Teaching English

After six weeks here it seems a fitting time to have a blog entry about teaching English! It has been a very different experience for us both. Not only is it the first time we’ve actually been teaching the language to a room full of children who know few words of English but the two schools we’re working at are very different. My school is very supportive with paid planning time, teacher communication, and resources. Jeremy’s hands him a slip of paper 5 minutes before going into class which tells him the page he’s teaching that day. That is a little frustrating and anxiety producing and doesn’t quite make him feel like a respected professional.

Here's a group of my 8/9 year olds.

4 Seasons: Here are four of my lovely girls who volunteered to pose with their favorite season.

This group was learning about the four seasons. Where do they have four distinct seasons? Not in tropical Taiwan. How do you teach children who have never seen snow what it is like to be a kid in New England and go sledding or build a snowman? The flashcard with “January” showed a snowman. The flashcard with “December” had a Christmas tree. Hmmm, maybe this material is meant more for kids immigrating to the States from other countries. The funny thing is, these kids knew what the images were and got excited about drawing them. I did find some helpful images on the good old internet that I could show them and teach them words like “toboggan”!

Here are some kids from Jeremy’s school. They decorated their palmelos for Moon Festival. Moon Festival is held on the full moon in September. People get together with family and eat barbeque and moon cakes. It is pretty much like Thanksgiving only it’s held out on the street (if you don’t have a deck) with fireworks. The plentiful palmelo tastes like a grapefruit which, to me, makes it more useful for decorating than eating. There is a Moon Festival legend about a jade rabbit and a jade emperor so many of these palmelo creatures are supposed to be these characters.

It is definitely interesting being the one foreigner in my school. Chinese is being spoken all around me - kids, teachers, staff - and I seldom know the content of the conversation (although I am taking Chinese classes at the University here so I'm learning!). Sometimes I don't know why a kid is crying or details about students that are shared between my coworkers. They do let me in on the important stuff but it's like there's a curtain around me most of the time and the communication isn't getting through. Luckily, I work with very nice people and we all end up chatting in English at the end of the night.