School has begun again and it feels almost like the first day again. I was so nervous to see how things changed and was completely in the dark as I was present at the teacher meeting the day before classes started. Half of me was glad I had last Monday off instead of attending the meeting as much as I loved having a day to get back into the pace of life in guan shan. I also typically feel like a child in the teacher meetings I have attended. I sit there trying to act like I’m paying attention while I completely don’t understand any topic being discussed. I do give it to me LET, she does an amazing job translating when something is necessary for me to know because although my Chinese has improved, I don’t really utilize the vocabulary for administrative decisions in my daily interactions.
The takeaways from the teacher meeting was that the principal wants more English to be utilized at school, que me. The administration is worried that the kindergarten students’ parents will move their children to Guan Shan Elementary School instead of continuing at Dian Guang. Guan Shan Elementary has a more rigorous English program – well scratch that – they have more rigorous everything. It’s a school of more than 300 kids whereas Dian Guang is only 10 students from 1st to 6th grade. Guan Shan Elementary routinely wins all competitions both academic and athletic. They really do own everything they participate it. This puts a lot more pressure on my shoulders to not only teach well, but show the parents of my students and the parents of potential future students that Dian Guang can compete at least on the competency of English.
I’m really happy that my teaching can have an impact, but it makes me worried. I have been solo teaching the 1st and 2nd graders all year. I was given no instruction other than getting told it was their first time having English class. I think I have actually done a good job. Weekly we practice and review the alphabet, but on top of that I have been able to cover colors, numbers, adjectives like big/small/tall etc, and animals. Even knowing that my kids can answer simple questions like “How are you?, What’s your name?, and What color is this?” I feel like its not enough. The only person that sees their weekly progress is the second grade teacher that rarely says anything during class other than telling one of the kids to sit down (which I guess gives me the opportunity to have full run of the class but in the beginning was hard).
On top of the pressure for my first and second grade progress, I must now also plan a Morning English section weekly and develop a semester project for all the students that will then be displayed to their parents at the end of the semester. I am not too worried about the Morning English. At my other school I have been doing that for months so I plan to recycle a lot of those sample conversations for my English at Dian Guang. I am having trouble brainstorming a reasonable semester project. The hardest part is that my LET doesn’t know all the details. I don’t know if the project is to be completed together as a school or individually, is it spoken or written? Without knowing more of the parameters I feel like I am wasting my time thinking of different outputs. I’ve considered Disney songs, teaching the Cha Cha slide (something I have wanted to do but other than teaching “culture” I don’t know how that presents English), and writing their own books with pictures. I guess time will tell what I come up with.
First Morning English at 電光國小
Another change in the new semester is all the medical steps that have been taken to protect the teachers and students from the spread of Corona. There are currently no cases in my area of Taiwan, but its always good to be prepared. Both my schools have a random tent set up outside in case one of the students comes down with a fever so that they can be separated from their classmates till a parent picks them up. My morning I am first greeted with a thermometer and then a 早安, a good morning. I am glad to say I have been fever free so far. Although there is nothing like the panic I feel every time my temperature is taken that I somehow developed a fever in the past couple hours. The thermometer does make me feel a little safer.
Due to the spread of the virus specifically in Asia, but also in other countries now I get what seems like daily emails from Fulbright. Each email assures me that the State Dept is keeping our health a priority and giving us updated numbers on Taiwan. I respect the transparency that the State Dept. has, however, I can’t help getting more worried by the constant emails. It’s easier to forget about the virus without the daily reminder. People always wear masks here and being in the mountains we don’t get many tourists so it’s my own little bubble. I feel safer here than I think I would feel back home just based on the culture of wearing masks and like I said people don’t travel to where I am. I am in one of the most rural areas of the island I don’t think I will have to worry too much. Through the grapevine I have heard that Fulbright sent all the people with Fulbright grants in both China and South Korea home. Its good news in the sense that I don’t have to worry about my safety if it does spread, but its sad. I can’t imagine being in their position and getting an email to pack up with little to no time to say goodbye. The whole idea of a Fulbright grant is to become part of a community. I would hate to be ripped away from the small one I’m a part of here.
All these changes and rumors about the virus did make school interesting for the first week back. We had three days of school (Tuesday – Thursday) because of a well-placed national holiday and in those three days I probably had more than 20 different conversations about the virus. My Chinese vocabulary about sickness and medicine has grown exponentially the last couple days. I think my favorite conversation was when my director asked me if I had any guns back home because she saw a story on the Taiwan news that was saying people in the US were getting paranoid about the disease and were going to the stores armed in case someone tried to rob them of their masks and medicine. I was taken off guard not by the fact that that’s a story, but that she thought after knowing me for months that I had a bunch of guns at home. I made sure to tell the teachers that people shopping with guns wasn’t a new fad, it’s a lifestyle in some parts of the US. A lifestyle that I made clear I wasn’t a part of.
Three days of classes, two days at 崁頂國小and one day at 電光國小, isn’t a lot of time to teach the students new material. Instead, my LET and I had every one of our classes draw a picture of their favorite thing (activity, place, etc) from over winter break. Depending on their English level they then had to announce to the class what they did and write a sentence or for the younger crowd we gave them 3 new vocabulary words that were found in their picture. I thought it would not only be a great way to ease into the classroom, but was looking forward to hearing the fun stories of what my kids got up to in their almost a month off. I was surprised by the answers we got. One student’s favorite moment was running into my sister and I in the neighboring town over break. Another student at first said he didn’t do anything over break only to come up with him helping his dad on the farm to grow ginger. I learned to adapt my idea of break from asking if they traveled anywhere in Taiwan to just asking if they watched a good movie or was able to play outside. I didn’t understand some students. They have siblings and yet they were saying they didn’t spend any time playing together over the break.
I had the hardest time running the activity of drawing and writing about something over break with my second and first graders by myself. I over estimated my ability to comprehend what each student would draw so as to use that along with what they told me to give them the English translation fo what they did. I easily understood Patrick's which was that he walked his dog and Kate's who played on the phone. The two first graders were another story. I made out something about a TV and a game from Peter in Chinese, but couldn't for the life of me see how that was depicted in the drawing. Morgan's drawing was similar in that I couldn't make out what it was. I was solely relying on my ability to translate his Chinese. Patrick, a second grader, tried to help to me which was very useful because I understand him more clearly. He said something about playing games and a grandma. The interesting part was that between those two words he also used 恐怖 which means terror and another word meaning nasty. You can use that same word for saying something is a horror film. I wanted to stay away from that just because I thought I was really wrong on my translation. In the end, Morgan happened to draw him holding a balloon in the corner. Whether or not he ever got a balloon over break, I didn't care. I quickly had him write balloon completely avoiding the other words till I was able to speak to my LET. After class that was the first thing I did and I found out that there is a scary video game called nasty grandma that Morgan was referring to. I guess I could translate, I just hoped I was wrong.
There were some bright spots that came out of asking the kids what they did over break. Godzilla and Kevin, both 4th graders, drove into the mountains and saw snow for the first time. Although neither of them had a snowball fight, they both made snowmen and played it in. It was fun to see their faces brighten remembering the snow and Godzilla told me he even got hot chocolate after because it was so cold. Their eyes got really wide when I told them every winter I get a lot of snow at home and showed them pictures of past winters. Winter in Chicago is very different than the winter to spring weather we are experiencing now. The weekdays are cold and the weekends thankfully are warm.
With a 3-day weekend in 70-80 degree weather you better believe I was outside the entire time. I spent Friday attempting to fish with Sean after he asked an old man on a walk around the town where the best places to fish were. Although its completely legal because we weren’t going to eat anything if we caught fish, I kept thinking the police were going to come just because we are definitely different from the regular people fishing in the river. Despite spending a couples hours outside, at the end of the day nothing was caught. We saw bubbles and splashes from fish so we know they were there somewhere. It might have to do with the fact that the woman in Taipei where Sean got his fishing rod told him canned corn was a good substitute when you don’t have access to worms. We really couldn’t go digging in my landlord’s beautiful manicured garden. I think we might hit up the grocery store next time to get some shrimp instead. Having something like that as bait might make our future fishing attempts more interesting.
Saturday was by far my favorite day of the weekend. I voluntarily drove an hour and a half to drive to the city and then up the coast a ways to go to one of the only swimming beaches in my county. Taiwan is obviously an island and therefore has many beaches. However, most of these beaches are un-swimmable due to their large waves and currents. The beach that is open for swimming is called the Shanyuan beach, also colloquially known as the abandoned hotel beach. Sounds a little sketchy and it is. It’s a massive possibly multi-million dollar building with all the amenities. It needed a couple more months of planning and the hotel could’ve opened and been a great success the only issue was the fact that they had chosen to build such a hotel on sacred aboriginal land. The story says that the people kept fighting the building of the hotel and with the use of lawyers and money they kept on their construction schedule. The hotel would’ve taken away the aboriginal groups’ fishing rights on that beach and could not only threaten their culture, but also threaten their ability to feed their population. As a last ditch effort to say the community one man committed suicide on the beach in front of the hotel. It cost a young man his life, but saved his community from the loss of the land because the case was closed after that. No more construction could take place. The building sits there wasting away, a complete loss of resources, but the good triumphed over bad money.
I hadn’t had the chance to visit the abandoned hotel beach until now and it didn’t disappoint. The water and beach were beautiful. There were shells and pieces of weathered glass shaped by the waves and hiding in the sand. If you walked farther you entered a fish reserve that was attempting to bring back the wildlife that used to be in the area. I thought the reserve was the best part. There were fish of brilliant colors and schools of mullet. The best part was the large amount of coral of all different shapes. There were corals with pullups and those that looked like columns. It took a full hour for Sean to realize what he was looking at as when we first saw the coral it looked like rocks until you got closer. He was saddened because out of the entire reserve we were only able to see a small section of coral that was still alive. Ocean acidification must’ve taken place decimating the coral population. With his background researching coral in Hawaii, Sean predicts the change to the coral happened in the past 20 years. Now all that’s left is the remnants of large boulders of coral and floating pieces of bao (Taiwanese bread) that people were throwing to the fish.
I say all this stuff about the negative details about the ecosystem there, but despite all of that I really enjoyed myself. I think it came down to the fact that my access to the ocean was rather limited growing up so just seeing coral albeit dead coral was a cool experience. I tracked hermit crabs in the sand. I tried to catch ghost crabs as they ran to the water. We tracked eels and even saw a mantis shrimp. I have to come forward and say I didn’t know it was a mantis shrimp, just a new looking animal I hadn’t seen before. Sean couldn’t believe I saw it and proceeded to tell me why that shrimp was so special. I guess the shrimp, although the a little larger than the size of my fish, has the power to punch someone or something with the force equivalent to a 22-caliber bullet.Did I look up that fact online - of course. Definitely an interesting and astounding feat I had a hard time believing when I saw the shrimp’s size.
On our ride back home, we entered rainstorm. It wasn’t just the drizzle that was predicted, but a deluge. I was grateful to have been wearing my swimsuit still under my raincoat because it had a better chance of drying off. The rainstorm was short, but its impact was lasting. I decided to not continue straight home, but stop in the city to hopefully dry off some or if need be park and take the train up to guan shan instead of driving through a storm. We stopped at Tiehua, an old railway station in the city that has now become the hub of artists selling their crafts. The first time I went to the art fair I saw a man selling custom bow and arrows. I had excitedly told Sean who wanted to see them. Every subsequent time I have gone the man has never returned. It seems now like I made up a lie because I can’t believe that over months of going to the market I would never run into him again. I did run into a student of mine at Tiehua when I was with Sean - something I have been attempting to avoid all year.
My schools have very different students. 電光國小students are very innocent and look at me more as a teacher and less as a equal. 崁頂國小students, on the other hand, are more comfortable with their English which leads to more probing question about my social life and love life all in the guise of “getting to know me.” I have done well to avoid it all when asked certain questions and usually its easy. They assume any time I am seen with another white boy that they are my boyfriend, but more often than not they are another ETA and I can identify the school they work at. My children always seem disheartened when they get super excited thinking about seeing me with a potential boyfriend. Now Tiehua was different. Sophia, a sixth grader, did see me with Sean. I don’t even know what she saw. Did she see us holding hands because that’s as bad as she could’ve seen.
Come Tuesday morning first class of the day, Sophia busts to the front of the room to confront me almost bolstered by the other girl students who she must’ve told the day before. She told me if I remembered seeing her in the city and asked about the boy I was with. I chose to instead focus on the part that I did see her at Tiehua and started asking questions about what she was doing in the city herself. I diverted enough till we started class and they opened their books. Crisis averted and my private life is just that – still private.
As I wrote earlier, my two schools have very different social habits. 崁頂國小is more comparable to schools back in the US with small cliques and gossip. 電光國小has only 10 students and feels similar to a family. They bicker amongst themselves, but know each other on a deeper level it seems. This comes to the surface during their weekly culture class. Culture class can be anything really. Last semester we backpacked, hiked, learned to dance, and yesterday was no different. We put to use our rappelling skills we developed last semester to go rock-climbing. It was a lot of fun. I teach at the other school on Tuesdays and commute back to 電光國小 for the culture class and yesterday I was able to get to the school earlier than usual. At first I joined the students in listening to a short presentation on AIDs and HIV which I thought was interesting to teach to first graders, and then I moved outside. The culture class outdoor instructor arrived and was pulling out harnesses and shoes. He seemed excited to see me because I am always enthusiastic with whatever the activity is. Today was no different.
Even before the students went outside to begin the class, the instructor had me in a harness and climbing up the wall. Not only once, but twice back to back. I rock-climbed, mainly boulderer back home, and expected the wall to be a level 0, the beginner level. The beginning of the wall was that easy, but the higher I got the harder it actually became. After finishing my second climb the students arrived and we started the class. I learned about the proper way to move horizontally on the wall. The instructor looked as if he was just walking sideways, he made it look that easy. The instructor ended up having me race his assistant trying to catch as we moved across the wall. The assistant has helped on numerous occasions, but only yesterday did I get the courage to ask her her name and talk in conversation not about class. Her name is Nancy and she is somewhere near my age. Maybe a new friend?
Before moving onto the vertical wall climb we had one more challenge, to play a game similar to Twister. You were on the wall with four other people. Then taking turns you would say left foot, right hand etc. one at a time, moving that limb to a new hold each time. The purpose was to learn to easily displace our weight, pick good holds, and practice our strength. I found it unbelievably fun. I was on the wall with the two girls and Charlie. The kids had difficulty with the game and it might’ve become worse once I was encouraged to use English to announce my choice instead of Chinese.
Then came the vertical wall. The instructor had Nancy and I both climb it before the students so that they could watch and see how “easy” it was. When I came down however, none of the students wanted to step forward to go first. Sara being the oldest was forced to go. She did well and so did Daisy. Both girls had difficulty halfway through the wall as hand holds become more scarce. Andy was a different story. He hates heights. We had this problem last time when we rappelled down the side of the school only this time was worse. He didn’t want to even be hooked up. When he was he got maybe three feet off the ground before the tears started. He refused the keep climbing. He kept doing that thing where you don’t trust yourself to move forward or backward. Every little bit he would attempt to move his hand to the instructions we were giving him. He would reach up, brush the new hold with his hand, but then not fully reach for it and go back to the original hold he was on. He clutched the wall like he was on a canyon about to die. It was heartbreaking to see him freak out as much as he did. The other teachers didn’t seem as moved by his tears and instead kept asking him to climb to the top. I think the culture classes are there to help teach the students useful skills and nature skills for the future. I just don’t think in the future Andy will have an instructor completely use his weight to jump up and then pull him up the wall.
Once the teachers gave up that he wasn’t going to finish the entire wall, the amounted to passing one hand over the halfway mark and then being able to come down. Rappelling was a different story as well. Andy didn’t want to let go of the wall despite knowing the instructor wouldn’t let him fall. I wish I could’ve just plucked him off the wall myself. With his feet back on the ground, he got control over his fears and slowly became the regular Andy I know. Although when Daisy was telling my LET what happened the day after rock-climbing she made sure the first thing she said was that Andy cried like a baby. I hope the fact that the he wasn’t told crying is for babies or to be a man by the teachers will help him keep his ability to show his emotions when he grows up. If he can take away anything, at least they all faced their fears.
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