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Chu, Jennie (朱玟瑾)
For me, the first week at the Youth Activity Centre in Taipei was filled with as much excitement as it was anxiety. In the span of four days the volunteers were exposed to various aspects of teaching; classroom management, teaching vocabulary, and constructing games. As a whole, the seminars were helpful in introducing the volunteers to the reality of the schools that we would soon face in the following two weeks. As long as they were, the classes opened my eyes to the proper ways to educate the students who are essentially living in ‘disadvantages.’ Right from the beginning I could detect the difference in learning and teaching styles between Canada (where I am educated) and Taiwan. Combining what I gathered from the seminars with the lesson plans that both my partner and myself have already prepared, we were able to construct a more solid and clear learning objective for the students at Mudan Junior High School.
To my surprise, I was amazed at the environment of the Pingtung County. I for one had seen pictures of the school and the overall neighbourhood, however, to be there in person was a breathtaking experience. The mountains, the fresh water springs, the winding roads were certainly unlike the busy car filled highways and the clumps of high rise buildings I was accustomed to seeing back home. In terms of my teaching experience, the whole two weeks was not what I expected at all. On the first day, our coach introduced us to the students. For the most part, the majority of them were excited to see us. From the first day, my partner and I quickly learned that there was a large discrepancy in the English abilities of students. That was one of our biggest challenges when constructing teaching plans. I taught the eighth grade and all the students in my class were loud and enthusiastic. My partner and I set up a point system for every time they participated in class. They were all very eager to attempt to answer questions and join in on games. The staff members (our coach, teachers, the principal, and the military soldiers) provided great accommodations in terms of our living space, our food, and activities for us to do on the weekends. They have certainly made this experience that much more comfortable and memorable.
To say that this four-week experience has changed my life may be generic, yet it is close to the truth. Though as a team we have given numerous speeches about how grateful we are for this opportunity, we meant it every time. For a while I felt detached from my Taiwanese culture in Canada and coming back and meeting people with similar backgrounds and growing closer together as a family is with out a doubt something I will always cherish. I will never forget the smiling faces of students and their willingness to learn. Every second spent preparing material for them never went to waste. As a future educator, I will forever carry this experience with me and grow from it. Taiwan has given me so much and I am privileged to give back starting with the children at Mudan High School—they will always be special to me. All in all, Taiwan truly touched my heart.
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Luong, Freda (梁佩芝)
Reflection
By: Freda Luong
At first when I had received the notice of my acceptance to the program, I was ecstatic for what was going to be in store for me. I had never been to Taiwan and neither of my parents is from Taiwan either. When I had finally arrived in Taiwan, I was amazed to see how well the program had organized the airport pickup. When I had arrived at Chien Tan for training, I had learned many things that I never expected to learn. These included subjects like classroom management, and how to effectively make sure students retain the information that is presented to them.
When I arrived at school, there was a lot that was running through my mind. Having been assigned to Shuang Yuan Junior High School, we were told that the students might not be responsive because they were in the phase of “acting cool to impress their classmates and friends”. Within the three classes that were participating in the summer camp, my partner and I had been assigned the rowdier class and the class with the least understanding of English. This was a little scary because I never consciously knew how hard it was to learn English, a language that I had been exposed to since I was little.
As the two weeks went on, I found that it was a lot of fun teaching. Although the children were a little rowdier compared to the other two classes, I realized that their learning method was just a little different from the others. They preferred to have acitivities that required total body response rather than sitting at their desks all day and being lectured act. They especially loved playing musical chairs. I wish that I could have been teaching at the school for a longer period of time as I was able to create some fantastic memories and bonded really well with my class.
The tour of Taiwan was more exciting than I had expected. As I had never been to Taiwan, I was willing to go anywhere the group would take me. I was able to experience so many different parts of the Taiwanese culture and learn so much about Taiwan. I would say that my favourite part would be the night markets of Taiwan. I was able to eat so many different things such as mango shaved ice and have awesome and authentic bubble tea. I wish that I was able to spend another month just wandering around Taiwan and discovering all the local foods, night markets and scenic spots.
This was truly an unforgettable experience. I hope that I will be able visit Taiwan again real soon with my friends and with family. I think Taiwan will be a place that I will visit multiple more times after this trip.
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Chen, Szu-Yin (Amy) (陳思穎)
This program has taught me many things, and left me many wonderful, unforgettable memories. I remember the first day I arrived at Chien Tan. I met all of my group members from C1-3, but we didn’t talk much. However, over the course of this program, we became super close, like sisters. The training week at Chien Tan taught me about classroom management, and fun activities. I found it helpful. When I arrived at Ma-Kuang Junior High School, my whole life changed. I had to live in the school, and everything was completely differently from what I was used. At first, I was kind of frustrated with the whole lifestyle change, and missed the city life. However, after meeting my students, I didn’t care where I had to live, because they were so welcoming and friendly, and that touched my heart.
During the two weeks of teaching, it was like a rollercoaster ride for me. Not everything was perfect. In the beginning, my class was extremely quiet, but after a few days they became talkative and began to participate more. The two weeks I spent at Ma Kuang Junior High School had made me realize that teaching is not easy. Every day after class, I had to prepare for next day’s lesson. Even tough, it was exhausting; I had a great time planning and making lessons for my students. We also played a lot of fun outdoor activities, such as running man, and water fight. On the last day, I was soaked because the students took turns pouring buckets of water on me. The time I spent at Ma Kuang Junior High school is something that I will never forget. When it came to the day where I had to leave everyone at Ma Kuang Junior High School, I was so heartbroken. It was very hard for me to leave my students and the staff at the school. I still miss them very much and want to go back to visit them.
And, the tour after the two weeks of teaching was pretty fun. The counsellors took us to places around Taiwan, and I got to learn more about the Taiwanese culture. I am glad that I joined the AID summer program this year.
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Hsu, Hillary (許來莉)
When I first arrived to the AID summer program I thought we were just going to jump right into teaching the children. Sadly, that wasn’t the case, along with getting accepted into the program we also had to go through multiple lectures. This was probably one of the lowest points of the program, sitting through three, three hour lectures simultaneously, I might’ve actually gained a skill through that experience. Even though we had to go through that during the first week, I also got to meet some pretty cool and amazing people.
I thought that my experience teaching at the Shihu elementary school in Miaoli was very fun and a very important experience. Throughout the two weeks I got to learn and get closer to each of the students individually, they were all very kind and open minded, which is not really what I had expected when I first walked into the classroom. I was afraid that as soon as I walked into the class and taught the first lesson, students wouldn't like me and would have the first impression that I was a terrible teacher and that they wouldn't listen to me, but that wasn't what happened, they were all very nice, they listened in class and they all respected me and my partner as their teachers. Although many of them would often yell out in class and some of them would cuss at the teachers eventually they learned that it wasn't right to do this and after some time they'd stopped because they knew that it wouldn't work anymore. Overall I found the experience, very memorable and life changing because it taught me about the different cultures in teaching between the Western and the Chinese cultures. It allowed me to be able to experience it from a first person point of view and gave me a chance to be able to expand on my leadership skills. Even though I was not very excited to be able to attend this program, I got over that feeling and had the time of my life teaching, although the orientation week (first week) was extremely boring I was able to meet a lot of nice and amazing people, who I am proud to call my close friends despite the short time I’ve known them.
A few of my favourite parts of this experience were the trips that we took during the weekend and during tour week. We got to get back together with the old friends that we met during orientation week and we got to hang out with our own group and have more fun and make more memories with them. It gave us time to relax after the stressful two weeks we spent teaching the kids English. We also got the chance to walk around more night markets and malls to buy souvenirs and try more food that we did not get to try in the past. Even though it was a week long we felt as if tour week was too short, one minute your packing your duffel bag trying to stuff all the clothes and stuff you’ll need for the week and the next your back at Chientan, it’s the last day, and your saying goodbye and waiting for your ride to the airport.
Overall, AID has taught me the importance of having a team to support you and help you achieve success and the importance of knowing about the different cultures between Chinese and Western. I will always remember all the fun and good times that I spent with my team and my friends, thank you for the memories. I miss you all, hope we’ll see each other in the near future.
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Ma, Andy (馬進暉)
AID Reflection Essay
AID Summer was unique and different from all the other teaching experiences that I’d ever had. I was nervous and not sure what to anticipate before actually reaching Taiwan. Before flying to Taiwan, I wasn’t really aware I’d inherited all the worrying qualities commonly associated with parents until I was sitting alone in an airliner on my way to another country by myself. I had no relatives in Taiwan, nor friends; essentially I was alone except for the acquaintances I would have to make myself. I stressed over everything – would my students like me? Would my admittedly underutilized Mandarin be enough to be usable when it really mattered? Would I be a good teacher?
I joined AID to extend my existing teaching experiences into the challenges of the international variety, which brought problems like the ever-present language and culture barrier into the classroom. But after the week of training at Chien Tan, the biggest difference I found with teaching with AID and the common elementary classroom was that I wasn’t going to be teaching just for the sake of teaching material, like the alphabet, vocab, or cultural concepts. In two weeks I wasn’t planning to cover a certain curriculum mandated by our ‘bosses,’ but rather, we’d been given free rein to plan how we’d allocate ten school days for something much harder. We had to instill a motivation to continue learning English into our bright little students, long after the posters with our faces would be torn down from the school boards.
I didn’t expect to have fun teaching. Teaching is a job. It sounds like a bore for both the class being taught and the teachers. From my own experiences as a student, the only fun during the typical class is derived from the sound of the bell letting us free. Unfortunately for my ill-lived expectations, we basically had to have fun. To fulfill the only criteria that was necessary for our teaching plans, to teach not just English but the motivation to learn English, I decided that the best way to leave the longest lasting positive impression of this ‘foreign language’ was to incorporate fun into every nook and cranny of the lessons.
I didn’t really realize this during the training week. In all honesty, all the plans made there were half-heartedly done, by pairs of exhausted and often bemused teachers-in-training, and my partner and I were not much of an exception.
When finally faced with our class of 11 assorted middle schoolers, all of them quite adorable in their own way, the lesson plans so not-very-meticulously planned out fell apart to their framework. All those late night hours of meeting deadlines and brainstorming content blew away like one of my flip-flops in the unrelentless typhoon that struck in the middle of our second week.
The biggest resource we had actually prepared beforehand were our unstructured, unserious, and quasi-sorta-kinda-educational games we’d hastily compiled “just in case.”
Therefore, the easiest summary of the two week teaching experience was that teaching children wasn’t about lesson structure. It wasn’t about fulfilling timeslots or even about designing the ideal set of rules that would magically transform all the kids into obedient prodigies. It was just about having fun with English. If they learnt curriculum material, then so be it.
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Chien, Tiffany (簡千雅)
Remembering back to April when I first received the acceptance letter to AID; the moment I saw the admitted status on my account, I jumped up and down in excitement. After the initial rush of excitement had died down, I began worrying about what to expect; but talking to the other volunteers on the Facebook page, I couldn't wait for the program to begin.
Arriving at Chientan, I saw all the unfamiliar faces and I have to say that it was frightening. I'm glad that my roommates were all girls from my teaching group and we all got along really well. Although the 1 week of training was tiring, I did gain some useful tips and advice on teaching and I was inspired by the presentations to modify my teaching plan in order to make it more exciting.
As training week ended, each group was sent off to their individual host school; my group got assigned to Baiji Elementary in Taoyuan. The school is situated on the mountain so our supervising teacher Rebecca warned us about the many insects that we may encounter. The first night at Baiji was uncomfortable as we slept in the music room on the hardwood floor, my roommates and I all had sore backs the next morning…The principal and staffs here are all extremely nice and every meal we were fed until we were all stuffed. The weekend before we started teaching, all of us worked extremely hard on teaching materials and it was without doubt, stressful. All 6 of us volunteer teachers also prepared performances for the opening ceremony, in which we had a lot of fun dancing and singing.
The first day of teaching was pretty crazy as we spent the entire morning getting the students to write the post-test, grading them and then assigning them to their designated classes. My teaching partner Brian and I were responsible for teaching the B class (intermediate level). It was hard to adjust the speed of how we talked but since the students’ English levels were so poor, we had to speak slowly and clearly during our lessons. During the first week of teaching, it was probably the most exhausting and stressful week I’ve ever experienced in my life, I started feeling extremely homesick and wondered if I would be able to make it through the end. However, Rebecca was able to offer some encouraging words and I pulled through the first week. The second week of teaching went by a lot faster; I was getting used to the daily routine and preparing for the next day’s lesson. We rehearsed with our students for the closing ceremony and taught them about holidays, watched movies, played games, made crafts…In a blink of an eye, we’ve reached the end of the 2 weeks. All of the students performed extremely well and some of them got really emotional knowing this will be the last time they will see us.
Overall, I have to say that AID 2014 was an unforgettable experience; I’ve met some amazing people, made some new friends, visited interesting places, but most importantly I made a difference in the lives of my students. If you are thinking about applying to this program, I would definitely recommend it; although you have to put a lot of hard work and dedication into this program, it is definitely worth the experience and it is so rewarding to hear your students say “Thank you teacher!”
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Chen, Steven (陳冠宇)
AID 2014 Reflection:
My name is Steven Chen (陳冠宇). For the duration of my stay within the program of AID 2014, I had a great time and experienced the opportunity to make friends with people from around the world in Taipei. This was a special experience for me because as a Republic of China citizen, I have a strong affinity towards my nationality and being given the opportunity to transmit my linguistic knowledge that I’ve accumulated in Canada to those willing to learn English in Taiwan was just terrific.
I taught in Miaoli County (大湖國中). My counselor and teacher (小胖) was the best in every possible way. He took care of us like we were his children while still maintaining a professional aura when teaching us how to teach. When I went to 大湖國中 it was like seeing a reflection of my past self in the country side. Having studied before in Taiwan, I fully understood the teaching nature of Taiwanese teachers. I wanted to bring the types of teaching that I learned in Canada to Taiwan by allowing the students to enjoy learning instead of being forced into it. For 2 weeks, Thomas and myself put together numerous powerpoint presentation and came up with a number of activities to encourage learning in the classroom. I soon learned that the children really like 慢畫 just like I did as a child so I decided to incorporate this into their learning. By finding 慢畫 online in English, I allowed the children to become highly engaged in reading. Canadian teaching highly encourages reading, which I also think is the first step towards successfully learning English. I think that the hardest part of teaching English is identifying the personal interests of the students. When Thomas and I successfully identified that the children liked 慢畫, teaching them became much easier as they became highly engaged and willing to interact with us more. In the end, our students really miss us and we also really miss them and we promise to always keep in touch with each other.
I would like to especially thank my fellow volunteer teachers (Emily, Thomas, Callum, Jackson, Diana, Debbie and Heidi) for becoming not only my friends but also my teaching partners for making this trip so fun and excited for me.
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Lu, Yi Chen (盧翊真)
This camp is probably the best choice I have ever made. Even though for a lot of the moments it was rather stressful and tiring, the priceless opportunities to meet such lovely teammates as well as staff was worth all of my tiredness. The students surprised me plenty with their love and their clingingness to us. I would have never expected these children to love us as much as they did within these past two weeks. I really appreciate this program for allowing all of it to happen. During the training week I started out very uncomfortable and anxious as to what type of people I will be working with and whether or not I would be good enough for them. But as I started to get to know each other better, I found friends that became closer than my closest friends. Every experience was a unique one, from the late nights we spent prepping for lessons and activities and then teaching class with barely any sleep at all to all the fun events we had with the students and staff after school and on weekends. My most memorable experience is when we got to go to Leofu village on the weekends. I felt that that moment connected our bonds together closer than before. It was also enjoyable to use that opportunity to collect footage for our final ceremony video. Perhaps it was our goofy personalities and willingness to explore different opportunities that allowed the students to feel comfortable in approaching us, the students hung out with us after camp and online which made it super difficult to part ways.
The closing ceremony was when I could finally see and feel the love and connection that the students had for us. Even though in class they were quiet, inactive and rebellious at times, their tears and want to stay connected with us made me feel that perhaps we have done something important to change their lives. This short yet eventful three weeks will be the most unforgettable experience, the new friends that I have made, the unbreakable bond created and the hardships are forever ingrained into my memory. Though sometimes frustrating, the priceless connections made with these lovely people makes it all worth it. I would like to thank our counselors Jess and Lillian for being absolutely wonderful, our mamabear teacher Michelle for working so hard with us, principal zhang for her bubbly personality, the warm hearts of our students and finally our overachieving group C1-1 with Rosa, Penny, Michelle, Katherine, Justina, Christina and Eva for being who they are. They blew away any unease I developed and turned it into a funny happy memory.
Jenny Yichen Lu
2014/07/ 31st
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Tsai, Chung Yen (蔡宗諺)
My 2014 summer experience was amazing and I couldn’t have asked for more from anybody else. I learned countless things from this program: teaching kids, managing them, the hardships and joys of being a teacher and also working together with others. Our school was located deep in the mountains in a place that I have never heard of prior this summer, and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to visit the place. My first impression was the hot sun shining upon everything in sight, bright colours decorating the landscape and the simple life that people led there. From what our group has heard from the others, we were more fortunate than most. We had hot water, single rooms with individual bathrooms and beds. Furthermore, the dorm we resided in was right beside the school which makes getting to and fro very convenient as opposed to some who had to walk 15 minutes every morning to school. Did I also mention that the food was simply amazing and they always came in bento boxes? Everything in a bento box tastes good! The staff and teachers were very helpful and caring, they looked out for us like their own and would always ask us about our nights, how we slept, how we ate, etc… They were also super humble and polite, as most Taiwanese people are :P. My teacher actually brought a bag of gifts for everyone in our group on the last day, each full of things that best matched us. (For example, she knew that I liked to maintain my skin tone, etc… so she bought me a lot of face masks) How sweet of her. I love you Shopping Lao Shi! During our brief encounter with the typhoon, the staff at Zi You elementary school worked endlessly to make sure we were safely delivered off the mountain to a place that was further away from the pounding rain and roaring winds. We were also delivered McDonalds that night, it was a great pleasure to be able to taste American food after 3 weeks of “deprivation”. The children we taught there were a lot more rowdy than their North American counterparts and very openly accepted us as their older brothers and sisters. They would stay behind after class and wait till we finished our daily reflection meetings to play with us. We have even become friends with them on Facebook, the children message us 24/7 non-stop, asking where we are and what we are doing. Of course, I find it amusing to chat with them since they would type in Chinese and I would respond in English to try to get them to type English as well. In a sense, I am still teaching them after I left their school and I plan on continuing to do so. The tour portion of the program brought us closer to the counselors (little gray grays) and the places we visited were enlightening, fun and unforgettable. I wish that we didn’t have to part, but as all good things come to an end, we must say our farewells and forever treasure our 2014 AID experience. ;)
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