"No really, it's true..."

Warning for those with short attention spans: This is a long, virtually pictureless post, mostly about my classes. So it's probably boring--be forewarned!

So I find myself replacing lunch with tea. Sometimes I’ll forget to each lunch, or lunch just doesn’t fit in my schedule, or I’m just not that hungry, so I’ll drink tea instead. When you get tapioca pearls in it, it’s almost like you’re eating AND drinking, so you kind-of feel like you’ve had a meal anyway. I’m not sure how healthy it is to replace a meal with tea, but at least it’s not soda. Green tea is good for you! And I get half-sugar, not all the sugar. It’s weird to put sugar in tea, but when the tea is cold, it’s good with half-sugar. And now I’m obsessed with Mr. Wish’s special juice/tea, and that comes with chunks of fruit, so it’s healthy, right?

So spring came last week. And by spring, I mean “late-spring.” Pretty much summer, frankly.

Based on the past five months and what others have told me about summer, I’ve concluded that there are not four distinct seasons in Taiwan. The seasons in Taiwan can be distinguished as follows:

March-October (8 months) = hot/insanely hot
November, February (2 months) = warm
December and January (2 months) = less warm

I’m not looking forward to summer and taking 2+ showers a day. Yaaaay.

I guess I should talk about my classes since I haven’t in a while.

I got a new class. It’s three days a week, one hour each day. The kids are there for several hours, but they’re only with me one hour at a time three days a week. They’re a special kind of class, and I don’t really understand it (called HB, not Y or M or K or A) All I know is that they’re there for a good chunk of the afternoon with the Chinese teacher, they’re on the 1st floor instead of the 2nd or 8th, and I have to take off my shoes and teach in my socks (at lots of schools here, you take off your shoes and wear flip flops or just teach in your socks).

This class is a little crazy. Out of seven kids, three or four of them are insane, or “energetic,” as I phrased it with my boss (who laughed, because she knows they’re insane). I walked in the classroom, put down my basket, and started putting my markers on the board rail when one of the crazy kids comes up and starts punching me in the side. Playfully, but also testing me. I gave him a harsh warning and he went back to his desk and he and his friend asked if they could kick me. Then they started a chant about kicking the teacher. Good times. I didn’t want to start punishing until I had gone over the rules and explained to them what will happen if they are good and bad. I didn’t think it was fair to just walk in and start punishing when the kids aren’t clear on the rules (although, kicking and punching the teacher should be a no-brainer).

So I told them I have three rules. I asked them to guess what they are. “No Chinese.” Of course—number one. “Kick the teacher!” No. But that brings me to number 3, “Be nice.” That includes not kicking the teacher. What is number 2? No ideas? Number 2 is “Listen to the teacher.” I explained that if they follow the rules and participate in the games and activities, they get 2 reward cards. If they break a rule, they lose 2 reward cards.

After I explained the rules, the crazy kids (two of whom are twins, and kept trying to trick the Chinese teacher and I about who was who) chilled out a little. They even started raising their hands (which I rewarded) instead of running up to the board whenever they had something to say. Overall though, the class is enthusiastic about games and participated well. Another teacher at my school who once subbed this class said it’s a nightmare. I’m sure they will test me a lot from now on, and while I only rewarded good behavior on the first day and never punished, I’ll definitely be doing some punishing during the next several classes so the kids know I’m serious. I’ve realized that the first several classes are very important, because they set the tone and the kids will behave based on that. I have a really good Chinese teacher, she’s hard-core. So I think we might be able to whip these kids into shape. Cross your fingers.
I guess this brings me to my Y class. As you may recall, my Y’s finished Y1 and have started Y2. The first day of Y2 was AWESOME. The kids were soooo good, and I thought we had turned a new leaf. Day 2 was good, but I had to do a little bit of punishing. I’m definitely doing the reward cards thing more with this class. If they’re bad, they give me three reward cards. And I reward them a lot when they’re good. But after Day 2, it all went downhill. First it was Dora. Dora all of a sudden was terrified to come to class. She would sit outside with her family and cry and cry, refusing to come into the room. I don’t know what happened. Now we’re on Day 6, and she’s started coming into the room and participating, but usually her sister or aunt is in the room with us. Mia has improved. She’s gone from having good days and bad days to having good moments and bad moments, and she seems to want my approval more and more.

But another student, Allen, who was occasionally bad in Y1, has gone insane in Y2. He kicks flashcards around, refuses to sit in his chair, wanders around the room, mouths words at me instead of speaking, etc. He’s not angry, he’s just having fun. I reward him when he’s good, and every time he does something bad, I ask for three cards. But this has happened so many times—“Allen, give me three cards. Allen, give me three cards”—that I think it’s lost its meaning, and one day he just gave me ALL his cards. He couldn’t care less about them. So the Chinese teacher talked to his mom yesterday, and Allen cried and didn’t come in our room for most of class yesterday. When he did come in finally, he refused to participate. So maybe he’ll be better. If not, I have to find something that motivates him besides reward cards. Maybe if all of them are good, I’ll let them run around in circles for the last couple minutes of class. I don’t know, we’ll see.

Some kids have turned into wise guys when we play games, and if they goof off or waste everyone’s time when it’s their turn in a game, I won’t give them a reward card for their turn. One kid, Vincent, gets really resentful if I don’t give him a reward card, and will completely shut down and sit and pout and not participate for the rest of class. Some days Vincent is kind of crazy, like Allen, and I think part of it is because he knows more English than most of the students, so he’s a little bored. So on some occasions, I’ve made Vincent or Allen my “helper” to keep them from distracting other students, but they can’t handle this either. They can’t stand and help me give the slappers to the other students just like they can’t sit in their chairs and participate. So it’s a lot of trial and error, and the kids’ moods are different every day, and I never know which kid is going to drive me up the wall. I still like this class though, I feel like I’m really teaching them something and it’s rewarding to see their improvement, especially now that we’re learning the difference between countables and uncountables (I want a book vs. I want paper).

My K12 is fine, they’ve become one of my best classes. I can joke around and have fun with them and they occasionally laugh. And they’re doing better on the tests than my last K12, I think that’s partly because I’ve learned how to teach this class more effectively. For instance, we’ve been doing a lot of “less/more/fewer/the most/the least/ the fewest” stuff lately, which can get really boring. The examples are always, “Who has the most crackers/robots/toy cars/milk/juice…,” which is lame. So in my warm-ups I try to not only use the students themselves in the examples, but also use weird situations, like, “Jay has the _____ insects in his soup” or “Alice has _____ spiders on her head than Tammy.” I draw pictures of each situation of course, and the students are both disgusted and amused at the same time. And “insects” is one of their vocab words too, so I was doubly impressed with myself. I don’t know if I’m going to follow this class when they move on to A1, it depends what day of the week they all choose. I’d like to, not only because I need hours, but because I like them. Even though I hate the books for A1. UUUUGHHHH don’t even get me started. If the book makes me want to shoot myself, I can’t imagine how the kids feel.

As for my A1, who I only see one hour a week, we are doing fine. It’s remarkable how much of a difference a seating chart can make, and I’m impressed with their resilience during our third hour, which goes from 9-10 on a Friday night. They sure complain a lot, but they’re surprisingly cooperative. Of course my one kid in there who is repeating the class is kind-of a nut, so I try to make him my helper so he can be somewhat productive.

My A11’s are done and have moved on to A12. Six out of seven kids returned, and there’s only one girl, and all those boys have crushes on her, so they tease her allllll the time. I guess her family is religious, and they’re always teasing her about being a nun. Anytime anyone says the word, “sister” in any context, one of them will point to Melodie and say, “Sister! Melodie! Hahahahahaha!” I’m not sure why that’s funny. On their final grade reports for A11, I really really wanted to write, “I’m sorry you were stuck with so many silly boys” on Melodie’s, but I didn’t.

I had a funny/sad moment during the oral test for my A11. The last question was simply, “Tell me about yourself” using five sentences. My weakest student said, “My name is ___. I go to school. I’m stupid…”
“No you’re not!!” I said, pretty surprised.
“No really, it’s true,” he answered, and I chuckled and told him he was wrong. But I can’t get that line out of my head: “No really, it’s true.” It was remarkable because it was the most fluent thing he’s ever said. His timing and tone were so perfect, he sounded like a native speaker. Furthermore, it had real comedic timing. It was really really funny. Unfortunately, he meant it, and I’m sad that he thinks he’s stupid. He isn’t stupid, he just talks too much and doesn’t pay attention in class. He just likes to talk with his friends, and I don’t blame him, but that’s why his grades aren’t as high as the others. I would assume he does that at regular school too. In an essay he wrote for me, he mentioned his father getting mad at him for one or two months every time he gets bad grades. That made me really sad—that his father gets mad at him for that long when he gets bad grades, and that it obviously happens so often that he knows for how long he should expect his dad to be angry. So I tried to be encouraging in his final grade report, telling him I think he has a lot of potential if he concentrated more and talked less. And I do think he’s a good kid with a great personality, and I told him so. I hope he doesn’t think he’s stupid forever.

For my first A12 class, I told the kids that since they hate writing essays for me so much, I won’t assign them a topic. We would come up with the topic as a class. So we had a discussion, but it wasn’t particularly fruitful. The kids don’t want to write period. It makes little difference whether I choose the topic or they do. But anyway, the one kid who hasn’t come back is named Peter, and they miss him. So we narrowed it down to two essay topics. Half the class is writing about whether tests or essays are better for assessing students’ knowledge, and the other half is writing, “How to Get Peter Back.” I’m looking forward for their ideas on how they would get Peter to come back, I think that’s pretty funny.

I subbed an adult class on Monday, unfortunately because the teacher was in a scooter accident. She’s OK, luckily, but she was at the hospital while I subbed her class (that leaves Mike and I as the only foreign teachers we know who haven’t been in a scooter accident, knock on wood). I usually really study my lesson plan before my adult class, but I didn’t know I was going to sub this class until the last minute, so I had to frantically photo copy all the handouts and the plan and then wing it. But it went surprisingly smoothly. It’s a few levels below my current adult class, and it was fun. She has a good group of students and the activities were pretty interesting. Except one activity—it was a listening activity. The point of the lesson that day was to describe people’s appearances, so the listening activity had “James Pond, Agent 006” talking with different agents (Agent X, Y and Z), who would describe the next agent he needed to see (he has long dark hair and glasses, etc.). At the end, he had to meet “The Boss.” This is where it got confusing. The people who made this activity tried to make a joke, and it didn’t work. The Boss was very tall, had long dark hair, and would be wearing a T-shirt that said, “Bruce Springs is The Boss.” OMG.

First of all, there was the confusion between “The Boss” the character and “The Boss” as in Bruce Springsteen. Furthermore, they didn’t know who Bruce Springsteen was, even the older students. But they really wanted to understand the joke, so I kept trying to explain it to them. Finally, I said, “OK, do you know Michael Jackson?” Yes. “OK, so let’s pretend that in America, Michael Jackson’s nickname is “The Boss.” The people who wrote this activity are trying to be funny, so the T-shirt says, “Michael Jacks is The Boss.”” Then they sort-of understood it. They at least understood that it was a bad joke. But it was a fun class anyway, even though I taught that night for five hours straight and my knees were killing me.

Overall, I think my teaching is improving. I’m much better at talking slowly, and I try to make examples and exercises a little goofy or interesting. My biggest problem is probably being too nice and not stern enough. That’s probably a reflection of how I’m conflicted in my own perception of our school. I’m torn between viewing our school as “real school” and an imitation of real school. I can’t decide between being lenient (because I feel bad that the kids are at “extra-school”) or being strict (because no matter what time of day it is, school is school). I try to strike a balance between being a laid-back teacher and a strict one by being relatively laid-back but also enforcing basic rules, but I feel like with younger kids you have to be one extreme or the other for them to understand. It seems like older kids can interpret the balance but younger kids take everything as a sign of weakness or strength. But, I’ve only been doing this for five months and I have no training, so the only way I’ll learn is through trial and error.

So yeah, that’s what’s new with my classes. And the weather. And my lunch habits. The end!