School

Before I came to Taiwan, I expected my teaching responsibilities and my time in school to be minimal compared to all the traveling and exploring I thought I’d be doing all across east Asia during my 11 months abroad. For some reason, I had it twisted that an English teaching assistantship would have little to do with teaching — how silly of me! As it turns out, my time at school has been the best part of my time in Taiwan, and it’s all thanks to some of the friendliest, most inviting teachers and many classes of brilliant, hilarious, and thoughtful students.

Dongshan Elementary School is a 1st-6th grade elementary school 15 minutes from my apartment in Dongshan Township, hosting about 600 students in total. I co-taught English for fifth and sixth grades with two outstanding local English teachers (LETs), Tina and Jennifer. These two made my year at least ten times better and I would not have made it through all the unique and often frustrating experiences that come with living abroad without their interest in my wellbeing, long chats about life, and fresh breakfast at school every morning before classes started. From the moment I met them I felt like I’d known them my whole life; we were quite the dream team, as our three-person group chat name had anticipated from its conception. As for the other teachers at school, everyone was very friendly and always said hello in the halls and could often revive a failing conversation with their English ability when my Chinese fell flat, which was often. However, conversations deeper than pleasantries were few and far between, and this is maybe the thing I regret most about the year. Given my limited Chinese ability, I am somewhat frustrated leaving Taiwan knowing there was so much more to learn about life and culture just by talking to the other teachers sitting right next to me. I realize now how valuable language is and even more so how much implicit culture is embedded in language. Even if I knew the words that were being spoken to me, their connotation and specific purpose in context was often lost on me, and reflecting on how often I use metaphors, sarcasm, and other indirect language in my own English vocabulary, it’s clear that just learning a language in school is nowhere near enough to truly understand a native speaker.

But I tried, and for the most part I made a lot of progress with my Chinese ability and shared a lot of laughs with the teachers I saw regularly at school. I shared even more laughs with my students! My fifth- and sixth-graders were polar opposites this year: fifth grade was full of energy and required some serious reigning in after a fun activity, while sixth grade often needed a jump start to make them even pretend like they were having a good time in school on any given day. English education in Taiwan is taken pretty seriously, and many students attend cram lessons after regular school lets out for more English exposure and test-taking practice. This creates quite the double-edged sword, however, as, on the one hand, students for the most part do improve because of these extra classes, but on the other hand, they tend to resent school and specifically English because of its association with constant practice tests and homework assignments. I hope my presence in the classroom helped to spark a renewed interest in learning English for these students by giving them access to a native speaker from the US, a place they’ve only really ever seen and heard about on the news and in movies.

I certainly learned a lot from my kids just by listening to their daily routines, what they complain about, and how much they love to either listen to k-pop or play on their phones, usually both. Kids are kids, even on the other side of the world, and even as they change from rambunctious little fifth-graders to angsty sixth-graders, teachers maintain the crucial responsibility of inspiring them to find learning fascinating and purposeful.

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