Dear friends,
I have not updated in a while regarding  my teaching experience in Taiwan because every single week I must write a weekly reflection report where I outline how my teaching is going. Thus, I tend to forget to update my website with stories about my teaching.

To remind all of you, I teach at Hua Shan Elementary School in southern Kaohsiung City. I teach 13 classes regular English classes (Grades 4-6), 2 special English classes (Grades 5-6), and Storytime (Grades 1-3). Altogether, I teach over 400 students. As you can imagine, teaching so many students makes it very difficult to remember all my students' names. I try, though, and the kids love it when I pronounce their names wrong, which I do often.

Each class I co-teach has about 30 students, which is pretty big compared to American classrooms. I teach in two classsrooms and one of the classrooms does not even have desks! This classroom is called the English Village classroom. Let me tell you a little about English Village.

You may remember from previous posts that there have been many English Village classrooms (or simulated environments of post office, restaurant, hotel, and airport) built in the elementary schools around Kaohsiung City. This was an initiative by the Kaohsiung Bureau of Education to stimulate interest in English and to help students improve their English speaking ability. Fifth graders from all over Kaohsiung must go to English Village once a year to do the English Village Activity. What is this activity you ask? Well, the Bureau has selected two environments to work with this year--the hotel and the supermarket. The Bureau would like the foreign teacher to run a dialog about the hotel or supermarket with 30 students and try to get each student to speak with the foreign teacher. How can one foreign teacher in the room manage 30 students in a dialog? Impossible, right? Well, the Fulbrighters decided to design stations and activities for English Village so that we would be able to get more individual time with the students. We created stations for each hotel and supermarket environment and divided the class of 30 into four teams of 7 or 8. Each English Village has three stations where they play English games and the fourth station is the dialog station where they speak with the foreign teacher. Each fifth grade class only gets 40 minutes at one environment (e.g. hotel) and then they must switch to the other environment (e.g. supermarket) for the next 40 minutes, and then they leave back to their school. The entire field trip to the English Village environments is only half a day.

The idea of English Village as a whole could be better. First, only fifth graders go to English Village once a year. That is not enough time to improve their English speaking ability at that age. Plus, once students get to English Village, they literally only play English games until they go to the dialog station. The dialog station is not a bad idea, but the foreign teacher only gets 5-10 minutes with each group. While I try to do the most with the dialogs, it is hard for the students to improve their speaking ability in just five minutes. So you can see how this activity, only for half a day and once a year for each fifth grade class, does not really achieve the goal of letting students improve their speaking ability. It may spark interest in learning English, but that interest is not supported or sustained. It would be good if the Bureau let each grade up until high school participate in the activities to sustain interest as the kids grow older, but right now it's a one time deal in the students' fifth grade year. Since so many English Villages have been built in elementary schools, it would be difficult to redirect funding for other projects (like reducing classroom size) now. As a person who is responsible for working at English Village, I hope this project can be better supported and the activity can be altered to be more effective. I will convey these suggestions to the Bureau at the end of this year. For now, let me get back to telling you about my teaching experience.

The English Village Classroom at Hua Shan (see how it resembles an airport? Look at the surroundings)

One of the classrooms I teach in is in the English Village Airport classroom. Of course, being an airport environment, there are no desks, but only comfortable seats. So, when my students come to class, not only are they really excited because they know me and my co-teachers always plan a fun activity/game at the end of class, but they have super comfortable seats to sit in that are incredibly close to each other so they can talk to each other in class! Ack! You can imagine the management problems we've had in classes trying to get our students to be quiet. For the most part, they students are well behaved, though.

I've noticed that Taiwanese students are pretty obedient and very good test takers. The entire society here is centered around exams. If you want to advance socially or professionally, you'd better ace that exam in your junior high school, which will determine your placement in high school, which in turn determines your placement in college and life. It's rather unfortunate that it seems your professional trajectory is locked and unable to change at such an early age.

The other classroom I teach in is the 5th grade English language classroom. This is a more traditional style classroom.

Me, Ashley, and our students in the other classroom I teach in

The classroom environment makes a big difference because it influences how students interact with each other and how they pay attention. I would much rather have my students sit in the uncomfortable wooden chairs, rather than the cushioned red seats of English Village because it forces them to not fall asleep. But, the students that come to English class never fall asleep. I say this without exaggeration. Since there are two teachers in the classroom, one of us can teach while the other "grazes" or walks around the classroom to make sure students are understanding and paying attention. It's really nice.

I will put a post about my specific co-teaching experience later. I think this blog post is pretty long. While I have to cut this post short, I want you to know that my teaching experience is going very very well. I've been learning a lot about effective teaching and how to improve as a teacher. I'm also building a strong relationship with my students, school staff, and fellow teachers. I am so lucky to be at a school where I am really getting to know the environment and people. They are willing to get to know me, too, so it's cultural exchange, both ways.

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