First Post

My school.

Hard at work!


Some photos of my students and school.

It's Saturday morning in Taipei. In Hawaii it is Friday afternoon and in Toledo, Ohio it is Friday evening. I've been living in Taiwan for a little more than two months. Gee, it seems longer. Living here is different than visiting. Since I've been here I have gone through many changes. First I had that "vacation" feeling. Next came the "I got get a job. I feel lost feeling," and now I am in the "Why did I get a job so quickly?" feeling and the "We really don't get a break until lunar New Year (February 2007)?" you've got to be kidding feeling.

Well, I know why I got the job so quickly. It made me feel like I had a sense of place. I don't think there is anything quite like a job to give you that "This is my home." feeling. Also, there is the money thing....

About the job. I teach English (not as straight-forward as it sounds) to kindergarten, 2nd graders, 4th graders and 6th graders. I teach all but the K's seven times a week. The K's I teach or should I say perform for only 2 times a week. I teach at a private elementary school.

The students are like the students I have known in Hawaii. Most of the lessons are text-book based. However, I find that I can get most of the classes through the text book in 5 lessons and then I have two lessons where I teach what I want. In fourth grade we are doing poetry and pen-pal writing to a class in Mountain View, Hawaii. In sixth grade I am having them make a poster and do presentations about endemic or indeginous plants and animals. The second graders are learning to write stories that go with illustrations. I am stumbling through these processes and a lot of it is experimental since the level of student's English abilities vary and my Chinese is still in its infancy.

Behavior is an issue here just like in Hawaii. Students may respect their Chinese teachers here but it doesn't mean they respect their forgien English teacher. In each of my classes, there are 3 or 4 boys that take up a lot of my attention due to behavior issues. The tools I learned student teaching in Hawaii are useful. But I find that the bag of tools must be rotated or modified. Similar to the "Borg" students seem to adapt to the modifications, and then another needs to be tried. Sigh.....

About my personal life. Annie and I live about 2.5 hours apart. It's a lot closer than Hawaii - Taiwan but far from ideal. I miss her a lot since we really only see each other on the weekends. More about all this later.

I hope you enjoy the new blog.