A year back I wrote a blog post entitled A Day in the Life of Teacher Robin, which I sent multiple people to when asking me what my job was like here in Taipei. Since my contract changed slightly in my second year abroad, as did my perceptions of my job, I thought I'd update it today so I can fully express my emotions saying goodbye to my students.
I now no longer teach night classes and now teach all young students with high levels of English. I have (well, had, as of today) three classes: two kindergarten classes and one young elementary school class.
Every Monday through Friday, I teach my two kindergarten classes. I work at two different branches of the same school (Hess) and switch off every month which one I go to first. One is in LuZhou, where I worked last year. The other is in San Chong, a school I just started at in August of 2011. Both cities are on the outskirts of Taipei and technically in New Taipei City, but I live in the city center and I commute via MRT (metro) every day to get to school. The kindergartens are bilingual schools, so they have Chinese half the day and English the other half. When I'm not teaching in one school, the Chinese teacher teaches them Chinese, until I switch. They also have a Japanese teacher come in once a week, though besides a few phrases here and there, they don't really know Japanese well.
In addition, I teach a 2 hour class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays from 4:40-6:40. This class is called TreeHouse 4, meaning these students have graduated from my school's bilingual kindergarten and are now in their 4th semester of after school English courses. The majority of my students just finished the 2nd grade, though I have about 5-6 3rd grade students in the class too.
We'll start with kindergarten. As I explained in the last post, there are 3 levels of kindergarten, small class (ages 3-4), middle class (ages 4-5), and big class (ages 5-6). I started with a small class in LuZhou in August 2010, so they're almost finished with middle class right now. The class name is B2, and they're just about the 18 coolest 5 year old kids you'll ever meet. Around 14 of them have been with me since I started in 2010, and they're my favorite part of Taiwan, hands down. I adore these children with all my heart and will be saddened when I have to say my goodbyes.
What is it that I teach them, exactly? Well, now that they're in middle class, we concentrate a lot on reading and phonics. Even though these kids are far from fluent in their second (and third - many can speak Taiwanese in addition to Chinese) language, they can already read. All of my students can sound out 3 and 4 letter words and we read books like this on a daily basis, "Jim has a pig. Jim and his pig have wigs. They do a jig on the rig and eat figs." Considering I've been their only English teacher, I'm pretty damned proud that these kids can read because of me; to teach someone a skill so vital to their development is extremely rewarding.
I also try to teach them as much vocabulary and grammar as I can. I can't exactly teach a five year old what present continuous tense is (is/am/are + [verb]ing), but I can teach them that you can't say "I singing a song" but rather "I am singing a song" is the correct way.
Hess tells me which vocabulary and grammar to concentrate each week. For example, this week is about things to do in the city. Their vocabulary words are "temple", "movie theater", "department store", "museum", and "night market". Their sentence pattern is "Where did you go this weekend?" " I went to the _____". "Who did you go with?" "I went with my _____".
While teaching my students the "I went with my ____" sentence, I decided to use this opportunity to teach them the word "boyfriend" and "girlfriend" today. After teaching them, I went around and asked the boys who their girlfriends were. The boys had an average of about 5 girlfriends each, most of the girls agreeing after I asked them if they accepted. One boy raised his hand and said sadly, "Teacher Robin, I only have 3 girlfriends." It was probably one of the cutest things my kids have done, and they do a lot of stinkin' cute things.
Anyway, we also have to do crafts that go along with our theme. Although I consider myself creative in some ways, art is not one of them. It is especially difficult to think of crafts that last from 30 minutes to 60 minutes for 5 year olds. But, after 2 years of crafts, I've gotten much better at it. For example, since one of the vocabulary words is "movie theater", we designed 3D popcorn boxes and set up our classroom like a movie theater. I gave them fake money and they went up to my ticket stand and I made them practice using a polite phrase, "I would like one ticket, please" to get a fake movie ticket and their popcorn. I filled up their popcorn boxes with crumpled up pieces of yellow paper to look like popcorn. They LOVED the popcorn. A little too much. They started complaining that some students had more popcorn and then started eating it. Seriously. They shoveled the shit out of that fake popcorn.
Ok, but seriously, I get paid to set up fake movie theaters and laugh at kids doing adorably stupid things all day? Not that I don't work a lot, but sometimes it is super fun.
We also have to sing a lot of songs with them. We warm up with an "exercise time" to half Hess songs, half regular songs. Last month we did "Call Me Maybe" and my kids couldn't handle its awesomeness and demanded to listen to it on a daily basis. I even made up a really stupid exercise-y dance to it. This month, we hula dance to "Surfin' USA" and do squats and lunges to "I Like to Move It Move It." But oh, those Hess songs. They're awful. There are no words to describe how terribly awful these songs are; I must show you so you fully comprehend. Here is one of my personal favorites that I uploaded to youtube just for you:
WHAT THE FLYING FUCK.
And the worse part? My kids fucking loved that song. I made them do awkward rap moves like brushing dirt off their shoulders, the gangsta swag walk, the roof is on fire move, etc.
Arghhh, I've already written far too much and I've only gotten through a few thoughts on one class. This post may take some time to finish; I'm going to have to do it in parts.
Whatever, if you clicked on the youtube video, I'm sure you have poured battery acid into your ears and are now seeking medical treatment for your injuries and therefore aren't interested in reading any further today.
No comments:
Post a Comment