Taiwanese Adventures: Teaching Struggles and Triumphs..sqeezing about 2 weeks into one entry

September 21, 2011

So I think I'm going to have to replace my daily blog entries with late night thrown together lesson plans..The school does not have a curriculum. The two biggest difficulties with the teaching right now is1) not having a curriculum and creating something new every week and 2) the kids don't understand a word I'm saying. The one co-teacher that I had to complain about to my supervisors hasn't really changed. She still sits back and watches the chaos unravel in each of the classes we share. The only progress that she's made is during a class last week, when she muttered, "Do you want me to repeat what you say and discipline the students in Chinese..?" (you mean you haven't been doing that at ALL the past two weeks?? No wonder a kid got away with writing the word "Fuck" on his pencil case and these two boys wrestle everyday upon entering the class and the smartass boy who's seat got moved to the front of the class, which was my suggestion during week one, laughs when I try to talk to him.) Whatever, progress is progress, she's speaking to me. I told her yes, please, that would be very helpful. I think some of the crazy kids are understanding most of my discipline. I mean, it's not anything intense or off the wall, just your standard classroom management things. Wait for them to stop talking, look at the clock, they'll get it (oh wait except for when it's one of the classrooms that DOESN'T have a clock for some odd reason which is about 5 of the rooms) Give them a look that says, cut your shit out, face forward. My biggest pet peeve with the some of the students is how they say HeHH?? really loud and annoying like. This one boy does it every time I try to give a direction or correct his behavior, he'll look around at his class and think he's being funny and say Heehh???( Like a huh? mixed with an eh? = Hehh?!?) Now all of the classes know that they aren't allowed to say that because it's rude. I tell them, if they don't understand then they need to say it in English. Either, "I don't understand, or What?" I'm teaching them small polite phrases along with the lessons, like when they want to borrow a marker they have to ask "Teacher may I borrow your marker" and if they don't want to borrow one when I come around they have to say, "No thanks." Besides that, I don't hear many of them saying English during class at all. The few that speak English well are the ones that can afford cram school every day after school. The one's that don't know any either have NO interest in learning and won't even repeat what I say to repeat but there are others that you can tell want to try, but they get embarrassed really easily. I think it's this whole "saving face" thing I'm hearing about. People are careful about being embarrassed or embarrassing someone else.

I'm really trying to reach out to the super quiet kids AND the special ed kids. The way the school treats special ed kids kind of pisses me off. It made me appreciate America's politically correct references and sensitivity to peoples' well being. Like, when I pass the special ed classes to get to the cafeteria, all 3 teachers who I've walked to lunch with say all quietly "Those kids are special..those are the special kids, at our school we have special kids.." I'm like ya duh, every school does, the only difference is you don't talk about them like they're a secret..In the classroom it isn't good either. If they're considered "special" (and most of these kids don't have anything more severe than a learning disability or emotional issue) then the co-teacher literally has them sit out of the activity. They sit at their desk and play with their pencil because they can't read the work. I still get them to do some work or sit with another group and the teacher will say "no they don't have to because they're special ed" and I think even the students catch some of this and outcast the same students. I tried putting a girl, who I guess could be categorized as special ed, with a group of girls and I wanted to slap these girls across the face when they gave this look of disgust and they had the audacity to ask me to put the girl in another group. My jaw basically dropped and I looked at them and said "She's working with you, and you will help her, and you will be nice. If you aren't, you will get points marked off and stay after class." I had my co teacher repeat what I said, but I think they could tell I was pissed.

Not having a curriculum is stressing me out. It also makes it worse that the people don't tell you flat out what they want or need, instead they do it in this passive aggressive way. Funny that they can come out and ask you questions like "why don't you have a boyfriend, how much did you pay for this, you should go to the gym on the 5th floor.." but when I constantly mention that I don't know what to do or I need help or I need some sort of reference point, they give answers that sound like "suggestions." But they aren't just suggestions, they are things that I can tell they've discussed with other teachers. Like, they all know I'm confused and just won't talk to me about it so my supervisor will say "Um mmhhmm mmhmm, I see, mmhmm, maybe you should take these things out of your lesson because they're too difficult maybe..and maybe add something like this" Ok, you're saying that "maybe" the lesson I've been doing all week long that seems to be going fine only because I stay up til 2am every night fixing it, isn't what you wanted.." I also can't sense emotion when they talk. I think it has to do with how their language is because their "tones" are to change meaning of words entirely, not to stress a point or show how they feel. So when people in the office are talking, I sometimes think they're yelling at each other and are arguing but its just a normal conversation. The one older co-teacher I have, who takes over a lot of the class but her kids are really behaved, tried talking to me about my lesson this week. She starts to talk about how I only gave each group of 4, one activity sheet to work on (honestly this is because I finished it about 5 hours before I woke up for work and couldn't get a billion copies made. but I spinned it as a group activity which worked like a charm because the worksheet was difficult.) And then she said, "some people in group understand, and others don't, so they all work together on it.." soo I'm like.."oh..ok so..you don't want them to work in groups?" And she's like "No no, it's good, they work together and help eachother out.." I'm like, jesus christ lady, just say, "Hey I like this idea because they work together as a group."

The co teacher I have for English club finds it necessary to mention a ton of times that "only 1 out of the 28 students who signed up for the club, wants to be in it." She told me that it can't just be holiday parties and games because they need to have things to showcase at the end of the year. So this week they started a travel brochure project and we were in the computer lab for an hour and a half. Let me tell you about computer labs at the school, the kids need to take off their shoes and put these sandals on before they go in them and there is absolutely NO censoring on the internet there. Kids were on their facebook, yahoo chat, taiwanese myspace thing, video games, and then the few who were actually researching their country were getting random inappropriate images of italian women. This was kind of a disaster. My co-teacher, Beryl, is really nice and insists on helping with whatever she can. I mentioned how I don't know if I can use any art materials for the classes and she said she'd ask. I've been laminating a lot of things lately and of course the stupid machine started to melt my stuff which made zero sense. I had it set to 100 degrees like they told me and I've already used it twice and it was fine. So this 3rd time, things start melting in the machine and aren't coming out the other side and I told coffee Joe because he's the one who taught me how to use the machine and he just goes "ummm maybe..too hot..too hot" I'm like.."but it's at 100 degrees, you told me to put it at 100, and it worked fine before?" and he's like "mmhmm mmhmm..um..too hot.." OK, so what temperature now?? "Hmm maybe 80." The copy machine was annoying to learn too. I have to switch the language to English but in order to do that I have to touch about 10 buttons in Chinese and naturally, they went through it once with me and I forgot everything, and there's coffee Joe, there to help again. I just wish I could do things on my own without looking like an idiot.

Positive notes: The students are hilarious and overall, a majority of them are friendly. Even the unfriendly ones make it a point to say "Hello Teacher" every day. "Hi hi hello teacher Diana, buh bye Diana teacher, teacher teacher hi hi hello, buh bye" ( but Diana is said kind of funny.. "Di on nuhhh" I've noticed that the students are very touchy towards eachother, like sitting in each other's laps, boys with boys, girls with girls, and I casually tell them to get in their own seats. SOO today, during their group work, these two girls were sitting with each other and this boy starts freaking out and goes "TEACHER TEACHER TEACHER, look!!! look at the girls, GAY GAY.." and is pointing to the girls and calling them gay, and I'm like woah what the hell, they say no English and now all the sudden they know what gay is?? ok. great. So I'm like, "Nope, inappropriate, please don't call people that.." They say some funny things though. They always want to hear what Chinese I know and I ask them to help me pronounce things and they like that. I'm thinking of trying to do a lesson later on where they have to teach me Chinese haha. I say De bu chi (sorry, excuse me) Mei guan chi (It's ok, it's alright) Wo bu dong (I don't understand) and I'm slowly but surely determined to learn more.