprised as was my LET. She went so far as to call the county to ask for reasoning on what they did wrong, but they said they couldn’t give us any specifics. I have never been so angry while in Taiwan than I was in that moment. I had two distraught students that thought they did a poor job when in actuality I was astounded with what they were able to pull off. I think that in the competition, which is required of all schools, is supposed to better the students’ English speaking fluency then they should be given notes or a point breakdown on their score. Even a score in general would’ve been helpful. Without pointers the students can never improve. As an English fluent speaker, I can honestly say that my students did an excellent job and I think the judges missed something and that the competition is flawed if the focus isn’t on improvement. This experience showed me that my competitive spirit goes farther than just myself. I’d be the most competitive soccer mom ever.
The week following the English competition was pretty boring I will admit. The students had midterm exams which is a busy time for them, but equates to me having no classes and being stuck at my desk. I did my best to apply to different jobs back home and work ahead in lesson planning. I was excited because I came up with a great way to discuss the case study my 8th graders were going to do on Africa’s water supply. The weeks before we had discussed the importance of water quantity and good quality. We then focused on Taiwan’s relationship with water on the west coast and how its changed since Taiwan is experiencing a drought. The students were surprised to see dams dried up and to watch videos of students getting a bucket of water to wash hands in and limited drinking water. After an activity where the students decided how they’d spend a bottle of water of their own if we were facing a drought in Taitung, my LET and I wanted to take it a step further into an area with some of the worst water problems, Africa.
In school my students do study geography, but focus primarily on Asian countries. I thought it’d be an excellent lesson for water and give us a chance to address a culture and way of life they aren’t familiar with. We watched videos of children getting water and I was able to bring into play my environmental science background as we spoke about the impact on education and gender equality that stems from water issues. To truly help my students understand the hardship involved, my LET and I created a relay race. A child or woman will typically travel 3.6 miles to get water and the water container is on average 40 lbs if not heavier. We filled up two water jugs that the basketball team uses to refill water bottles for each team and had them race without sloshing water. We slowly increased the distance they had to travel, but obviously never having them walk almost 4 miles each seeing as that would take all of class. What I failed to take into account was that we were doing the activity on concrete, in the shade, and some of my students work on farms on their weekends. All these factors made the challenge harder than I anticipated. I wanted the students to have fun mind you, but also to understand the struggle it takes to get water every day.
For the next section of 8th graders I had planned to completely change the activity. Instead of a relay race, we were going to organize them into households. They would have to walk to the “river”, a table in the back of the room, and upon answering a water questions first would then color in a bucket of water. That sounds easy enough right? The student would return to their desk and discuss what they would use the bucket of water for. Like our previous class discussing daily water usage, each action like cooking noodles, farming, to washing your face would require X amount of buckets of water. After getting enough buckets from multiple trips, the students would bring their finished and colored buckets to the “town” where the LET and I would tell them if their water was clean or not. Sometimes we could tell them the water had too much sediment, or that there were bacteria in it that would get them sick which would require them to return to their desks and continue with taking trips to get water. Despite not being able to do this activity in class, being able to come up with it to have the students comprehend how much water and trips to get water would take out of their day was a fun and creative experience for me. It reminded me a little of last semester when I created the whole curriculum of the class to be a trip abroad to practice English. I realized that all these creative ideas that I have included in my own teaching have stemmed from my time as a student myself at Quest Academy, a small private school that highlighted creativity and experiential learning over test scores. I never did forget anything about my trip through Ellis Island or my time as a shoe maker in the early colonies. Good education and values really do come from early learning.
Now if you are reading that paragraph closely you realize that despite teaching everyday, that I wasn’t able to get to use the water activity I developed to replace the relay race for the other section of 8th graders. Why you may ask? Because the utopia that Taiwan has created since the pandemic just started of being proactive has finally come crashing down. Originally it started with a few cases that the government was able to track down and quarantine, but a cluster originating from a pilot that was only one shot into getting vaccinated blew up with hot spots at a red light district tea house and a lion’s club meeting, an old boy’s club. From there it has spread all down the west coast. Taipei schools and then New Taipei City schools went online and only two days later the rest of Taiwanese county schools followed. It was going to be a quick closure, just two weeks and in the beginning I was optimistic. However, the proactiveness of the government seemed to stop there. Having looked at the other countries and how they handled lockdowns, the Minister of Health thought a fast lockdown would result in people complying at first, but then becoming stir-crazy. I get it, I do. Nevertheless, their inability to close transportation paths and limit travel resulted in people in the city returning to relative homes in outlying counties. We even met Taipei people in GuanShan, the small town I was located last year. That’s a far way to drive for ramen. The free travel now has led to more cases and the continuation of online school into june at the earliest.
Obviously I wasn’t going to be one of the people found traveling when the other counties weren’t handling it well, so my friends and I found ways to have fun and social distance. Our dragon boat practice which had a limited amount of participants after Fulbright asked us not to travel, turned into kayaking on a pond in Chishang instead. It was a great change because I can’t imagine rowing a dragon boat made for around 15-20 rowers to be paddled around by 5 rowers with me as a steerer *yikes!*. I made the most of the trip up to Chishang and accompanied both Vince and Aaron into the rice fields, filming a dance video for Vince’s Instagram and getting a lesson in drone work from Aaron. I’m glad to have Aaron’s footage to work with now that I don’t have classes.
Along with boating (which is now not an acceptable activity to limit tourism to the area), Kendra and Amanda moved up our planned camping trip. Kendra’s old LET has a architect friend who is currently building a campsite up the coast. We were invited up for a weekend to stay on their site before it is officially open to the public. What I heard in this invite was “please come hang out at a campsite that you can see the beach and mountains while you eat breakfast that isn’t open to the public, so you would be by yourself.” An excellent idea!
I’ve never gone real camping. There were a few trips in middle school, but I don’t think I was ever responsible for putting the tents up and we all still had access to the parents’ cabin with running water, ac, and tv access. Sean has been wanting to go camping for some time, but I kept putting it off nervous that we needed permits, but in actuality all you need is to get permission from whoever owns the land. -I’m sorry Sean-
I would call our camping more akin to glamping. We had a 4 person tent which is just big enough for three people if one of the people brings a one person air mattress that takes up a bunch of space. Surprisingly, we also had access to a half kitchen and an industrial size freezer and fridge. Joining us was Andy, Kendra’s old LET, and his girlfriend, Lily. We had wanted to go stand up paddle boarding, also known as SUP here, but the shop was closed because of COVID precautions. Instead, we went to a beach and hung out for a little and then had some bubble tea flavored shaved ice. Shaved ice isn’t like a snowcone. It’s closer to ice cream that has been shredded, so it's lighter and flakier when you get a spoonful. While we ate our shaved ice we played some uno, continuing to play when we got back to the campsite. The rest of the night was spent playing card games, setting up the tent, and drinking. I haven’t had such a laid back night with Kendra and Amanda before because one of us always has to drive home and leave early.
We were invited to join Andy, Lily, and the friends who owned the campsite as they went night-fishing. I have gone fishing while in Taiwan. I am not too fond of it though, only going to accompany Sean on his goal to at least catch one fish while in Taiwan. I was more than happy to stay at the campsite and continue eating fresh pineapple and catching up, so when the campsite owners told us we needed boots to go we used it as an out and thank god we did. Night fishing was a lot more intensive than they led us to believe. They weren’t going to be in a boat and fishing, but standing in a river that has had snakes in it in the past, hence the need for boots. With no luck fishing, they switched to catching shrimp. After 3 hours they returned just before 11:30 with buckets of shrimp. Cooking them up we were treated to Amis style shrimp which are seasoned, tiny shrimp that are stir fried enough that you eat the entire shrimp with the casing on. It was oddly crunchy, but once I got over what I was eating they weren’t half bad. Finally at 1am we headed off to bed.
I forgot that sleeping outside I might hear some different sounds. If Andy hadn’t introduced us to the sound of the barking deer earlier in the day I would’ve been alarmed as I went to sleep. I maybe got 4 hours of sleep before the tent became too hot and bright to continue sleeping. After a lazy morning of eating the apples we brought and looking out at the ocean in the distance, we packed up the tent and made the trek back home.
With all the changes with COVID I am glad I was able to fit in one last little trip with my friends especially because post-fulbright we will all be scattered to different countries. Amanda’s moving to a different Taiwanese county while Kendra is off to London.
Without glamping and online school where I am not given any responsibility or way to help my LETs out planning, my days are spent at home with my roommates straight chilling. I’ve got ramen, dumplings, and enough bao to last for weeks and enough movies on my que to keep me occupied.
In less than 30 minutes we get an email from Fulbright about any updates on our situation and whether or not we can return home early, so we shall see.
