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Wang, Rachel (王韶晨)
Ever since I heard about AID through my friends, I had always wanted to go back to Taiwan to teach English. This year, since my family was already planning on going back to Taiwan to visit relatives, I decided to apply for the program; not only did I look forward to working with the kids, but the program also seemed like a great way to meet others and travel around Taiwan. Even though my friend had told me about his experiences from last year in AID, I still didn’t know quite what to expect. Looking back on my experience, it was fun, rewarding, and unforgettable.
The first week at Chientan was filled with classes that made teaching more of a reality. Although some of the classes were redundant, the teachers definitely reinforced the necessity to speak very, very slowly to our students and use visual clues so that they would be able to understand what we were saying. The teaching demos were also more or less helpful and gave us many ideas of games to play in the classroom. The most useful part of the first week was meeting with our school’s teacher, Apple, who helped us prepare our teaching plans for the next week and who filled us in on our students’ interests and learning behaviors. She filled us in on what to expect—enthusiastic students who wouldn’t understand a lot of English, extremely hot weather, and numerous mosquitoes.
I had a wonderful teaching experience at Chao Yang Elementary School. I had a great time with my students, my teaching group, and the school administration. The first day, the students couldn’t necessarily understand everything we said, but we simply repeated our words and used more visual clues. The students would guess in Chinese what we were saying and would continue guessing until we told them they got it right. Over the first few days, we got to know our students better and how they liked to learn—they were an active class and needed to go outside to play a game at least once a day. We also learned that the students weren’t huge fans of singing and dancing; from the first day, they begged not to sing and dance for the closing ceremony. We found out that they already knew their numbers, so we decided to replace our numbers lesson with an Easter lesson. For Easter, we had our students decorate Easter eggs and we hid them for them to find. This became a theme in our teaching—we tried to bring them as much culture as we could. By the end of our time at Chao Yang, we had given them fake passports and went on a trip to America, we decorated a Christmas tree, and we went trick or treating. We also taught them how to play American dodgeball, which they took a great interest in because they play dodgeball (Taiwanese style) competitively during the school year.
What I loved most about the school was the family-like community. Right when we walked into the classroom on the first day, the students had all opened the windows of the classroom. They also all knew to get the lunch from downstairs and wash their bowls to eat lunch. Whenever Catherine or I needed help, they would always come to our rescue. Furthermore, whenever we didn’t understand what they were saying, they would patiently repeat it in simple Chinese. I was a little surprised that the students did not even try to take advantage of us in the slightest. Our students were truly a great bunch. Outside of class, the school brought us to several local landmarks—a ceramics experience, Lukang old street, many museums, Xitou, and even the local nightmarket. I loved seeing the village and getting to know the local culture.
The tour during the last week of the program was also a lot of fun. AID planned a very busy schedule to make sure we visited a number of key landmarks. It was fun to get back together with the rest of the volunteers and hear about their teaching experiences as well as spend more time with my teaching group who had become like family to me. While I wish we had more time to shop at the nightmarkets, I was extremely satisfied with the tour and definitely learned a little more about Taiwan and its culture.
I will never forget my AID experience and the people that I met through the program.
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Yu, Anthony (游傑勝)
To characterize the AID experience in a one page reflection is almost insurmountable. I guess I could call it awesome. Awesome can be defined as pretty much every vocabulary word in the English dictionary. There were ups and downs throughout the past four weeks and many friendships were made.
When I reflect upon my experience and ask what I could have done better, I would probably answer that I wish I was more sociable. I made several friends, but I was quite restrained in meeting people outside of my friend group. However, that said, I still met fantastic new people that I’d probably be friends with for a long time. At Chien Tan, we all struggled with the annoying rules and boring classes. However, this struggle allowed us to develop stronger relationships.
The most important part of the AID experience was the teaching. In my opinion I think I was a good teacher and the students learned a lot. I definitely wished I used more English. However, the students simply refused to respond unless spoken to with Mandarin. I had a great time with the students, who we would eat with during lunch and come find us after school. Chaoyang Elementary School really encourages a family like environment, which enable teachers to get to know our students. Students were active learners and that made the work I did feel worthwhile. Even though at times I may have had to yell or control the class room in a more firm manner, students were always engaged in learning.
The tour was also very fun experience. I thoroughly enjoyed the humor offered by our counselors. While I think some of the living conditions were mediocre, most were pretty outstanding.
The whole AID experience was very good. I had a good time. At the same time, I felt there is room for improvement. I could have probably worked even harder and provided an even more welcoming experience However, most everything was good.
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Chang, Amanda (張芳如)
Sweat. If one thing ties together my whole experience with AID Summer 2012, without a doubt in my mind, it would be sweat. It sounds gross, but come on, one has to sweat while they're running around playing soccer with their students. And sweat comes easily when hiking up a gorgeous mountain. And who didn't sweat waiting to see if they were going to be accepted into this once in a lifetime experience?
Maybe it's just me, although I'm pretty sure all 350 volunteers did a lot of it too, but I've sweated a lot due to this program ever since February when I first began the process for application. I'd known about the program for a while, but I didn't know when the due date for all the paperwork was, hence why I ended up dashing around the house searching for my health information the few days before the deadline in a bid to beat the clock and turn it all in on time. The days before the results of the application came in were also spent in sweat, this time a cold, clammy, nervous sweat as I repeatedly checked the website every few hours to see if the glorious words “Admitted” would be emblazoned next to my name.
And obviously, I broke a sweat running up and down the stairs for the various workshops at Chien Tan, where I tried to retain all the helpful hints the teachers gave to make teaching easier when I would finally arrive at Bi Tan Primary School in Chiayi County. Without a doubt though, the two weeks spent teaching was where the sweat joined up with blood and tears to form the often quoted “blood, sweat, and tears.” Within the first ten minutes of teaching, I broke up a fight and escorted a student to the nurses after she had gotten a cut while playing outside. That seemed like such a dark way to start the two weeks, though it actually turned out to be an exhausting, but ultimately rewarding and fun experience. Running around outside playing dodge-ball with my students, jumping around in a box formation to teach the directions, and waving my arms madly to teach “The Rainbow Color Song,” left me drenched in a happy sweat, no doubt also because of the lack of air conditioning. As I’m from the North-East, Taiwan’s heat was killer to my system. In all those two weeks though, the tears on some of the student’s cheeks left the greatest impact on me. When we left, half of all the students arrived at an insanely early hour to send us off, bringing heartfelt notes with them. When we all hugged and took our final group picture, it was unbelievable how changed I felt. All I could hope for as the bus pulled away was that I had made an impact in these kids’ lives, however small.
The sweating didn’t let up at the end of teaching though. Between hiking up mountains to see some of the most gorgeous scenery I’ve ever laid my eyes on and walking through the old streets of Lukang, I found myself having to find Boba Tea stands to cool myself off during the tour. I enjoyed myself so much during the tour, no actually the whole four weeks, that it was with shock when I found myself walking across the stage at Chien Tan to receive my certificate. Never before had I truly appreciated the phrase “time flies when you’re having fun.”
I lied previously when I said that sweat was the one thing that tied together my whole experience with AID Summer 2012. I meant beautiful memories. And I lied when I said there was just one thing. Because more than just memories, there were new friends, amazing experiences, excellent teachers and counselors, and belly-cramping laughter that made those four weeks into what will undoubtedly be one of the highlights of my life.
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Pan, Heidi (潘筠潔)
When I first arrived at Jiantan, it was safe to say that I had no idea what was going on. I did more than my fair share of worrying. Were the lesson plans too hard? Too easy? Would my students be troublemakers? Would they hate me? How would the living conditions be? But after a week of educational training, time chipped at my fears. I thought I might be ready to teach, and allowed myself a little spark of hope.
As the bus smoothly followed the winding roads to my assigned school, I began to worry if I could even handle the weather or not. But one whiff of clean mountain air and I knew that teaching wouldn't be as bad as I feared. In fact, there were times when I felt proud to be teaching, when I could see definite progress among my class. The students in turn became less shy around volunteers - even trying to sneak into the meeting room - and after two weeks it was difficult to say goodbye to the entourage that sent us off.
Of course, one of the most important parts of the camp was the tour. The three weeks before truly created a family out of each school group, and now it was time to enjoy ourselves while learning about Taiwan. I enjoyed touring the island and discovering that Taiwan was much, much more than its urban capital. Thanks to this tour and this camp, I gained insight into the island, experience with understanding a student's mind, and meaningful relationships with volunteers and counselors alike. AID treated me well this past month and I will never forget these amazing memories. AID SUPER!
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