Teacher David's Coming to Town for the Holidays

     American holidays, from Thanksgiving to New Year's Day, don't mean much to Taiwanese middle school students. Even Christmas, that ubiquitous commercial undertaking is a regular school day here; so is New Year's Eve. Surely some teachers in public schools pay attention to it, and EFL after-school centers take advantage of the bright lights on artificial evergreen trees  to drum up business and promote "winter camps" they run on the weeks after public school lets out in mid-January leading up to the Lunar New Year, this year falling on February 2nd. Only on New Year's Day do students have off, but if it falls on a weekday, they have to make it up with classes on a Saturday, anyway. 

     Because of my American upbringing, with special dinners and days off from school, and my Jewish heritage celebrating Hanukkah in December according  to the lunar calendar, I have the spirit and like to share it. Taiwanese students have a conception of America as a 'Christmas' country and I like to rectify that misconception . So when the Kang-Chien Publishing agents come calling me for enrichment or judging assignments at public school contests, I am happy to go.  

    On Saturday, December 8th I did a three hour enrichment program at Jia-Tong Middle school in Changhua. I did a “Season’s Greetings” program. It was the first of a number of holiday events leading up to the Lunar New Year on February 5th.

The event in Yuanlin county went very well. Twenty middle school students got a lot out of it and had a great time with my "Season's Greetings" PPT and activities.         The teacher that asked for me through the publisher's agent had never seen anything like it. She said when The Ministry of Education sent an expat for enrichment, they usually played Monopoly with the children or wasted their time. But from the start, with my ten-page booklet, I mixed the children into homogeneous groups with a 'one-to-five count off', used a reported speech introduction, and  taped the large posters  to the back wall of the classroom fir presentations after cooperative learning preparation. 
     The four group members, to the organizing and copying their report on the posters to prepare for oral presentations, it wall all a revelation that I hope the teacher, her colleague whom she beckoned, and principal who stopped by to make a cameo. They then had a YouTube viewing and singing of George Harrison's "Ding-Dong Ding-Dong" before I went into the final component; a telling of "Gift of the Magi"
that the students understood and appreciated. If I had managed time a little better and the other side of the posters were blank, the children could have then done a re-telling of the story from recollection written for reports, but I took my time and didn't rush. It all worked out well. 

 On December 24th,  I was a judge at an English choral competition. 

     Then, on December 27, I was asked to officiate at an English Recitation contest at Shuang-Wen. The students had prepared well for it but the rules were not fair;  Participants were told prepared to read three very short stories from their ESL textbooks. Then, they were randomly given one to read. The problem was the stories were not evenly difficult. 
     A foreigner from another publisher judged with me. I saw him looking over at my score sheet in amazement at the detail; 40% each pronunciation and intonation, 20% body language. I subtracted a point for each error I detected. I didn't ask how the other invited foreign judge scored. It was a pleasant end to an enjoyable holiday teaching English in Taiwan. 

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Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.

Like a Cog in Their Spelling Bee

         On April 10, 2019, I read and judged the last oral part of a spelling bee at Chung-De Middle School this afternoon. I have officiated at a number of spelling bees in Taiwan middle schools but this one was the worst, for me and the young participants.

     The organizers of this spelling bee made up their own rules.Their rules implied a student who incorrectly spelled was immediately replaced by a substitute if the sub could spell the word correctly; a dozen times I had to read the same word and sentences, twice.

     They had me standing in the front of a full gymnasium surrounding around fifty classmates form various classes on stools wearing their class shirt with cardboard whiteboards on their laps with a tissue and marker in their hands I read the word, sentence (without the errors) and word again before some cockamamie music timed them ten seconds. They didn’t turn the air-conditioner on until well into the program and I was glad they did. 

      When they narrowed the pool down to five, the children were lined up in front of the two desks near the stage. I had stood the entire two hours as instructed but a few female teachers took the liberty to sit behind those desks for a better view. I was asked to read the word and sentence and have the finalists spell the word out-loud into a microphone, some clearly some not. One girl spelling “exercise” I had to ask twice and get closer to hear. The third time she said the word, she spelled it correctly but one teacher behind the desk begged to differ and commented that the girl had spelled it incorrectly. “Not to my ears,” I said, 

but she insisted to have her way. I told her that she could be the judge if she wanted and stepped back to the side of the finalists. I asked the MC if he wanted me to judge as well as read and he looked befuddled and waved me on. To the next two students who spelled correctly I commented, “It sounded good to me.” It was then that it seemed to me the teachers behind the desk were asked by the organizer to leave and off they went to the side. I finished judging the students spelling with no suggestions from the peanut gallery. I was not apologized to. A few students seemed to snicker at their wise-ass teacher. The MC was trouble enough jumping around the list he gave me choose words out-of-order that he thought the contests should spell. 

        I was treated like a cog in their whims and not given professional consideration . So often it happens in Taiwan schools that the foreigners asked to officiate at an event are window dressing and not respected. Though some schools do have the children's interests at heart, there is no reason to invite a foreigner unless it adds to the event's reputation. This one did not. I will not do a spelling bee at that school again if they ask me.

www.readingsandridings.jimdo.com

Copyright © 2019 by David Barry Temple. All rights reserved.