Curriculum in Public Schools (or lack of...)

I am interested in what kind of curriculum is provided at public schools in New Taipei City.
Do they just hand you a book and the rest is up to you? Or is there curriculum from previous years that teachers can use/modify as needed?
I heard there is less curriculum provided in elementary schools as opposed to junior/senior high, is that accurate?

Yup.

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Is this from personal experience in New Taipei City? And was it elementary or junior/senior high?

As a FET in public schools I was given a copy of LiveABC magazine and told to teach about whatever articles I liked. During the observation to see if I was teaching effectively (on my second week) they just looked at student engagement. No hand holding here but they don’t set the bar super high either.

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I’m teaching at an elementary school currently. I wasn’t given a textbook, but I do have a theme. I just make my lessons based on the theme. Generally the upper classes have certain goals they have to meet, while lower classes are more teaching phonics, or vocabulary and having fun in class.

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Thanks so much for the feedback. How many grade levels do you teach/lesson plan for? And are you the only English teacher or is there a local English teacher that does more of the grammar side of things? If so, is there much teacher collaboration?

How long are the lessons?

Wow that sounds pretty wide open. So I’m assuming they have a projector that you can use for powerpoints and videos when you need? Are you teaching all grade levels in elementary? And are you in New Taipei City? (not sure if public programs vary across Taiwan but I’m looking for work in NTC). Thanks!

I’m in New Taipei City. I think all of the schools have different setups. Some of my classrooms have a projector and smart board, while a few have a giant touchscreen TV type thing, and then there’s a couple with just a projector and a screen. I don’t teach grade 3 or 4.

There are curriculum guidelines for all subjects. They are entirely in Chinese. Well, recently the 核心素養 (core competencies) – nine general competencies organized under three categories have been roughly translated to English. For the English domain, the 學習表現 (performance indicators) and 學習內容 (teaching content) are only in Chinese, as far as I know. They are pretty general guidelines, anyways. Deeper in, the curriculum indicates that 19 教育議題 (educational issues, such as gender equity education, human rights education, environmental education, etc.) should be covered in English class, where appropriate. Furthermore, integration of content from other subjects is recommended, in an interdisciplinary manner.

In the new form of the K-12 guidelines, even the 1,200/2,000 common English vocabulary, genres/topics, and language functions are not included (we are meant to refer to the K-9 prior curriculum manual).

Textbooks must pass rigorous evaluation before getting the MOE stamp of approval on the back cover. Many of the regulations are finicky standards for paper weight, dimensions, and font (no kidding!). However, a few textbook companies control the market.

A slightly outdated, but informative overview in English is available at the link below. If anyone has a better source, please share.

I worked at a high school. The classes were all 40 minutes long and they were all the same grade level. I was actually asked not to use the projector with slide shows.

Looking back, it was a pretty sweet gig. I only had to think of one lesson every week and perform it 20 times. It’s different expectations though. Typically, English is considered a non-serious subject so us FETs are expected to entertain more than educate. I would have been better served if I had more experience in the buxibans. Having taught in the US almost gave me the wrong teaching technique.

Truly a clown show. I hope you have the right shoes.

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Can’t be any book/magazine work in 40 minutes, can there?

How did you manage that?! Years ago I had one day a week at a junior high school, teaching the same lesson every period, six times total I think. And “merely” six classes had me in a surreal Groundhog-Day-deja-vu fugue state by the time the day was done.

I think I was making $1000 per class session? Maybe $1200? At the beginning of the semester I thought they were overpaying me. By the end it wasn’t enough.

It’s all about state of mind. Eventually you are cracking the same jokes that you think are funny, because the students politely laugh, at exactly the same point in every lesson.

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My first job in Taiwan was with an English Village where we would bus the kids to our school and give lessons in a classroom that had specific themes. Each classroom different: Hotel, Newsroom, Airport, Grocery Mart…

Every month we would pick one classroom and do exactly the same lesson (based on a very formal lesson plan) multiple times a day. That was the epitome of deja vu. Still, it didn’t bother me because I was still finding things that worked at the end of the month.

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Yeah, syllabi/syllabuses are highly overrated.

Ha! Maybe I wrote some of it, or at least edited it. I always wondered how they used that in the classroom. I also worked for the other company that makes ESL magazines. I always wondered how they were used in classes. There were a couple of writers who went around to schools promoting the magazines, but I didn’t think there was much follow up.

Is that still a thing? I’ve been afraid to teach in public/private schools for that reason. I’ve heard of messed up situations where teachers were told to teach the material in large classes without the proper set-up (here, on other threads). There’s a supposedly good private school near me with English Village on a sign that has seen better weather. I was waiting for that whole system to die before considering trying to get a job outside of cram schools and publishing.

It seems the English Village model is on it’s way out. The good part of the English Village system is that we had a lot of FETs all in the office with most of us arriving fresh off the boat. The culture shock in that office was real for the newbies and the old-timers were also an eclectic bunch. At other public schools you get platooned by yourself with no other FETs to help show you the ropes. Not as much fun IMHO but I did get shafted on my bonus from English Village whereas I got my bonus in NTC highschool.

I thought English Village is a teaching system used in some public/private schools. I know there are programs up in the mountains where they have facilities designed for the content, but I think I’ve read it’s used as a curriculum in the schools.

We taught new kids every day and had a few summer camps as well. This is in Taoyuan so I don’t know what they did in other places.