Vistior from Taizhong
March 23rd, 2006 by MarkLast Saturday, Patrick, a teacher at a middle school in Táizhōng visited my school. He has some influence on his school’s curriculum and wanted to investigate a hardcore bŭxíbān to see if there was anything we do that he could adapt for use at his school. I was both impressed and amazed that a teacher would come all the way from Táizhōng to visit Guīshān on his own time. He’s obviously much more dedicated than any of the other English teachers I’ve known who work at Taiwanese schools. It must have been at least a three hour bus ride each way, and I can only hope that what he saw gave him some teaching ideas worthwhile enough to justify such a trip.
From what he said, it sounds like Patrick really has his work cut out for him. Unlike the other classes at his school, the English classes taught by foreign teachers don’t really “count”. Talk about a way to ruin the kids’ motivation. On top of that, the foreign teachers at his school aren’t really allowed to speak Chinese in class. I’m sure that slows down the progress of the kids at the lower levels quite a bit; I’ve been at that kind of school before. Still, he said that the students at his school have 18 hours per week of English language classes if P.E. and drama are included. That’s a whole heck of a lot of input. If they can just make sure that it’s comprehensible and get all of the kids paying attention and interested in class, they should be able to get some pretty phenomenal results. Considering that my school’s bŭxíbān classes are only 4 hours a week, I really doubted that much of our curriculum would be of any use to him. From what he said though, they do have some pretty confused kids at the lower levels who fail to get what they should out of all of those hours of English classes.
While I can’t say for sure what will be useful and what won’t, I hope he gets something out of it to justify the long trip. It was sure a nice thing for me that he came up to visit. It’s always nice to meet interesting people, and people who care about their work. Another thing that I’m really happy about is that he was able to film some of one of my classes on his super-uber-duper cell phone. The resolution and overall quality are far better than that of the DVDs with the cameras built into our classrooms. Once I get a copy from him, I can convert it to an FLV file and stream it from this site. Then, all of my family and friends back home can finally see what it is I’ve been doing out here in Taiwan these past few years.
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March 23rd, 2006 at 7:36 am
Mark,
The vids are already up on the CALL website (on an unlinked page), but it seems There is a mp4 restriction imposed from the webmaster. I spoke to him about it and he says he would look into it today or tomorrow. I’ll let you know.
http://web.shinmin.tc.edu.tw/call/hfrb.htm
Thankyou for your encouragement. It goes a long way, as I don’t get much of it from the laowais I work with.
March 23rd, 2006 at 9:49 pm
Mark-san,
One of my Korean-Chinese friends teaches Japanese at a foreign language school. She told me before that she didn’t let her colleagues observe her classes, because her teaching method was her asset, and she didn’t want to give the secret and tips to her rivals.
I suppose there is another reason for it. She is shy about teaching Japanese before her colleagues. Although her way of thinking is understandable for me, I’m afraid it might not benefit both the students and teachers at her school. She speaks excellent Japanese.
March 23rd, 2006 at 10:58 pm
[...] I fell in love with this piece when I first saw it in an art book at my uncle JeanMarie’s house. I must have been 10 or 11. The unavoidable cognitive tension it produced sent me into a fit of giggles. I certainly wasn’t able to put it into words at the time, but it was as clear then as it is now. The painting invites us, quite abruptly, to deal with our perception of reality, the “genuineness” of it, the hierarchy of it. Which is more real? The painting? The meaning of the words? Or is it the idea of “pipe” in our minds? We are, most of us, predisposed to a certain arrogance concerning the real. This painting does what LSD should do, except better. It’s sublte and doesn’t leave that horrible metalic after-taste in your mouth while you grind your teeth for hours. I am not at all sure what made me think of this tonight as I was getting ready to comment on Mark’s last post and further developments on my side of things. Yes, I care about my work,which is something I didn’t do for many years. I feel like I’ve got some catch-up to do, which explains why sometimes I do things with a certain…fever. A fever which is rarely shared by my co-workers. I try to put myself in their shoes, but they never quite fit. Last week, the other teacher who has some CALL classes (I am the coordinator for this department) came up with a good assignment for 2nd year students: A powerpoint presentation on one or more environmnetal issues. This will be the 2nd powerpoint presentation this year. I immediately thought it would be an even better idea if the presentation by the students is done during one of their ESL classes. The students use up precious CALL class time over the next 3 weeks–which is only 1 class a week–to get it all done, then use up 2 of the 6 weekly ESL hours some time in the future to do it in the swank audiovisual room, with a big screen,mike and dim lights. All the ESL teacher has to do is sit there and give them a grade. They can use it as their oral grade, which counts for 10% of some portion of their final grade (for a class whose grades everyone knows are meaningless, but my CALL class grades are even more meaningless…) This way, the kids will be motivated 10% instead of their usual 5%, and the teachers wont have to do those meaningless passage readings masquerading as an oral test. Well, the grumbling that ensued. Even the teacher who thought up the assignment grumbled, thinking she would get “stuck” having to help the other teachers set up in the audiovisual room. But, to give her credit, she did come round and help me “sell” the idea at our weekly staff meeting. So, as you can see, I am far from reaching my goal of implementing anything, except, it would seem, a hot poker up my co-workers’ pipe. Just like in the painting. [...]
March 24th, 2006 at 11:02 am
Mark,
Sorry That my post got posted here… I am not sure how that happened. You’ll have to give me a bit of a tutorial this Sunday
Please let me know what time you will be coming up. Why dont you give me a call when you finish tonight.
March 24th, 2006 at 5:31 pm
Don’t worry about it! It’s a trackback, and I’ve set up my blog so that they’re posted here.