Like a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman for Housewives Without Electricity

     Look at the photo above. In it you can see  EFL teachers  sitting around a table in  Li-Ming Middle School on the affluent  Westside of Taichung. They are scowling at me, a teacher of underclass immigrants from Brooklyn. Talking with me, the unsmiling woman in the gray skirt and white blouse, is their leader. She didn't like me unwilling to accommodate her role-playing idea of mercantile dialogue with her staff; children will rarely be in these situations in their daily lives, I explained. I used reported speech instead; it threw the staff for a loop. 

     Middle school children in Taiwan will never order a meal in English in a restaurant or buy clothes in an English speaking  department store, but these were the two  scenarios she thrust upon me when I entered  the room to meet with her, a private meeting that became a public power play.

 It was on September 26, 2017 that the publisher’s agent drove us to the middle school on the Westside that wanted me to hunker down in ninety hours a month of EFL classes; my limit is 12 hours a week; I am, after all, retired. I offered to teach nine class in three three-hour increments. My idea was to be a curriculum developer and teacher trainer for their staff to carry on after a month of demonstrative lessons. I hoped they would accept my plan to get things started in October and then come back  in November when I returned from the States to see how they had incorporated the Natural Approach, reported speech, and cooperative learning in their lessons. My supervisory model was Maryanne Cucciara who did this with FDR teachers in Project Freire years ago; her “Read the World” workshop was a blueprint for this project.

Before the meeting, I obliged  and observed their Readers' Theater troupe that would represent the school in  contest; I had done so the year before. I found this school liked its accolades and trophies and would sacrifice its students' language development to win. The children are not to blame for the misguided goals of their teachers. I watched the  skit and gave recommendations, but  none of my suggestions mattered. Their juggernaut would plow on.  

 I was pleased that this Westside middle school seemed to value my experience to  build    their   EFL  program but I was not going to run myself ragged teaching twenty-two hours a week, ninety hours a month; that was for a young instructor to punch out. I had brought a binder with curriculum and handouts and pedagogy to be used with The Community Curriculum. It was passed among the seated staff without a question of me being asked; they hardly looked. Their boss was watching them; she only wanted to use her idea.

     When we left that day, the project at the school on the Westside was not a done deal until they contacted me with a schedule proposal I had given them. There were two other textbook publishers vying for contracts to sell EFL textbooks to their school though neither brought a professional American teacher  to demonstrate as my publisher had, but I wouldn't use their textbooks;  I wanted to use Read the World Freiren workshop models with my own material. The easiest thing a teacher can do is follow a textbook page by page.

     By November 11, two months had passed since I heard back from the school.  I assumed they had decided to look elsewhere for another teacher to do their bidding. I hadn't gotten a formal reply or a thank you for coming. It was the publisher's agent calling to ask me to do an enrichment elsewhere that let on what happened. Li-Ming's EFL department understood I wasn’t going to use an ineffective  curriculum or antiquated methodology to make their school look good. It was nine 45-minute classes a week to use up funding. They would not care what their kids were missing. The face value of winning contests and getting awards for underachieving work made them look good. 
      The Li-Ming Middle School had offered me the world to be their EFL go-to expert, but then pulled their hand back after I went to demonstrate my syllabus. This is the same school that asked me to go be thanked by the principal for helping their Readers Theater troupe win last year; he didn’t show his face.  I was directed to observe a new student skit instead.  I felt like a vacuum cleaner salesman for housewives without electricity. “Hey Abbott!!”    
       Recently the school had the nerve to ask the agent to have me back for something or other; he was told to tell them I'm busy.