Q & A

Generally speaking, students in Taitung County have the lowest English ability in Taiwan. This assumption is partly based on stereotypes of the lower SES, and teachers’ general impressions from their own personal comparisons. Many teachers who are tenured here actually spent several years as contracted teachers in their home counties like Taipei, Taoyuan, Kaohsiung, PingTung, Hualien, so they sometimes experience a culture shock when they begin their assignment in Taitung and see how slow the kids here are. There is also a Taiwanese achievement test which assesses and compares counties and urban centers (TASA). These test results tend to corroborate people’s assumptions about Taitung students’ English abilities.

On the other hand, there are plenty of individual cases where students exhibit very impressive English abilities that could rival counterparts in big cities in Taiwan. And there are some schools in Taitung that have a reputution for smart kids. Some of you have probably encountered some of these kids in your schools or are stationed at one of the “good” schools.

As for me, I believe that Taitung kids are on average nearly equal to any group of kids in Taipei or Kaohsiung. They only appear to be at a much lower level because the majority don’t have the same testing mindset as big city kids. What I mean is, when presented with tests, especially non-school tests that don’t impact their grades, they will bomb them intentionally because they don’t have the patience or will to sit through an hour of boring nonsense for nothing.

As a general rule—keep your expectations high, because if you lower them at all, the kids will immediately sink down to your expectations, and just keep dragging themselves down. You know what they say, aim for the stars and whatnot. You might miss, but you’ll end up a lot higher than if you hadn’t.

This is where growth mindset comes into play. All of you achieved what you did and made it into Fulbright because of the traits and tendencies associated with your growth mindset. Cultivate the same mindset in these Taitung kids. You cannot make them ready for college at the 6^th grade after only 1 year of teaching them. Instead of teaching them English, you must teach them how to learn English, so they can keep going without you. Teach them study habits, learning strategies, ability to analyze mistakes and rectify them. You can also teach some key idioms. Textbooks typically include outdated sayings (e.g. An apple a day…) because the book writers think it’s culture. But, focus on the idioms that reflect growth mindset and achievement--- “Well begun is only half done. Don’t quit while you’re ahead. Practice makes perfect. Don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Make hay while the sun shines. Good better best; never let it rest; til the good is better, and the better best”

Keep reading my responses to items 1 and 2 every time you feel like your kids just can’t make it, or you just can’t even…

Yep. Doing things old school is still pretty cheap. You don’t always need iPads. Use tech, but low-tech. Play games with PPT game templates, like quiz shows and multiple choice questions for points. Also try Plickers. It’s like a Kahoot game, but you only need one device for the teacher. All the students respond to questions projected with a desktop setup by using printed answer cards that get scanned by the teacher’s device to tally student responses. You can also use Quizizz and play a quiz in “Solo Mode” projected on screen with desktop/projector set up—or use Quizlet in “learn mode”. Or just play lots of games with flashcards and some pandemonium in the classroom.

Yes. They usually master it by the end of 4^th grade at the latest (English letters, but keep on going for Chinese characters). If students older than 4^th grade are still not forming letters correctly, transposing d,b, or m, w, etc, they might have real learning issues up there between the ears. They will require more time and attention. By 5^th grade, I am carefully looking at their workbook and notebook writing to make sure they don’t make spelling mistakes or drop those pesky “s”s on 3^rd person singular and plurals. Penmanship becomes a non-issue by then.

Coffee. Buy one, get the second half price and guzzle both of them yourself. 711 has an awesome Sicilian Lemon Coffee soda and some 711s also sell “jing pin” coffee (Ethiopian Yerge Cheffe). Also you could try the instant ginseng tea packets. You’ll find them in the tea section at PX mart or Carrefour. I’ve developed some tolerance, so they don’t really do anything for me, but it might still work for you young’uns. Have a coffee with your breakfast, and then a second cup after you arrive at school before your scheduled classes start. Then maybe have another after lunch and take a coffee nap.

And then about lesson plans…..In general, when you are trying to extend beyond the textbook---start with the sentence pattern, close the textbook, and then just brainstorm some objects that you think will be familiar/every day for the kids. So food/drink/fruit--- Do you like_____? Add stinky tofu, teppanyaki, cold noodles, sesame noodles, hot pot, etc. The kids will recognize pictures of these and absorb it right away. Sometimes the only concern with learning the stuff outside the book is awkward pronunciation, but it’s not really a problem if the test only requires good production of the small set of vocab in the book. Also you should be looking at Reading A to Z pretty much during any and all of your free periods. All of you have access to a Fulbright Reading A to Z account—just log in and browse and select some readers that you think might be appropriate. You can log in during class and project the e-book for the students to read off the screen, or you can download, print and staple. After accessing Reading A to Z, take a look at this page for some ideas ---Reading A to Z (RAZ): Support & Discussion

HA! Mwahahahah—what a question! like chicken or the egg. Let’s define “effective” as “what works for you.” Everyone will have a different answer. I use Chinese when I know I am extending beyond what the kids have learned before. I also use Chinese for meta-learning, i.e., teaching the kids about learning or how to learn. My Chinese consists of using Google translate of key words like “attitude” “responsibility” “ability” “mindset” “self-directed learning” “self-control” Other than that, it should be all English (as far as I’m concerned). Keep discussing this question with other ETAs when you’re doing item 11 below. Also you or your LET may want to look at this page in your free time---The All English Classroom 全英語教室

Yes, she probably is. Your LET is awesome and I picked up some things from observing her co-teaching with ETAs. In general, your LET will handle the yelling and making kids stand up for lengths of time. You have to learn where her lines are, so you won’t be surprised if she starts disciplining in the middle of your segment. Also, if you know what behavior crosses her line, you can make a move to preempt a kid from crossing it. Like if you see something going on, start walking over to the kid. He/she will see you and probably stop what they’re doing. My kids are infamous for being sassy, smart-alecky, so it is normal to raise my voice once a lesson or more. With older kids who are used to my style, I don’t have to say too much at all this year, but in the past—usually once a period. I have observed a number of classes over the years and I am impressed with the discipline in most other schools. So---check with everyone else and get a feel for how much yelling goes on. Keep discussing this question with others.

Use the Voice. Everyone develops their own teacher voice at different times-some sooner, some later, but one day the Voice will come to you and you will become master of the class. And until then, lots of TPR and “eyes on me/ eyes on you”, clapping etc. Some kind of commands are easy to use TPR for, like “stand up, sit down, line up, make 2 lines, boys over here, girls over here”, etc. Oh, and also a good amount of Google translate, like in item 7.

Observe, evaluate, take action. You should have eyes on everyone and also eyes in the back of your head. You will be able to see lots of stuff going on, but when you evaluate your own capabilities to communicate sans Chinese, you will decide to let some things go because it’s better handled by the LET. You might see some simple things that you can fix easily, like a kid has another subject book open in English class. Just walk over, point at it and do the "close book" TPR. Also, after you and LET develop routines, you will know when they are supposed to group or pair up. Jump in and start pairing up or cuing kids to make groups, so the process can go a little more quickly and smoothly. If taking on responsibilities means doing more instruction besides the human tape recorder thing, you have to plan how you will communicate the activity you want to do. It’s the most important part of lesson planning. Some learning activities may be too complicated to explain with TPR-then you should modify the activity to make it simpler or try to come up with a different activity. This way the planning to communicate becomes integral to the planning of the lesson content.

Nice request. I will pass the word on to the other advisors. We’ll see what we can scrape together.

For now, try to put these images in your head and mull them over: Kids could be raised, or mostly babysat, by the grandparents who are farmers. The grandparents might be pretty much unschooled according to our standards (JH education if lucky). Gparents have to get to the fields early in the morning, so they just grab the kids and drop them off at school too early. Some poor teachers might have to be at school as early as 7:00 just to make sure those kids don’t stir up trouble unsupervised. Kids might not have their own reading room at home, and not much storytime experience on their elders’ laps when they were younger. Others are more fortunate, with parents who have free time to raise the kids and send them to cram school. Aboriginal kids could be speaking mother tongue at home and had to learn Chinese at school as a second language, learning bit by bit from preschool time onward. If their Gparents are not literate, these kids will be low achievers in other school subjects besides English. Some parents who are just too busy simply expect teachers to raise the kids. These parents think they only need to feed and clothe kids and then drop them off at school to become civilized. Other parents are helicopter parents or micromanaging parents. Dealing with the mixture of all these types creates a kind of stress for LET or HR teachers which may be invisible to you. Be observant and notice. Watch the kids go out the door and get picked up by parents, gparents, or cram school vans. Learn their situations over time.

See response to item 6. Also, when you have a really great lesson with some game that you created from scratch you will feel re-energized like you can run a marathon after school. It will happen on the good days. Try to have more good days than bad.

If she does not maintain discipline, but you sense she would rather have the kids behaving well because she is not happy to be interacting with wild kids. Also, she does not want to reflect on the lesson or troubleshoot afterwards. In the alternative, some LETs may thrive on chaos and even though kids are chewing on the walls and rolling around, the LET goes with it because the kids pause their destruction long enough to answer questions correctly. You’ll know the LET is ok with that level of chaos because she will still smile and say, “I think that went rather well, don’t you?”

You will always lose class time over special needs kids. That’s the trade-off. We integrate special needs kids not because it makes learning better, but because it makes the children better. Normal classmates learn to accept others as they are, meanwhile special needs kids receive validation which will encourage them to remain active members of the community when they grow up. But it will always be the case that learning the subject matter will be slowed down a bit because special needs kids bring some level of disruption to the class. The challenge is finding that balance where a little bit of delays are still acceptable for the majority. Balancing delayed progress in the syllabus against positive social development is especially difficult with noticeable special needs like mild retardation, autism with behavioral disruptions, physical impairments that affect bodily functions, etc. In those case, there should even be specialists in the classroom working with the special needs kid.

But…if your idea of special needs kids are just ADHD, dyslexic, and Asperger, classes can still be run normally except maybe add more independent quiet work to let the kids focus. Dyslexic kids will need one-on-one during lunch break or after school, and you just have to learn the Asperger kids’ styles. They may look like they’re out of it, but, let it go and then check on them later when they work independently. They will probably be doing alright.

I’m at a total loss on this one. Sorry about that. It’s kind of cultural to not acknowledge this stuff in the open, at school. Also, it’s generally the purview of the HR teacher, not English teachers. The HR teacher will keep you in the loop so that you are aware a kid is feeling down and needs space, but you are not expected to actually try to engage the kid on his/her personal issue. And of course—language barrier. It’s hard to communicate with the student other than providing safe space in class. If you give a kid lots of leeway in class, he/she will implicitly understand that you know his/her situation.

Classes and individuals have different baselines of disruptive energy because the class will have different mixtures of kids without issues and kids with issues. I check baselines on a nearly daily basis when I walk to the English room or just take some time during a free period to do a walk-around. I peek in the windows as I patrol the halls to check out known troublemakers. I can see which kids are doing the standing punishment, or see if they are rambunctious while the HR teacher is working. I use that baseline as a standard for my English class. If the kids are acting extra in my class, I will come down hard on them. Regardless of the level, the disruptions occur because the kids’ issues are undiagnosed due to willful blindness on the parents’ part, but you and LET can sense what they are and act accordingly.

Issues are: not getting enough sleep at night because of bad parenting, ADHD/ADD, Autism/Asperger spectrum, simply not knowing socially acceptable behavior because of bad parenting, sneaking in “contraband” and consuming at school. At my school we sometimes suspect contraband because the kids might be at normal levels of hyper in the morning, but later become outrageous hyper in the afternoon. And then we might see evidence of the contraband—candy wrappers, discarded cups/straws, various litter. And of course, during holidays we sometimes give out a bit of the contraband ourselves (Oops, our bad.) A lot of this stuff is the HR teacher’s responsibility. She knows who should be taking their meds, who can’t eat chocolate, etc. For you and the LET, it means being aware of what the kids’ problems are and communicating with HR teacher and parents. But mostly that’s it, because you can only control what goes on in your classroom. Day-in and day-out it will be a battle of the wits using every management technique in the book. Anyways, since LET is the Chinese speaker, she will determine the timing of when to yell. You just have to go with the flow.

Don’t worry about giving kids the chance to change. I do it too. I give them free will –the freedom to control themselves or not, and accept the consequences if they choose not to control themselves (pop quizzes, writing worksheets, running around the track, etc.) And do they change? Do misbehaving 2^nd graders grow up into good students, outgrow behavior problems? The answer is YES. And the REVERSE is also true. Don’t worry too much about their future, just make sure they are attentive in the classroom and in sync with the phases of the lesson. And also, as noted previously, since you are not the Chinese speaker in the classroom, discipline (not redirection) is mostly up to the LET. Go with the flow, and then re-think your lesson plans to incorporate pre-emptive classroom management techniques, to restrict the chances for kids to misbehave.

Unless your Chinese is really good, you won’t be able to engage with them appropriately on your own. There’s a pecking order to such engagement –HR teacher handles 50-90 percent of the trouble; LET handles remaining 50-10 percent, and then you help LET handle that 50-10 percent. If a kid has a traumatic issue at home that affects them in school, it will filter from HR teacher to LET to you, and your method of appropriate engagement is just giving them a safe space.

Your question answers itself partially at the end. Because everyone is so insecure, it is nearly impossible for anyone to be open. It’s the essential nature of insecurity to eschew openness. It’s a bit tautological actually. Openness requires a third person to explicitly suggest it as an option. It actually needs to be taught because the natural course of action for the little boys is to show off. I will also add that…YES, boys receive differential treatment in a traditional Chinese/Taiwanese home. And many of us Americans would be dismayed at the disparity between boys and girls especially in this day and age. And I will add that the gender bias at home is slowly changing. Quite a few contemporary Taiwanese couples are “woke” and are trying to instill equality in gender roles by training their sons to do household chores like the girls. But, if the kids are being raised by the grandparents, then probably the boys are being spoiled at home or getting preferential treatment. And on one final note, as it stands currently, girls are better, smarter, have more self-control. All round, yes, hope for a class with girls as the majority.

Depends. If I know that a kid knows all the material for the unit, then I let a lot of their inattentiveness slide. (From your experience as described, your teacher was viewing you in this way). Even if I know that kid doesn’t know the material and is making a bad life choice, I will still pretend that I don’t see the comic book in his/her desk, and I will catch the kid later with a quiz or board writing game or an exit ticket, which he/she fails, and he/she spends all of recess in the classroom reviewing the lesson vocab. The smart kid who was inattentive will still probably pass the exit ticket---and it’s ok. They knew the stuff all along. However, if the inattentive kid is distracting another kid, I bust them immediately regardless of what type of kid they are. And, spoiler alert-----in this scenario, the smart kid gets busted just as often as the less-smart inattentive kid. Over time, the kids learn to self-regulate—either pay attention in class, or mind their own business if they tune out, but the end result is the smart kids stop having their little gossip sessions, or side hustles in English class. Not-so-smart kids still take a while to learn this lesson—maybe a semester or a year or two…and they’re usually boys.