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Lin, Kevin (林哲寬)
The blast of sound from an alarm wakes me as I struggle to return to the solace of my sleep. Groggily I wake, wash up, and make my way to the classroom where middle school students are eagerly awaiting the first day of class. Nervous, but determined, I converse with my teaching partner briefly before striding confidently to the podium, laying out my class plans in front of me. I take a few seconds to gather my thoughts and address the class with a simple "Hello class! My name is Mr. Kevin" No audible response. One of the students rolls their eyes and another yawns, looking uninterested and gazes off out the window. I repeat, firmly, "Hello class!" This time I get a few murmurs from the students. Progress. The third time I repeat the phrase in firm and resonating voice and, in unison the class says "Hello Mr. Kevin."
This is my second year attending AID Summer and I've come to conclusion that being firm yet fair to the students is key. On my first year, I taught elementary school and was lax, allowing some variation in rules that I set for the class. Though these kids were at most 11 years old. The control of the class fell into their hands by the end of the first week of teaching. It was then impossible to control the class at times, causing large amounts of stress to both my teaching partner and me. By the end, I vowed that if I attended AID Summer again, I would approach the way I taught differently. As shown, I demonstrated a firm tone on the first day of teaching allowing for little question of the lengths I would go to ensure order in the classroom. Initially, people in my group questioned my approach. However, by the end of the first week, they realized exactly why I was so strict. As the class began to get to know each other, they started to test the water on the rules, looking for any chance to gain more freedoms. With the firm foundation I had set, my students still listened to me, course materials were effectively taught, and at the end, both the students and the teachers felt accomplished. I even added games, activities, and humor into my teaching, but, despite this, the students would listen to everything I said. From other people's point of view, it looked like the teaching dream: course material being taught thoroughly, students laughing and enjoying the material, and full control of the class being retained throughout the teaching period. By the end of the teaching week, I received great praise from both students and administrators commenting on how I seemed to teach with ease, breaking the common idea that teaching middle-schoolers is tedious. In fact by the end, I had a positive teaching experience and began to love teaching.
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Lee, Ching (李婧)
AID was truly an incredible experience for me. I can say that my four weeks in Taiwan were well spent. In the beginning, I was not looking forward to this program, in fact I was kind of scared. Spending a month in a foreign country with 350 strangers did not sound appealing to me. I had no clue what to expect. But after the first few days at Chien Tan, I realized that I was a part of something really amazing. Through out the four weeks, I met tons of people and made countless new friends. My teaching group, busmates, tablemates, room mates... etc. are all super close now and I know some of these people will become my lifelong buddies. Even some of the kids from my elementary school are now my FB friends! I know I will keep in contact with all these people forever.
Although preparing for opening/closing ceremonies, teaching rowdy students and living in an unfamiliar environment infested by bugs can be stressful and frustrating at times... all in all, I can say it was a very good learning experience. I never expected to gain so much out of this program and I'm so sad now that it's over... It has been about a week since the program ended and my mind is still filled with AID stuff. Seriously... I'm having AID withdrawals :(
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Yeung, Wendie (楊問笛)
AID was a fantastic experience for me. I have been to Taiwan many times in the past, but I always stayed with my uncle in Taipei and never really explored other parts of Taiwan. Having lived in a rural mountain area, I now have a new perspective on life in Taiwan and have seen an entirely different lifestyle. The kids could be mischievous, but they were very cute and loved to learn, and it was both sad and inspiring to hear the backstories of the kids who live in rural areas. The place where I stayed was gorgeous - Baiji is surrounded by mountains and it really allowed me to appreciate the natural beauty of Taiwan, something that is much harder to do from a city like Taipei. The two teaching weeks were the most meaningful for me, and I wish it could have been longer.
Overall, teaching English in Taiwan has been an eye-opening and enlightening adventure, and I highly encourage people to do it.
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Cheng, Jennifer (鄭吉利)
Time. It’s something that is represented by the ticking of clocks, the whooshing of sand through an hourglass, the chanting of children counting…
Never could I imagine that the two weeks I spent at Haiduan Middle School would pass by so fast. After a five hour train ride and another twenty minute car ride, we finally arrived at the school in Taitung. The following day, we were taken on a tour and the culture shock hit. The communities were so small; the teachers that accompanied us knew almost everyone from one or two townships over. The amazing thing was, we would be driving and suddenly stop to just admire the vast mountains, rivers and valleys that seemed to stretch on forever.
No amount of preparation and assurance could have alleviated my nervousness for the first day. Waking up at 8am and realizing that in an hour, I had to meet my students, perform for them, and then teach them English was a completely different category of frightening. The opening ceremony and pre-test passed by in the blink of an eye, and suddenly, I was standing in the front of the classroom introducing myself with my teaching partner. With the eleven kids in front of us, we played icebreaker games and I quickly realized that this was an energetic group of teenagers. Over the course of the first week, we prepared educational games that fired up their competitiveness, discovered that various worksheets were the magical instrument to quiet them down, and really bonded with the students and each other. We would stay up late to prepare the next day’s teaching material and closing ceremony ideas, and while our way may not have been the most efficient, we were able to talk and bond along the way. Whether it was watching movies and dramas, playing card games, or just sitting there and talking, nothing could have replaced those moments of bonding. When I woke up on day five of teaching, I realized that I didn’t have to teach tomorrow. But I also realized that half our time at Haiduan was already gone.
The second week passed even more quickly, and the little things really got to me. Who knew that trips to the supermarket could be so fun, that having a typhoon pass by meant that the school director would come cook lunch and dinner for us, or that 500 water balloons could make our students so happy? On the last day, we ate lunch with our students and had them sign our polos. After the closing ceremony, they tackled us with joy and sadness and we played until it was really time to say goodbye. Throughout the two weeks, the number of students that attended class was different every day because some of them had to take care of their parents or help run the family business. Despite their obligations, almost every student stayed after the final bell rang so they could talk to us; that level of loyalty and eagerness from kids that we had only known for two weeks was unexpectedly touching.
The level of responsibility you have as a teacher is insane; our students willingly came to class every day, with some travelling by train and for hours just to sit and listen to us teach them English. They relied on us to teach them vocabulary and tell them how and when it would be used in a foreign context. All my friends that I have met at Aidsummer, whether I met them at Chientan, at Haiduan or during the tour week, have changed my perspective on life and given me one unforgettable summer. I may have lost time, but the rewards and satisfaction gained instead were definitely worth it.
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Yeung, Felix (楊中衍)
This AID experience has affected me in a way that I think most people would not be affected. This is because it mainly gave me the courage I needed to speak Mandarin. It sounds silly, yes, but I have been taking Mandarin at a Chinese school for 12 years. Every time I walked into class, I would only speak English because I was so afraid of speaking Mandarin and making mistakes in pronunciation and grammar. My parents are from Hong Kong and we speak Cantonese at home, as opposed to many of my AID friends. Just being in Taiwan this trip and being forced to communicate with the principal, teachers, and students in Chinese has helped me to understand that 12 years of work at Chinese school had not gone to waste and that I simply needed to find the courage to speak. This will help me a lot in the future because I am currently also taking Spanish and French and hope to become fluent in those languages in order to become a mediator of languages in the future.
AID has also opened my eyes to the side of Taiwan that would not be as well known if one were simply visiting or sightseeing. I learned, along with my friends and coworkers, many of the children's stories and also got a taste of what teaching would be like. All of us agreed that we finally understood the hardships of teachers and how much work outside of class was needed in order for successful classes to occur.
I am incredibly grateful that I was able to participate in this experience and am thankful for all the friends that I made!
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Chen, Kathryn (Katie) (陳慧婷)
AID Summer was an adventure with many brand new experiences for me. Starting with stepping into the airplane ride there, it was my first time travelling alone, and even travelling overseas! When I finally arrived at the Taoyuan Airport, I quickly found everyone to be incredibly kind and friendly. Getting situated at Chien Tan Activity Center turned out to be easy, and I found my teaching group to be an enjoyable group to be around. We bonded a bit over the first week, getting to know each other through the many long lectures and planning sessions.
The second and third week, we were sent over to our elementary school to teach! Although before the program I had dealt with young children before, I was not expecting the amount of planning and tiredness I had every night. Teaching was a very draining experience, especially having to control a group of 16 first and second graders. Even with two other teaching partners, the kids were just crazy to handle. Despite these troubles, I learned to cherish and enjoy my time with these kids, and even spent the little breaks I had talking and interacting with them. I found out, even if it doesn't seem like it, teachers work very hard! Through AID I have gained much more respect toward all my teachers, and their dedication to helping students.
The fourth week we went on tour! My group was assigned to the Central Tour. Before, I felt that my group was not that close, but after the tour, when we bonded more and more as a group, we became closer- and in the end, we found it hard to separate. I also met other people on my bus, and had some great BUS A moments during the trip, along with long amusing bus rides.
This whole month of July I found an irreplaceable experience. I went to my first overseas trip, first night market visits, first time teaching, first time to Taiwan, etc. AID Summer was definitely a summer of firsts, fun, hard work, and meeting new and amazing people.
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Dong, Lucy (董鹭希)
Before AID, I had only been to Taiwan once in my life. In the one short week I had in Taipei last summer, I already fell in love with the place. I loved how warm-hearted the people were, how environmentally conscious the whole country was, and how efficient the transportation was! After spending another month in Taiwan with AID, I found only infinitely more things to love about the well-named Ilha Formosa (beautiful island).
I came into the program incredibly excited and uncharacteristically outgoing. I remember on the first day, running up and down the floors with up to ten people on the tow, meeting new people, and introducing AIDers that I had just met to each other. I did not want to waste a second of getting to know the people I would be spending the next exciting month with.
AID did not waste any time either. The first official day of the program, we woke at 6am to get ready for the day. The day was filled with icebreakers, singing, chanting, listening to lectures, and planning for our two weeks of teaching. Every day that first week, we worked from early morning to 9:30pm every night. Sometimes we would be bored, sometimes we would be tired, but we would remind ourselves, “it’s for the kids!”
The teaching experience itself was incredible. My awesome teaching partner, Sarah, my super cool TA, Daniel, and I taught Class A. The class was made up of the students who had scored the highest on the English pre-test in the school, so we knew that the kids would be great, yet they never failed to surprise us. When we walked into class the first day and called out “Good morning everyone!” they chimed back, “Good morning teacher!” As we wrote on the board, they read aloud what we wote; when we asked them to answer questions, they raised their hands willingly; when we got caught up in teaching and forgot to keep track of their break times, we did not hear a single complaint. They were my perfect little angels. Every day they would do something to amaze me. When we saw that they had already mastered basic vocabulary and sentence structure, we challenged them to write short stories about their day. I had expected a few simple sentences, but as I walked around the room, I saw that they had writen full-page long essays, complete with adorable illustrations. My eyes welled up as I read their stories, and ran around to the other classes to show them off. My angels never failed to make me proud.
I was put in the greatest group that I could have asked for. In our six girls and two guys, we formed lasting friendships in no time. We ate together, taught together, stayed up late together, became sleep-deprived together, explored together, searched for wifi together, got lost together, sang and danced together, and made infinitely many amazing memories together in those few short weeks we all lived together. We saw each other’s best and worst sides, and shared secrets that we would have had a hard time entrusting in friends we have known for years!
Leaving the school was one of the hardest parts of the program. I had a hard time letting go of the kids, and even more so the TAs who we had become great friends with during our stay. We exchanged presents and letters to each other in at the house we now referred to as home, and took countless pictures. When we were ready to leave, the TAs surprised us by deciding to send us off to Chientan by going on the bus ride back with us. On the bus, we sang all our songs from the closing ceremony at the school, and were close to tears as we shared a few last jokes and laughs.
“Come visit us in America!”
“I miss you guys already!”
“Ahhh GROUP HUG!”
We all piled together for another group hug, as the Chientan counselors kept telling us that it was time for lunch and that our TAs had to leave. We shook our heads, tears streaming down our faces, unwilling to say goodbye. As our TAs reluctantly left us, we cried even more, waving frantically at them through the windows of Chientan, as if they would come back if we waved hard enough. We made hearts with our arms, and in the distance, we saw they made hearts back to us. Finally, they were gone. A few sympathetic counselors walked us to lunch, telling us not to cry. I hugged my teddy bear, one of the TAs’ goodbye presents to me, for comfort. I was surprised at myself. I had never expected to be so upset saying goodbye to these people I had known for only two weeks. This was the first of many heartbreaking goodbyes.
During tour week, we got to see so much more of Taiwan, but we could not help feeling homesick for our Yude Primary School, and made nightly calls to our TAs. They missed us too, and came to meet up with us at a nightmarket, surprise us with more presents at our hotel, and hang out with us at Taipei 101. The day after the program ended, our entire group checked out first thing in the morning and our TAs all came to meet up with us. They took us out for one last adventure in Taiwan with our whole beloved AID family.
The dreaded tear-filled goodbyes came again. In one final moment, I sought to lighten the situation. “It’s not goodbye, it’s 再見! We will see each other again!” I stood by those words. As I write this reflection over a month after the program has ended, I can happily say that I have just returned from visiting 6 out of 7 of my amazing group members in their respective homes, and left with plans and promises to meet again.
AID Summer exceeded all my expectations by far. I knew coming into the program that I would have an amazing time and make lots of new friends, but it turned out to be so much more than that. I came to Taiwan with an open mind and an open heart, and left with the most unforgettable memories we made together as a family. I wish to thank the Taiwanese government starting and funding AID Summer, the staff, counselors, and teachers who helped make this program possible, and most of all my beloved teaching group--it would not have been the same without you!
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Chiang, Kristy (江佳璇)
I felt the moisture in the air and the waves of heat coming from the air outside of the plane. I have finally arrived in my home country, Taiwan. It has been 7 years since I came back to Taiwan to visit my family and experience Taiwanese culture that is extremely different from American culture in the United States. This time, my mission was to teach English to little children in places where they lacked the chances to learn English and experience Western culture.
Training week at Chientan Youth Center was a long week and there were a lot of classes that were mandatory because they taught us the skills we needed to develop in order to successfully teach our children the English language. During training week, I have met my teaching partner and the rest of the people I will be living and teaching with for 2 weeks. My roommates were the 3 other girls that will be going to the same school as me and we bonded as fast as a snap of the fingers. Although my roommates and my teaching partner thought that this would be a very fun experience not only for us but for our students as well, deep below the surface, we were all a bit nervous and excited for what was going to actually happen at our assigned school in Taichung,Taiwan.
The school that we were assigned to was called Zih-You Elementary School up in the mountains in Taichung,Taiwan. I was warned ahead of time of the bugs and spiders so I brought a lot of bug repellent..hoping to escape the bites of these foreign creatures. Our dormitory was very nice. There were 5 rooms so the guys shared a room and the 4 girls (my 3 roommates and myself).
The first week went by really slowly because all of us wanted to get an opportunity to meet each of our students and observe and understand their behaviors during class, during lunch, and during recess. I would consider the first week of teaching to be more difficult and challenging than the second week.
Near the end of the first week, the typhoon hit and our principal and the staff at the school began to prepare food and supplies for us. They were very kind and very thoughtful in preparing for all of the things.
After the typhoon, during the second week of teaching, a lot of the students didn't come and my class began to shrink. But unfortunately, the most playful students still came to school everyday. The second week went by faster than any of us had expected. All of us became really attached to our students and our students became really attached to us. We were like one big family at Zih-You Elementary School.
As the second week went by, the last day came and there were tears and warm hugs from all of the students and even from the staff. It was really an unbelievable experience.
I'm really glad that I got the chance to visit Taiwan this summer to not only help little children learn English but also help them experience Western culture in Taiwan. I have become much more independent and responsible as an individual and I hope that more people become interested and apply to be a part of this program because it allows teenagers like us to discover what it is like to be stepping in a teacher's shoes and gives us a chance to be the ones at the front of the classroom instead of the ones in the seats starting up at the front of the classroom.
I am really glad that I was chosen to be a part of this outstanding program with 349 other brilliant and talented teenagers. If I have the opportunity and time next year, I will definitely apply again and get another chance to meet new people and experience life as a teacher for 2 weeks again! Thank you again for this summer! AID Summer 2013 was definitely unforgettable!
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Cheng, Kristina (鄭天穎)
The AID program was an experience I will treasure for the rest of my life. While the training week was tedious and slightly dull because of the long sessions with few opportunities to leave the center, the speakers and presentations were constructive. I found it very helpful when the speakers and volunteers would supply ideas for teaching activities. This allowed the volunteers to bounce ideas off one another. The training week was an essential preparatory part of the program. I felt well prepared and excited to teach the Taiwanese students. The training made me more aware of what I was going to expect. Most importantly, it trained me to be ready to act when various circumstances occur.
During the teaching weeks, I was able to bond with the students almost immediately. It seemed as though on the first day, everyone had mixed feelings of nervousness and excitement. But by lunch time, the students had already warmed-up to me and my co-leader Jeffrey. The students had their arms around us and were requesting us to treat them to ice cream. Their pleas were both irritating and entertaining. They never seemed to forget that first day because by the end of the week, they again asked us for ice cream.
Teaching was not as hard as I had expected. The students were well behaved. They were most disciplined when the class was videotaped, which I thought was amusing. My co-teacher and I taught class B which is supposed to have students with the second to best English at the school. We were told by our teaching counselor that the students should be able to understand if we only spoke in English. However that was not the case. Jeffrey and I had to use the little Chinese that we knew to give simple instructions and to explain English vocabulary and sentence structures. Thankfully we had a teaching assistant who helped us translate words we did not know and helped us acquire teaching materials for the class such as markers, color pencils, scissors, and paper. Without the teaching assistant, Jeffrey and I would have had a much more difficult time handling the class. We did not mind using Chinese. I thought it was also entertaining for the students to see the teachers scramble for Chinese words. Each day Jeffrey and I would start off the class day with a writing warm-up by either reviewing the previous day’s curriculum or introduce a new topic. The students had their own “passports” in which they would write down the daily warm-up. This warm-up consisted of simple sentences and pictures. When they finished we would stamp their passports. It was a good activity to start the day. Later in the week, one of the students asked if the stamps count as stickers which go towards a sticker point system to earn prizes. When I told the student that the stamps do not act like stickers, she asked what the point of stamping their work was. I honestly replied that it was because it was fun for the teachers to stamp papers. While Jeffrey and I made detailed teaching plans, often times, we would make minor changes by adding or eliminating activities. One activity the students enjoyed was the fly swapper game. The class would be divided into teams a student from each team would hit the picture that describes the new vocabulary word. The activity they disliked the most was worksheets. It is a good activity for the teachers to have some down-time. Jeffrey and I mostly used PowerPoint presentations as one of our teaching methods. It was used to introduce new vocabulary words. We would present a slide with the word paired with its affiliated picture. Personally, I really enjoyed teaching.
It was the planning time that took me by surprise. I did not expect that planning for the next day would require so much time. The time went towards creating the PowerPoints, coming up with activities, and making up the worksheets. It was tedious work but it was more tolerable since my partner and I did it together. Every day after school, Jeffrey and I would start planning for the next day. We attempted to get all the work done as soon as possible so we would have time to relax and go to bed earlier. However many times, we would stay up past eleven to finish planning. Planning was by far the activity I least enjoyed, but it is an essential and crucial part of teaching.
The teaching weeks passed by extremely fast. Before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye. The students did not want us to leave. It was a very emotional time for everyone. Jeffrey and I ended up meeting some of our students after the last day of school. We bought them ice cream from 7-Eleven and played games on the school field.
Tour week was very fun. I enjoyed going to the markets, trying food, and visiting Taiwan’s beautiful sigh-seeing destinations. I also enjoyed it because I was able to bond with other volunteers in the programs. The counselors were absolutely amazing. They all have wonderful personalities. They were always cheerful and helpful. They took care of all of us very well. This is a wonderful program that allows students to learn about and experience Taiwan. I had a very positive experience and am seriously thinking about participating in more teaching opportunities abroad in the future.
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