I’d like to hear from people who are also in the ‘bilingual program’ and / or teaching at Taiwanese public schools. I quite enjoy my job and have extended my contract until July 2021 as my workload is dreamily light compared to teaching back in the UK. The students I teach are almost certainly making progress, however, their progress is severely limited by the absolute disarray of this so called bilingual set up.
For example, I teach math, life curriculum and PE, but not English. There is no cross curricular framework, plan, scheme of work or any form of direction from management, the government etc and so the children aren’t learning English in a systematic way but in a scatter shot way. Basically however I can adapt the materials to English that week.
My co-teachers in the above subjects vary very dramatically in their ability to teach, English abilities and general enthusiasm. Teachers are (mostly) very nice to me although often seem antagonistic to one another and a number of the teachers seem to spend a lot of time gossiping rather maliciously about other teachers. I do my best not to get involved and that seems to have caused one colleague to blank me (I am not joking, she has not spoken to me in 3 months)
The logic behind the set up doesn’t appear to be based on any evidence based research. The text books are entirely in Mandarin but I am expected to teach the materials in English.
BLAH! ok so, the school overall is a pleasant place and I’m just muddling along through the chaos. I really enjoy working with my kids, my work load is AMAZING. If I just turn up and use the books as is, everyone is happy so my planning / prep is almost 0. If I differentiate work for children, I get quietly told not to do that as it will make the parents unhappy… most afternoons I am free to chill in the office… Clearly this is not a job for life but for now this suits me quite well…
Anyway what are other people’s experiences? What are the options for after public school in Taiwan? I also saw someone talking about biannual FET training??? Can anyone tell me more about that please?
Fellow FET here. Yes, there’s training in mid August and at the end of the semester in January. Those of us at the January training requested that it becomes monthly, cuz it’s hecka helpful to be surrounded by other people in similar but slightly different situations who are willing to help complain about / work through / troubleshoot problems, plus the idea-bouncing that happens. Not to mention put whatever government people come on the spot and make them realize they’re worthless/tell them they need to listen to experts on the ELT side on things. If they ever want their country to even dream of mild English proficiency.
Talk to your school or MOE rep or whoever is your “superior” to find out why the f*** you haven’t been told about trainings, cuz a lot of people who have never missed a training in years didn’t come this year become the MOE people or their school or whatever pencil-pusher in charge of letting them know didn’t bother letting them know.
Just close your eyes and pretend your school is remotely bilingual. Officially, the government believes that “bilingual” means teaching art, music, and PE in English. This goes against every other definition I’ve ever seen of “bilingual school”, but I’m not the Taiwanese government.
There is no central authority about bilingualism and it becomes up to the schools to implement or not CLIL as they see fit. For example, my school (jr high) was like “hey, we want you to teach science in English with the science teacher next year” (last year) and I was like “ummm…” and then they forgot. And then suddenly in the middle of an all-staff meeting a few weeks back, the director was like “so, the foreign teacher’s classes don’t need to be co-taught by the local English teachers, so anyone wanna teach with the foreign teacher next year? Foreign teacher, tell us about what you do in your classes!” And I thank god that while my Chinese is very capable of attending meetings in, I can pull the “I’m not sure I understand what you mean, maybe we can talk about this later?” card.
I welcome you to join any and every meet up of FETs if you would like to hear another 20+ stories like mine and yours. The government doesn’t have any idea what they are doing and they don’t really care about hiring anyone qualified to direct them to do what needs to be done with pretty much anything English. Certainly any effort to use research from post 1973 has not shown up at any level.
Being an FET is pretty chill, but I agree it might not work long term.
That’s great to know. I’m not surprised my school didn’t tell me - I doubt they knew about the training ha ha. How would I get onto the training? I’m based in Kaohsiung and imagine that it’s based up in Taipei? But I’m happy to travel. There are other FETs in Kaohsiung but they’re all South African Xhosa speakers and feel like they have a well established clique and don’t seem much interested in getting together outside of our “official training” and it seems already one or two of them have fled back to SA for reasons unknown.
Kaohsiung city’s official training is quite amusing. It’s run by this professor who apparently ruined the bilingual program in Tainan so has been punished by being put in charge of Kaohsiung… The prof himself seems to see the training sessions as an opportunity to show everyone how good his English is and doesn’t follow anything through…
So am I then just being hopeful imagining that things would be more professional / pedagogically sound in Taipei?
This past year, August training was in New Taipei and January was in Taichung.
Whoever tells you about trainings in Kaohsiung and gives you forms and whatnot would be the person who should tell you about training.
My school explicitly told me training was for new FETs, but I told them I knew it wasn’t and they better give me the info. Gotta be assertive on that front!
Hi there, its great to see your input in this topic, I am looking into the same thing and want to teach aboard as well. Therefore, I am looking into more input as well for those who are in the program already based in Kaoshiung. If you don’t mind you we can exchange emails.
Hi there, its great to see your input in this topic, I am looking into the same thing and want to teach aboard as well. Therefore, I am looking into more input as well for those who are in the program already based in Kaoshiung. If you don’t mind you we can exchange emails.
You should be teaching English with more resources than what you have now unless your city just likes to bs and waste government funds away. The MOE in your city should already have a plan on how they want this whole teaching and learning English thing to work out. Teaching in public schools differ by city some like you said can give you a lot of time down time, while some will squeeze everything out of you. Your city should hold their own training stuff for FET too.