Chungder JHS Weekend Enrichment

July 1-2, 2016 Friday-Saturday 

      I was driven to Yun-Lin County. Taiwan, to the township of Hu-Wei, to offer enrichment to a class of advanced EFL 8^th grade middle school students at Chungder JHS. The two day event (I am to return this morning to enrich the 9^th grade) was arranged by the textbook publisher a few months ago. It took almost an hour and a half for the driver to get to the remote rural school.

Before I arrived, I was not sure how deep the children were taken with the copies of  five activities from Housing Sense and “Kim,” the first story in Seedfolks, the little fiction about a vacant lot where Kim clears a small space to plant her precious bean seed and transform the dump into a garden.  The theme, “City Planning,” part of the Community Curriculum I created atFDR, was to be a cooperative learning activity culminating in reports.When I arrived, I found the twenty students fiveof whom were boys, that needed to be warmed-up. I introduced the word “home” and identified them as the students from home school, Chungder JHS, Hu-Hui, Yun-Lin, Taiwan. They were to identify themselves through a board contest. First, I demonstrated the pattern, “He is the boy with a black watch,” and we practiced. I then grouped the children into four teams of five players. On cue, I asked them to come to the chalk board when I called their number and identify themselves using  thispattern.

Each grade was given the same booklet of materials in advance but were uneven in their preparation. Ironically, the younger grade's teacher seems to have gone over the "Kim" story in Seedfolks (read the story at the end of this blog) while the higher grade's teacher hadn't. Although the materials were shared with each grade, the results were different; the higher grade had better command of vocabulary.     

The best and fastest answer won the most points; I even gave points for responses that were less than perfect. Once the ice was broken, I accessed the “Read the World” power point on the internet, projected it on a drop-screen, and gave a brief introduction of myself and my home. We ended the contest with questions about the first paragraph in “Kim” which I read aloud: “Who was Kim? Who was her father?” and brought them into the handout                                                            materials about “home.”

 After the break, each team was assigned one of the worksheets to brainstorm collaboratively: a reader, writer-compiler, grammar checker, spelling checker, and time-keeper. I demonstrated a model of the final presentation they would be giving using the “Home is a Feeling” work group. and urged each of students to participate by answering the questions on their worksheets and discussing them, in English. 
With the 8th grade class, I read aloud the motivation "A Place Called Home" after the break before they actually started brainstorming .

That Special Feeling

The students on this collaborative team discovered that home feelings were prevalent when they considered home through the five senses. "When I think of home, I see a computer because we are always playing video games," was a response to the sense of sight. "When I think of home, I smell my mom's cooking because she makes the best dinner," was a response to the question about smell. The group of five students used a bilingual dictionary and asked me what certain words meant as I roved around. 

Look Carefully!!!

This worksheet was made to be used on a walk outside the classroom in an investigation of the neighborhood to heighten the students' awareness of their environment and consider all the aspects of housing. Since the group chose to describe this junior high school, the question "how many apartments in the building" had to be changed to "how many classrooms." The most though provoking question was "How would you escape a fire?" The students had never considered this question nor had the school devised an escape plan. My wife, who attended a school such as Chungder's as a child, pointed out that there had been modifications made in the staircases from the upper floors for better fire security; notice the "X" pattern in the photo at the top of this blog. 

Housing: Houses, Services,  & Facilities 

This cooperative learning group categorized housing and realized the functional differences between services and facilities. Initially, they were content with merely identifying the vehicles and buildings but I asked them to dig a little deeper and give a brief explanation, and example, for each one they identified. This made for a much fuller presentation.  

                                           Choices & Consequences

The "Choices and Consequences" group had a lot of fun deciding what kind of building would be best to build in the space of vacant lot and abandoned building. Their consciousness was raised to the residual effects that their initial choices would confront. Each of the students in the group had different buildings in mind - hospital, movie theater,  and even a hotel "where people could make babies." We all had a good laugh about that. Finally, the group chose to make a park in the space if they were city planners; the residential community obviously needed a place for residents to relax and play.

Improve This Park 

The students in this group, had a lot of fun pointing out the deficiencies of the park in the picture. The broken equipment, trash, and noise pollution of inconsiderate park patrons was obvious. The solutions were to the point. "The girl should not pick the flowers," one student said. In the other class the group pointed out how a child in the park was naughty and breaking off a branch from the tree. "There should be more trees and flowers," the reporter pointed out, "not less." 

The township of Hu-Wei in Yun-Lin County is rural with minimal western franchise presence. There is a narrow gauge grade-level  sugar-cane railroad crossing just behind Chungder. The children come from farming families and small businesses. The grounds of the school are well-kept and clean. Ironically, the lack of industrial development in the area means better air quality.

     On the route from Freeway #1, our van passed some retainer walls and utility poles that had been painted in a tiger-stripe pattern. "Hu-Wei," the township's name, means "tiger tail." There is a potential for tourism that the city planners may want to investigate. On one old winding country lane, the red brick housing and traditional Taiwanese design are still present in sub-standard housing. I have seen such areas developed commercially to promote local foods and goods such as in the village in Punghu or even the abandoned sugar cane factories in Kaohsiung, Taitung, and Taipei. The history of their town is something the children at Chungder should be proud of. Hopefully, the Taiwan Community Curriculum, from which the workshop was culled, will act as a catalyst for such resurgence in addition to motivating the students to further practice English, a language that could be useful in their future. 

     My experience at Chungder was remarkable to feel the excitement and motivation the children had towards learning English. With great teachers, such as those who wished to enrichment their students by reaching out to the textbook publisher, English can become a living language, even in rural Taiwan, and not just a subject for examinations.