Fulbright tries to support us as much as possible so that when we enter the classroom we know how to help and what we can do to aid the students English competency. There are workshops, reflections, and observations that all check up on our progress of becoming a teacher. With another semester down and the new ETAs coming to Taiwan my role is set to change.
Even with COVID precautions surprisingly, Taiwan was able to fly more than 100 ETAs to the island on January 1st right before a new travel regulation would have prevented it. Their arrival symbolizes a change to the group dynamic. Instead of the six of us in Taiwan there will be an additional 14 new ETAs calling Taitung home. Arriving on the 23rd after 2 weeks of quarantine, a week of self-help, and a negative COVID they arrived in the city. It was definitely a hard week. We balanced finishing school and lessons with trying to find time to answer questions and make ourselves available to them as leaders.
The last week of school was stressful as a result of the move and final tests. I am not in charge of grading or proctoring any tests which takes some of the pressure off. I think my Super MARIO review game based on a template from my advisor took the cake for the best activity in class for the semester. With 16 questions set up in a Jeopardy style grid, each team got to pick a box and then answer the question. If they answered right they got to open the treasure box. The box could either have coins (+ points), bullets (- points), or a green turtle shell (take another team’s points away). For the 9th graders, I thought the students were mature enough to handle throwing in some blue turtle shells that would allow the team to switch points with any of the other teams. It was interesting to see how each class handle the power of taking and giving points. One 7th grade class decided they hated the Bowser team so when either of the other teams got green turtle shells, they would hit Bowser. Bowser went into negative points! My favorite though was the 9th graders where one team was getting really cocky having missed all the bullets and just constantly gaining more coins until the second to last question another team got a blue turtle shell and switched points resulting in the original leading team to have one point. It was hard to settle the class down after that switch. Even my LET was laughing along with the students.
Along with the frantic reviewing before finals it was interesting to hear the stories and gossip from other teachers about their expectations for the upcoming tests. I oversee an English study hall period at night on Mondays and one of the nicest 7th grade girls is always studying diligently. However, my LET leans over and tells me that her elementary school teacher thought she never had any potential. The old teacher literally told her parents that her best option for her future was to get married as soon as she could. That comment really upset me. To label someone who just might not love to study as a lost case so young shows the need for teachers that see the best in students. Jay, a 7th grader who would never complete any homework or in class worksheets at all in the beginning of the year, has completely changed his persona. Now with two close friends, I’ve seen him completing work. He still faces some challenges to overcome like the fact he ran out of school when he was upset about how he was being treated, but I’ve seen monumental changes in his personality and presence at school. It is uplifting to see the positive impact Chulu teachers have on the student body.
Following the final testing sessions, Chulu hosted a day of presentations. Each 7th grader created a website through google and a poster to present in a 5 minute speech about what they achieved and learned in their experiential courses this semester. The students milled around listening to all the 7th grade speeches and then you picked your favorite to vote for, putting stickers stating “Good Job”, “hardworking”, and “very special” on their poster. Directors then counted the stickers to name the most successful students in an all school assembly. 8th graders and 9th graders followed suit in a different format. In small groups they gave powerpoint presentations highlighting one of their projects in their experiential class this semester. Students presented websites they created, 3-D printed fidget spinners, and even the designs for a new coffee table that they crafted out of wood for the Principal’s office. It was interesting how much I picked up from the presentations seeing as they were all in Mandarin.
The director hyping up a group before their presentations
I can't believe my students could actually plan and make some of the items they presented. The Totoro speaker even worked!!
My favorite part of the day was when listening to the 7th grade presentations I was the designated “teacher leader” of a group of some 9th grade boys. Shane was sweet and kept making sure I could see the iPads displaying the different websites and that the 7th graders spoke a little slower to help me understand. I think the position of the “teacher leader” was supposed to make sure they were paying attention and involved in asking the students questions about their experiences. With my limited Mandarin skills I was at times lost in the parts of their presentation on coding and computer lingo that they don’t exactly teach in Chinese 101. Yet, I was still expected to ask questions of the students. I understand the need to question their experience and have them add more of their opinions, but I don’t think out of a group of 4 other native speakers that I should’ve been the one asking the questions. The 9th graders left me to ask as many as I could think of to fill the 4 minutes time slot for questions after each speech. So kind of them. You would be surprised how many questions fit in that time allotment.
How did the students think the directors would be able to determine which group their stickers were for exactly?
One of the final presentations I really loved was the culmination of the 8th grader’s International Communication Course. We spent the whole semester learning how to travel, navigate an airport, buy a plane ticket, and find different tourist attractions. For a final project we had them do everything we did as a class, but for another country of their choosing in smaller groups. They made big posters which we hung up and voted on. I thought it’d be something fun and artsy they could do and never imagined my students would go above and beyond class time. Nevertheless, I guess the draw of a popular vote and potential prizes led one group to stay up the night before till 9:30pm at the nearby 7/11 to finish their poster while another group created a personalized QR code to supplement their poster sentences. I didn’t have a heart to mention the typos they had on their poster which would’ve led them to mark up their beautifully written poster with white out. I was just so excited that they enjoyed my first class making a curriculum so much to dedicate themselves to this final project. It is so fulfilling to see how much they have grown in confidence.
Taitung County was unlike all the rest of Taiwan in that we had an extra 2 days of school. Instead of finishing the semester with final project presentations like in past years, Chulu Junior High added a group discussion activity, a “school market”, and a trip to the Aboriginal community center to fill the last two days up with fun. The group discussion split all the grades and classes into smaller groups of mixed ages to discuss and reflect on some TedTalks and student presentations. Each group then made a poster stating how they would improve for next semester and utilize what they learned from the TedTalks in their school work. I didn’t have a group and didn’t fully understand what was happening, so I milled around with my camera for the whole first part of the day to photograph the students.
When I walked into an 8th grade classroom my interest peaked. With the history teacher (a friend of mine) the students weren’t discussing the presentations at all. Focusing on my lovelife, they were having a talk about Sean and I. I was baffled. I get that they are curious as only 4 students have actually met him before, but why are they so invested. Jeb, a 9th grader with a pretty high English level, outright asked me if he was my husband to which I said no, quickly followed by if we were engaged. I showed my left hand so they got what I hoped was the full effect of my “no” thinking it would end the Spanish Inquisition I walked in on. Needless to say it did not. The 9th graders asked my permission to talk to Sean about why he hasn’t proposed. I thought this was all hilarious especially when I said I was too young to get married and the history teacher proceeded to say at least in Taiwan I am already very old. That one comment led to the students delving into his lovelife as I gleefully looked on. Despite being a very private person, the conversation left me feeling a little uncomfortable, but also happy that I was able to actually keep up with them in Mandarin showing just how much my language skills have improved.
By lunch the groups dropped any focus on my relationship and were focused on cooking food for the school market. Both the 8th and 9th graders set up shops selling everything. One class made their own tea, tea-boiled eggs, and french fries. Another class (which was my favorite) had not only an aboriginal dish consisting of rice, sausage, and pork belly, but also had a dessert stand where they toasted marshmallows on bread with nutella. All the proceeds from the sales went to charity. The amount of money that must’ve been spent by the students was astronomical; enough that the school ran out of the tickets symbolizing money (you first bought raffle tickets which were then used at the stands for food or games) and had to print more. I also felt bad because each class kept badgering me to buy something from them. I ended up buying the aboriginal dish, a marshmallow bread, and a tea. All the dishes were unexpectedly good for being made by students.
The last day of school’s plans didn’t go exactly as the schedule predicted. The sky looked ominous enough that the idea of walking the students to the mountain closest to school and hiking to the top which holds great meaning for the aboriginal community was viewed as an improbable feat. Cue the school going on a trip to the 巴拉冠, Balaguan, the Beinan community center that held the festival New Years Eve instead. I had been looking forward to the hike with my students, but wasn’t completely heartbroken because the weekend before a coworker, Sean, had invited me along with his friends to hike that very same mountain. The views from the top were breathtaking.
At the 巴拉冠 the students were told stories of the community’s history in that area as well as the meaning behind the architecture of the building. I have to admit that the rate at which the speaker was sharing the stories of the past was so fast that I found myself staring at the paintings on the fencing and making up my own story to match. Despite not understanding much, I did find some fopas I could’ve easily committed while I attended to ceremony on New Years. I learned that the field next to the building with these large seats labeled by the names of the elders’ families is a woman free zone. No female is supposed to enter that area to the point that the female school dog was put on a leash when we visited. The area which translates to the “man cave” is similar as it bars all females as well as outsiders from entering. That was exactly the place Sean had wanted to go during the ceremony as it had a bonfire burning all night.
After the students filled out their worksheets on Beinan history they split up once again to clean the streets, a necessary and crucial part of any off-campus fieldtrip. Running up and down the side streets, the students filled their garbage bags to bursting. The 7th graders left the two smallest students to attempt to carry, but mostly drag their large bag back to the community center. If it wasn’t for the director going back and getting his car to transport it back to school I don’t know how it would’ve gotten back.
We took a roundabout trip back to school to pass these red pine trees for a quick photo op and then we were done. The semester over. In what seemed to drag on for months now feels as if it passed in a blink of an eye. Half my grant is over and I’m already staring at the end of my grant with trepidation of what’s to come.
One of the other entertaining classes I've had this semester that I haven't mentioned yet is my construction class. As a way of tying in my students' experiential building courses I decided to join their lesson with my morning English class. I created an "instant challenge" of sorts. Together I read through the activity's instructions. Each part had a time limit where they were given time to brainstorm and another part where they could touch the materials on the table and begin to build. The goal of the challenge was to build a tower made primarily out of paper as tall as they could. The 9th graders learned words such as freestanding, skyscraper, and material names like tape and paper clip that aren't in their textbooks. At first I was met with blank stares, but as the students started to understand the class more and more they actually got into it. I want to continue challenges like this in next semester's classes as well because I saw room for improvement in their creativity. They understood how to build a tower tall, but their comprehension of maybe the instructions held them back a little from embracing the creative aspect. One of the materials given to each group was a long balloon. The balloon was too hard to blow up without a pump and therefore the groups had no idea how to incorporate it in to a tower. I try to encourage them to think out of the box giving options in the way of a questions such as "could you use it to tie something together?" Alas what I thought would be hints led to multiple groups running out of the classroom and to the sink to fill the balloons with water. I don't know how they intended a water balloon to help their structure gain height, but at least they tried and no water was sprayed in the classroom either. The last morning English for the 8th graders was just as fun as I have begun to check off an activity from my ETA bucket list I have had since I began last year, to teach my students the Cha Cha Slide. The 8th graders are one step closer having learned the vocab involved and singing along to a slower version of the song. When we return to class you better believe I am going to video tape them dancing to the full song!!
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