I’m starting to get in the hang of teaching. It’s been thrilling to see my own confidence grow and my relationships with my students grow into something more than foreigner and student. The kids now address questions to me, and at times I can either completely understand or I can infer what they probably are saying. Building that trust has really meant the world in class not just for my interactions with the students, but my fellow teachers and LET. It used to not be common that I would be in a 3rd through 6th graders’ classroom without my LET, those are the classes she leads. However, over the past couple weeks Irene has needed to print activities last minute, talk to the 主任（director）, or gather her things so she has sent me to the class first to get it started. The first time this happened it was a little awkward. The students kept asking where Teacher Irene was and I didn’t know how to say office so instead kept telling them 老師在老師的地方，which translates to Teacher is in the Teacher’s place. I was just talking with them because I had no idea what the lesson plan was that day.
Since then it has gotten easier. I have found textbooks for my classes from the old ETA so I have a better idea of what vocab is coming next. I also can understand and predict what and how my LET is going to teach the class so when I am sent to the classroom early by myself, I can do something productive with the kids. Irene seemed pleasantly surprised when she walked into class with their review quizzes and I was leading them in a review of addition in which they practiced 11-20. My classroom role and responsibilities has increased as well. I am responsible for any speaking. So, when we start each chapter there is a story that is some adaption of a fairytale like the Three Little Bears or Little Red Riding Hood. I read the story line by line with the students repeating after me. I also take the lead in phonics as I believe I have mentioned before. The hardest is knowing that I mispronounce words on a daily basis like milk. I pronounce it more like melk and I’ve been having to try to correct that for my 4th grades students as they began their food unit. My newfound responsibility in leading the listening comprehension gave me a big role during the students’ English test.
Three times a semester, the students have a week of all their course tests. To prevent the students from asking to repeat the listening comprehension an absurd amount, which they do during review, my LET wanted to limit it to 3 times. To do so, I ended up recording myself speaking all the listening comprehension for the four tests. It was quite entertaining to see the kids react when the radio started playing and it was my voice. Daisy even made a comment afterwards about how it sounded just like me. Although this part has been fun, that I feel more comfortable and trusted working with the students I still experience a lot of difficulty.
During the test the end part was a speaking portion. It ranged everywhere from “Who’s she? She’s my mother” to “Alice is a police officer. She is very short and thin. She sees a naughty boy.” We had practiced for weeks reviewing the material and checking pronunciation. Come time for the test most students clammed up. My third graders were like pulling teeth. They couldn’t even remember how to answer “What is your name?” which was repeated a lot. I felt so bad trying to connect that when I asked them “Who’s She” and they had to reply “She’s my mother” that it was the same “she” I just said. Instead, they stared at it not really recognizing how to say “she.” Some students did surprise me though. There’s a student in sixth grade that I stick with during class to make sure she stays at pace with the rest of class and doesn’t fall behind. I don’t know how much she studied, but she jumped from not being able to say a lot to almost getting a perfect score, which four of the students were able to get. I was so excited for her. I literally wanted to jump for joy that she did so well. It was so hard though to assign a grade because they did well, but sometimes it was flubbed or if they didn’t know it completely. I didn’t even know if I should take into account speed as well as accuracy. I decided not to assign grades till I saw the whole class to have an understanding of the entire group’s ability and grade from there. I don’t know how teaches can grade unbiased. It is so much more difficult to do when you want the underdog to know they have improved and give them a higher score. I deliberated quite a while before handing out grades for the speaking portion because I wanted to be as unbiased as possible.
During test week I still taught my all school English class at Dian Guang. I’ve been relying a lot on it being Halloween season. My kids love Halloween. Patrick, one of the second graders, told me one day he is going to the USA just so he can do Halloween. He wants to dress as a monster and go trick or treating. I love that some of my lessons have rubbed off because half of what he said actually was in English, like Halloween, Monster, and Trick or Treat. So far this month they all made paper Jack O’Lanterns, learned a chant that I adapted into a song and dance about trick or treating, and played a game I developed. I had my proudest moment so far in the All School English class today. I thought last week where the kids were still singing the song after class was great, but it didn’t compare to the laughter I got today with the game I made. It was an adaption of Pin the Tail on the Donkey where instead of a donkey and a tail, they had to put the face on the Monster. It gave me a chance to teach and review all the vocab or hair, eyes, ear, nose, mouth etc. The kids loved it so much my LET even asked if they could play it next week during that class too!
With testing week nearing to an end, Kan Ding took their students for an afternoon field trip to none other than the 關山國小，Guan Shan elementary school. It was three hours spent in the school’s pool with some swim teachers. They practiced everything from blowing bubbles, kicking, and learning the strokes. I was asked if I wanted to join. The option was stay in the Teacher’s office with no kids at school for 3 hours or go to the pool and swim with them. Which do you think I chose? If you say sit in the office and twiddle my thumbs I already do that a lot, I don’t want more time to plan lessons months away, I want to get to know my students better.
When packing my swim bag the night before I am so glad I chose my one-piece swimsuit I had used for practicing my diving and flips at home. It was the most conservative swimsuit I brought and I thought being a teacher I should make sure I was dressed appropriately and not in a bikini. I expected the kids to be wearing similar one-piece suits to my own, but I was far off. There swim suits were out of the 1920s. They resembled dresses more than a swimsuit, with skirts that at times hit their knees. I felt completely underdressed next to them with my obvious shorts tan showing how white I was before Taiwan, thanks to almost all my students pointing that out. I felt more awkward amongst them than I have recently. The boys were also in speedo trunks that hugged their legs as opposed to the swimming trunks in the US which are pretty much more water-resistant shorts. Not only was my swimsuit different, but I didn’t have a swim cap- not even thinking that would be an issue or required. Not having goggles also surprised my students as I explained 我不常常去游泳所以我沒有泳鏡。所以今天我不用泳鏡 (I don’t often go swimming, so I don’t have any goggles. So, today I won’t use any).
Participating in their gym class I have grown accustomed to their warmup exercises
I stayed primarily with the 6th and 5th graders because I feel the most confident around them in that they are more mature to talk to and have a better English vocabulary. They try to talk to me in English and me in Chinese. It sometimes turns more into Chinglish, but we can hold a conversation on our own. Sadly, some of the girls keep turning the topic of conversation back to Sean. They happened to see my phone lock screen and thinking they were clever asked in English if he was my boyfriend. My blush at being surprised being asked that question pretty much told them the answer as I tried to describe him as a friends that’s a boy which is hard to do because the Chinese for boyfriend is 男朋友 in other words boy- friend. Regardless, it was fun to be out of the classroom with the kids which I will get to do more this weekend as I go as a chaperon on their trip to perform at Taipei City Hall.
Not sure what to expect on this trip, but soon you will hear all about it. I learned that we are sleeping on the floor somewhere, whether it is in an apartment or a sports complex was lost in translation. I was able to borrow a sleeping bag from a teacher that was supposed to be going on the fieldtrip, but because of a car accident, she can’t walk on her foot very long so she was nice enough to drop it off at my house late last night. On another note, it is a little creepy that everyone knows where we live in the community. I was just told to be home before 8:30pm and all of a sudden, I see her getting out of her car in front of my apartment, no need to even ask for directions. I am really grateful that she is enabling me to borrow her sleeping bag and I am trying to figure out if there is a special way to wash them here before I return it (LMK if anyone has any ideas). I was given a schedule written in Chinese which my LET nicely translated into as much English as she thought necessary for me to get an idea of the plan. The best detail I learned was that we would travel by bus so I didn’t have to carry whatever suitcase/duffel I packed nor carry around the sleeping bag all day.
Tune in sometime next week to see pictures and videos from this Kan Ding Drumming Performance at Taipei City Hall! (even the teacher leading the field trip asked me to bring my camera for pictures!)
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