*A little late to post, but I'll post it anyways
It has been the last week of classes and then I get a three-week vacation where I plan to sleep, catch up on movies by hopefully going to the actual theater, and filming. I couldn’t be happier looking forward to having time to myself. Not that teaching isn’t rewarding, but I swear the stress some of the kids are put under for their Chinese and Math tests significantly impacts their temperaments and ability to pay attention in English class. With 3 weeks off I think both the kids and I will have time to recharge and then hit the ground running. The kids don’t get off as easy as I do. I guess all the students, or at least all the students older than third grade, actually have work over the break to be turned in on the first day back to school. I don’t know how hard the work is, I can only assume its Chinese and Math, but at that age I surely wasn’t doing anything productive. This is 3rd graders we are talking about! Julia, my third grader, should be able to constantly be playing with her doll and stuffed animals that sometimes make appearances in our classes. At least I am not adding to their homework over break by giving them English work.
Despite giving the kids homework and having their final exams, both my schools have found time to make the end of the semester fun. It started with Culture Class at 電光國小which I began to attend a couple months ago. These classes are anything from calligraphy and rock climbing, to learning about their neighborhood. This week was one of the more fun activities. The class was titled “Road Running.” I completely thought it was a way the school was trying to increase the students’ fitness and just have them run for a couple hours. Instead, it was a hiking-based class in which they learned the proper use of hiking poles. The catch on this course was that the entire hike through the rice fields to learn and practice using hiking poles would be done while wearing a backpack with 10 kg of water in it. I arrived as the kids were filling and taping water bottles shut and stuffing them in their bags. With one hiking bag left the science teacher, like in most of the culture classes, offered and asked me if I wanted to fully participate and load up the last hiking bag like the sixth-grade teacher had. I politely declined the idea of volunteering to carry a ton of weight for no reason. I opted instead to carry my full school backpack which is pretty heavy, just not 10kgs heavy.
I felt bad watching my students struggle to even lift their bags to put on. It did help me learn the proper form to put on one of those large camping backpacks. I also did step in a couple times to hold the backpack while they tried to put their arms through just to take a little bit of the weight away. The kids then did a refresher on how to alter the straps of the backpacks. The teacher then looked to me and pretty much told me my backpack was all wrong. Mind you he is talking about my school backpack I use every day – not like a fancy hiking bag. He overlooked the literal gaping hole in my bag right now and focused on altering my straps which I make larger so that when I ride my scooter it rests on the seat rather than actually carrying it while I drive. I didn’t realize how much the straps changed how heavy everything was.
Once all the backpacks were filled, we took off. The basics were taught on parts of the school campus. We balanced on a little curb, climbed the stairs, and then learned to utilize the hiking poles while regularly walking. I was mostly learning just by trying to copy everyone else. It was a lot of fun and a lot more mud than I expected. After getting a nod of approval from the culture teacher we moved on towards the rice fields outside our school. We walked on the small mud mounds that border the rice fields and split them into each plot. In places that had holes and gaps in the mound we learned to use the poles to propel ourselves forward to make it to the other side. I actually got a little over confident in my abilities and my height that I almost lost my balance hopping from one concrete wall (which is utilized to create the water streams that connect most of the fields to their water source) to the other side of the concrete wall. I made it out of class with only a bunch of mud on my shoes, but a definite strike to my ego.
The next day at Dian Guang was an interesting one as well. I was all prepared for us to teach our 5th and 6thgraders about Chinese New Year. I had all the activities created of putting the Zodiac animals in order, but only using their English names. However, we didn’t end up having classes. Instead we had a celebration of the semester. In a group of students, teachers, and parents each of my kids presented their artwork, giving a short speech on each picture, clay sculpture, and map that they created. After the small art exhibit, we then were able to watch them perform their music as well as a traditional Amis dance. Everything culminated in a semester photo-video of all their activities. I actually made a couple appearances in their video. I have no idea who made it or that they had that many pictures of me let alone the kids. The video kind of puts my work to shame because I was going to start creating a photo-video as well of my time at each school to show the kids as a going away gift once I leave. Now I am not so sure they will care or need another one, it seems like that have taken care of.
Like American schools who stop really teaching after their tests, my LET didn’t plan anything for after the students finished reviewing and correcting their English exams. In 4th grade I introduced Duck, Duck, Goose. It ended up with one student always choosing me and many near collisions with the desks. The kids loved it even with the small addition that whoever is “it” has to say a vocab word we choose and say it in a sentence. Every so often the goose would come out more as a “gooost”, but we will work on the pronunciation next semester. I made up a slapping game on the spot for my 3rd graders using their flashcards and they seemed happy to learn more even while the other grades didn’t. I even seemed to make strides in their understanding being able to sight read and react fast without assuming a word based on the first letter and getting it wrong. It was a lot of fun realizing we have got to a point in which the third graders, their first year of English class as we just started 1st and 2nd grade English this year, now have confidence in recognizing and saying some words. I think only after you get confident is when you can start having real fun with a language. At least that’s how I feel with Chinese in which I am now able to understand jokes which is a whole new level to the language and culture here.
5th grade on the other hand was all in to watch a movie. My LET asked for my recommendation of some cartoon they would find interesting, but was kid/school friendly. I fell back on Disney because you can’t go wrong with Disney. However, the students hated my recommendation of Toy Story. It was absurd they seem to despise that film, a film I grew up on. I finally was able to get their approval when I recommended Mulan for its inclusion of a small part of what I thought might be a depiction of Chinese New Year at the very end. I wasn’t entirely sure showing this movie was appropriate because they don’t exactly display everyone in a good light without stereotypes, but the students loved it. They had us keep playing the movie into the break.
Overall it was the 6th grade class, the last class I taught for the day on Thursday, that I found the most interesting and rewarding. The students are interested in taking a graduation trip after the school year, but the school is not in a position to be able to fund the trip. Therefore, if the students want to go anywhere they need to host fundraisers throughout the year. The first fundraiser was their project now to create customized Red Envelopes, 紅包. It is customary on Chinese New Year to give Red Envelopes to the children and single adults with “lucky money” inside. The students created their own stencils out of pieces of rubber and carving designs into it. Some of the teachers at the school even volunteered and made a stencil as well. The students then used their breaks and lunch period to create a red envelope assembly line, each taking over one aspect of the printing. We walked into class and the majority of the floor was taken up by the envelopes. Irene, my LET, and I, helped the students create some and then spent the rest of class taking pictures and talking to the students. I was honored that Irene and I were the first buyers the students had. Do I plan to give out the 10 red envelopes that came in each packet? Absolutely not. I got them because if I bring any souvenirs home, a piece of culture that my students made would be high on that list.
It is now my last day of school before a mid-year conference hosted by Fulbright in Taipei leaving me to miss the last real day of school with my kids. So far I’ve spent the morning writing this article, but I’ve heard the rest of the day will be spent cleaning both the school grounds, English/music classroom, and I happen to also be in the group that is going in the community to clean as well. I’ll see what this entails. Hopefully I have enough cleaning drive when I get home to clean my room before a leave for a long weekend and most of break. To end on a happy note, today also marks the day that I am going to show the third-grade teacher how to use the manual setting on a digital camera. I’m hoping this is a start to a possible friendship next semester!!
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