I am an AMERICAN

Work Teaching English in Taiwan
1

So, after a difficult moment in an important but baffeling meeting the other day, one of my sweet co-workers shared some thoughts with me.

In the meeting, my collegues were trying to say one thing, but saying the opposite thing. They were saying the opposite thing in fluent English, so it took me ages to “get it” that they meant something else entirely. People started to steam, accuse me of not paying attention, and laugh in embarrassment as the boss began to lose paitience with all of us.

Now–get this, please–the only thing I actually did WRONG here was to assume that the words they were speaking were actually the words they meant. I know. I KNOW. I’ve lived here long enough to know better than to make such a stupid mistake.

I was a lot off center in the first place because I’d been told that the meeting was going to be about one thing and it turned out to be about something else entirely, but whatever.

So, ANYways, my sweet co-worker told me the other day that lots of foreigners learn Chinese, and if I learned more Chinese I’d understand everything that was happening all the time and we wouldn’t have any of these kinds of problems any more.

Now, I already speak a LOT more Chinese than any other foreigner they’ve hired before and they really, REALLY like this. It makes all the difference in the world to them. No matter how many times I ask them, when they’re working with me in class, to give the kids a chance to process for a moment, then respond, before they translate, they do it anyway. The more I speak Chinese in class, the less they have to say. It DOES NOT register that the kids are getting the information and doing whatever is asked of them through Chinese. The goal is English, and as long as I’ve also spoken English, they think the kids are getting it. Whatever.

Another problem is that I understand more Chinese than I can speak and they make the huge mistake of believing that just because I can understand SOME of what they’re saying I should be able to keep up with them.

But that’s NOT ALL. No, WAIT! There’s more. I’m welcome to join them, in fact, to become a Taiwanese! I can be just like them, I can be ONE of them! Then there would be no problems with culture, either! I could always fit in and they wouldn’t feel so worried about if I’m satisfied or not, or how I might be thinking!

Damn it all the Freaking 'ell!

They don’t actually WANT a foreign teacher. They want Taiwanese who happens to LOOK and SOUND just like a foreigner!!

DOH!!! :doh: :doh: :doh:

As God as my witness, that shit always drives me NUTS!!!

Thanks for listening. :bow:

2

I hear ya!!, and it’s just not in teaching either.
I own the frikking company, and I still get the same kinda thing.

Hang in there and keep doing what you know is right.

3

I am only truly jealous of Americans for one reason. The fact that you have this song:

fucking great song, should be the national anthem, let the haters hate!

4

RE: I’m an American.

My condolences.

(wait… ssshhh…)

It’s not that they don’t want a foreigner. It’s that they have no idea of what the hell a foreigner is really. Think of the yokels in the states - simply cannot fathom that someone could not be a Christian and still be a good person. Just can not understand how people can eat with chopsticks. It’s the frog in the bottom of the well.

They’ve never really had to deal with people on a different cultural level, so they don’t understand (and probably don’t realise) that it’s not the easiest thing for you to do.

As for the becoming Taiwanese bit… meh. At least you’d… uhm… be able to get a cell phone hassle-free. Oh, and a credit card.

5

Housecat, your experience sounds like a conversation that happened to me in San Francisco after an Israeli company sent me there for a month to work on a project for them.

Except this time it was an AMERICAN handing me lines like that!

6

I think they just want you to understand high-context communication, i.e. meanings are not stating explicitly; listener has to infer the real meaning from the context.

It’s just a cultural difference, an objective thing. You and I were raised in a low context communication environment. There is no guessing at what people really mean. Because that’s the way we grew up, we tend think that’s the way people should talk. But they don’t feel the same way. Many of them don’t even realize that there is another way to communicate. Doesn’t make them wrong.

7

[quote=“Tomas”]I think they just want you to understand high-context communication, i.e. meanings are not stating explicitly; listener has to infer the real meaning from the context.

It’s just a cultural difference, an objective thing. You and I were raised in a low context communication environment. There is no guessing at what people really mean. Because that’s the way we grew up, we tend think that’s the way people should talk. But they don’t feel the same way. Many of them don’t even realize that there is another way to communicate. Doesn’t make them wrong.[/quote]

I didn’t say they were wrong, Tomas, I said I was wrong, and for exactly this reason. It took me too long to key in to what they actually meant.

They make the mistake of believing that I can get more understanding from their Mandarin than I actually do–because sometimes it looks like that, and I make the mistake of expecting their English to be better than it actually is–because sometimes it sounds like that.

We’re both (all) at fault here with the communication problems. It’s the bit where they try to get me to be someone or something I’m not that grates. I mean, if I actually WERE Taiwanese, I wouldn’t have been hired! I doubt seriously they’d want to hire an ABC because there are too many occasions where people come in from other schools, even from other countries, to observe their “program.” They need the correct “look.”

Tsu is also correct about the frog in the well. It’s just tough when you’re the only one in the office who shares your perspective. They even told me that the couldn’t understand how negative they thought I was about some proposed changes for next year. They freely admit that they don’t know many specifics about the changes, but as stated, they mean that I will possibly have to deal with leaving my son alone at school while I go elsewhere for a large part of the day. If I can’t get back by noon (and that seems likely–as stated), then he will be unsupervised until I return.

They also all consider anchingban the obvious solution but, again, I’m the only adult in my son’s life. If he fell down the stairs, or got really ill and needed me, I’d still be too far away to get back to him quickly. And anyway, I don’t want to send him to anchingban.

They can’t understand why that would be a big deal to me, but they don’t get that I’m his ONLY parent, his ONLY family at ALL. If I can’t get to him, and he needs me, then he has no one. To me, that MAY be a deal breaker. I need to consider it very, very carefully, and how I might deal with it if I keep this job.

But my rental contract is dependant on my working contract with this school. So, if this is going to be a deal breaker, I’ll not have a job OR appartment after July. So, my priority is finding out about this first, deciding if I want the job FIRST, because if it goes, my living arrangements go, too.

Not to mention that even if I decide to stay, waiting too long for them to make a decision about me will mean visa hassles for me. They don’t know about, or understand about, any of that. They just think that I’m not supportive enough of their program and policies if I have to have so many concerns that they can’t understand. They think I’m making up things to worry about, or making things harder than they need to be. Once I tried to explain this to one co-worker who used to live in AZ, she seemed to understand a bit more and back off a little bit, but it took getting upset with me to make her try to figure it out in the first place!

8

Considering that you can speak more Chinese than many foreign teachers, if i was in your situation i would try to find other single parents (and other interested parents, single or not) to set up a support group / cultural exchange group in my (extended) neighbourhood. In Okinawa (my home) it has until now been the extended family that looks after children when parents are unavailable, but since in Okinawa, too, more and more families are locally fragmented, support groups have begun to spring up to fill the gap. (On a tangent: i also know one similar group of people who are fed up with the school system and who have set up up their own mini-school.) Your place of work is directly connected to hundreds of families - is it not possible to get your school to help you draft and distribute an advertisement? Just some ideas…

(Additional search terms: Anqinban An1qin1ban1 Anqingban An1qing4ban1 安親班)

9

Considering that you can speak more Chinese than many foreign teachers, if I was in your situation I would try to find other single parents (and other interested parents, single or not) to set up a support group / cultural exchange group in my (extended) neighbourhood. In Okinawa (my home) it has until now been the extended family that looks after children when parents are unavailable, but since in Okinawa, too, more and more families are locally fragmented, support groups have begun to spring up to fill the gap. (On a tangent: i also know one similar group of people who are fed up with the school system and who have set up up their own mini-school.) Your place of work is directly connected to hundreds of families - is it not possible to get your school to help you draft and distribute an advertisement? Just some ideas…

(Additional search terms: Anqinban An1qin1ban1 Anqingban An1qing4ban1 安親班)[/quote]

Actually, if I keep this job, that’s an excellent idea that I hadn’t thought of at all. Thanks, Yuli! And even if I don’t choose this job, if I stay in Taiwan, I may just do this anyway.

*Oh, and just to clarify–I don’t mean that I speak more Chinese than many foreign teachers–just more than any teacher who has worked at this school before (there have only been three others, and none of them have stayed here a year yet). (That’s another part of the problem–they’ve not had to directly work with foreigners for very long yet.)

10

With all due respect, you are the person in this relationship who has the experience of dealing with all the cross-cultural stuff. You should know by now that these issues are going to arise, and have ways of dealing with them.

I get occasional problems dealing with a specific kind of person in specific kinds of organisations, enough that they’re actually quite predictable and I hate myself every time something goes pear-shaped. But in terms of everyday interactions with ‘normal’ organisations, I just don’t get the kind of crap that seems to follow you around.

This is kind of strange, because anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not always the easiest of people to deal with. And yet I manage to have cordial relationships with school administrators all over Taipei. I don’t speak Chinese either.

You’re a teacher. Your job is to teach. You can’t teach someone who is doing everything right already, because they don’t need to learn anything. Therefore, your job is to help people understand what they are doing wrong and how to do better. That’s what teachers do. Teaching is helping people solve problems.

If you are a teacher, and someone doesn’t understand you, then it’s your job to change the way you communicate in response to their needs. There are no stupid classes, only bad teachers. From reading your posts, over many years, it seems that all employers you encounter are in a class of people who can’t manage foreigners. This happens time and time again to you.

You are not managing your class. They don’t understand you, or you need to adjust your expectations of them. Either way, I find it hard to believe that everyone you meet is a bad employer but most of the people I meet are pleasant and easy to get along with professionally with very few problems ever arising. These are the same people, managed differently.

You speak the language much better than I do, and have had a much deeper cultural immersion than I have. And yet, time and again, for many years, the same shit keeps happening to you. It’s time for you to take a good look at what you’re doing that could be done differently. You need to get a better result, and it’s not going to come if you don’t change your own behaviour.

11

With all due respect, you are the person in this relationship who has the experience of dealing with all the cross-cultural stuff. You should know by now that these issues are going to arise, and have ways of dealing with them.

I get occasional problems dealing with a specific kind of person in specific kinds of organisations, enough that they’re actually quite predictable and I hate myself every time something goes pear-shaped. But in terms of everyday interactions with ‘normal’ organisations, I just don’t get the kind of crap that seems to follow you around.

This is kind of strange, because anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m not always the easiest of people to deal with. And yet I manage to have cordial relationships with school administrators all over Taipei. I don’t speak Chinese either.

You’re a teacher. Your job is to teach. You can’t teach someone who is doing everything right already, because they don’t need to learn anything. Therefore, your job is to help people understand what they are doing wrong and how to do better. That’s what teachers do. Teaching is helping people solve problems.

If you are a teacher, and someone doesn’t understand you, then it’s your job to change the way you communicate in response to their needs. There are no stupid classes, only bad teachers. From reading your posts, over many years, it seems that all employers you encounter are in a class of people who can’t manage foreigners. This happens time and time again to you.

You are not managing your class. They don’t understand you, or you need to adjust your expectations of them. Either way, I find it hard to believe that everyone you meet is a bad employer but most of the people I meet are pleasant and easy to get along with professionally with very few problems ever arising. These are the same people, managed differently.

You speak the language much better than I do, and have had a much deeper cultural immersion than I have. And yet, time and again, for many years, the same shit keeps happening to you. It’s time for you to take a good look at what you’re doing that could be done differently. You need to get a better result, and it’s not going to come if you don’t change your own behaviour.[/quote][/quote][/quote]
Loretta, I respect what you’re trying to say. I can see how I give that impression. But consider a couple of other things, please.

  1. The love me in the classroom. They don’t have problems with my teaching and I get lots of compliments from outside teachers who visit the school as well. Of course, the staff here like that.

  2. The communication problem came up in a meeting, not the classroom. I have admitted thrice now that it was my fault. As you said, and as I did, I should have seen that comming, but I didn’t.

  3. I use this (the flob) place to let off steam quite a bit. I guess I come off as quite bitchy or hard to deal with because I do that, but sometimes it helps me to spout off here about stuff that I don’t want to say out loud for obvious reasons.

  4. I haven’t said that everything is bad here. I think I’ve written about how much I actually like this job because I like the people. In fact, I know I have. And I do like this job so much more than I’ve liked any job I’ve had in quite a long time.

  5. This isn’t the same sht, it’s entirely different sht. Any medical issues that I or my son have had since comming here (from day 2) have been dealt with very well, with respect, and with an abundance of friendly help and support. That’s one example. This is just trying to fit into an all Taiwanese work environment, which I don’t have prior experience with, exactly. It’s sometimes harder than you might think.

I just need to vent sometimes. I’m frustrated lately, with them and with myself as well. I think it’s normal. We all go through times of adjustment.

12

I’m probably telling you guys how to suck eggs, but here’s my take on meetings in Taiwan:

The general rule with meetings is the foreign teacher isn’t expected to contribute, just as junior Taiwanese employees aren’t expected to say anything. VERY different to our idea of meetings in the UK and the US, where everybody is expected to contribute. This makes teaching Taiwanese business people cultural techniques for handling meetings with Americans quite tricky.

Foreign teachers are expected to look happy and attentive, but say little. I find this quite easy because it suits my personality. I never agree or disagree strongly in a meeting here; I always remain neutral. If there is anything I feel strongly about I deal with it privately after the meeting with the person who has the influence to change it. I learnt this through seeing the look of shock on the faces of people when I’ve just gently disagreed during meetings in the past. It’s not the done thing over here, old boy :slight_smile: !

Anyway, this strategy seems to work for me. It’s also good because I freaking hate meetings and can’t wait to get out of them :laughing: .

13

Housecat,

You are missing things because your Chinese is not perfect, but you do speak some. Now, just imagine how much Loretta is missing because of not using Chinese at all.

I guess you’ll have to cut Loretta some slack, and forgive the patronizing tone of that post. The next time Loretta deals with a Taiwanese work situation in an all-Taiwanese office in Chinese, as a single parent with the stress that entails, I’m sure any and all advice from that quarter will be welcome. Of course, it’s also true that I may have more information about what you’re like IRL since I’ve actually met you on more than one occasion, which may give me more insight into what you mean than Loretta has.

14

Okay, so let’s imagine that (even without her own admission), housecat keeps fucking things up and she’s the shit magnet (been there, done that, am that myself). What then? What constructive advice? Tom has given some, but what else? Even though housecat is pointing the finger at herself, that doesn’t mean she necessarily wants us to agree with her and say, “Yeah, we think you’re a fucking idiot too! Haha, I have my shit so well together at my job!” (Which I don’t.) She wants a practical solution or set thereof.

Tom: Once we figured that issue out at my previous job, another teacher or two and I came to a tacit agreement that we would deliberately try to derail the meeting as soon as possible (but this was only possible because the meeting had to finish at a particular time and other people would literally jump up and start leaving because one guy would always do a runner to catch his high speed rail train, so the flood gates would open from that point). On the very first point of the meeting, we’d ask for clarification over and over and then subtly try to steer the meeting as far off on a tangent as possible. We sometimes used to get through an entire hour’s worth of meeting that way. I’m not sure if the director actually figured out what we were doing, but we always tried to appear sincere in our need for clarification or we would all have a laugh about one foreign teacher’s lack of articulation (he was in on it) and ask for him to clarify what he needed clarifying. We avoided it appearing confrontational.

Another thing we would do would be to insist that everyone was there before we started (the director was often late to her own meetings and once tried to not even come to one of them) and then restate (and reclarify!) the half a point that had been made.

Funnily enough, the meetings occurred less and less frequently as the semester went on!

15

:roflmao:

I can just imagine you doing that, Guy. I bet you gave drove the managers up the wall!

I’m a bit more of a softy. I follow the reed that bends is stronger than the oak that breaks line, or some crap like that.

16

[quote=“tomthorne”]I’m probably telling you guys how to suck eggs, but here’s my take on meetings in Taiwan:

The general rule with meetings is the foreign teacher isn’t expected to contribute, just as junior Taiwanese employees aren’t expected to say anything. VERY different to our idea of meetings in the UK and the US, where everybody is expected to contribute. This makes teaching Taiwanese business people cultural techniques for handling meetings with Americans quite tricky.

Foreign teachers are expected to look happy and attentive, but say little. I find this quite easy because it suits my personality. I never agree or disagree strongly in a meeting here; I always remain neutral. If there is anything I feel strongly about I deal with it privately after the meeting with the person who has the influence to change it. I learnt this through seeing the look of shock on the faces of people when I’ve just gently disagreed during meetings in the past. It’s not the done thing over here, old boy :slight_smile: !

Anyway, this strategy seems to work for me. It’s also good because I freaking hate meetings and can’t wait to get out of them :laughing: .[/quote]

This is good advice, but impractical in this particular case. I did wonder why I was even invited to this meeting in the first place. I wondered that before, durring, and after the meeting. Later I found it was because they thought they could just tack on my questions about the new program to whatever else they had to discuss at the time. Since the director was going to be in the room, and since the questions needed to be presented to him, they’d just ask me to come and ask my questions then. It wasn’t really the best idea about how to handle things in the first place, for a lot of reasons.

Ironlady–THANK YOU!

Thank you, too, Guy. I’d love an easy fix, if you’ve got it, but mostly just need to bitch it out a bit. It’s not like there are any other people on Earth who understand what I’m trying to deal with any better than other Forumosans, after all. Sometimes, you know, you just wanna go where everybody knows your name.

17

[quote=“ironlady”]
I guess you’ll have to cut Loretta some slack, and forgive the patronizing tone of that post. The next time Loretta deals with a Taiwanese work situation in an all-Taiwanese office in Chinese, as a single parent with the stress that entails, I’m sure any and all advice from that quarter will be welcome. [/quote]

I didn’t read it that way. Loretta’s advice could be right or wrong, but I think it was simply considerate of him to go out of his way to make it.

18

Tempo Gain: Sure, though I can see how it could be misconstrued. The reason I say that is that I give this kind of advice all the time. I get straight into the heart of the issue and then people react badly and I tell myself, “Shit, I was meant to just listen, say ‘yes’ or ‘aha’ every so often, and just generally shut up.” Also, I know that sometimes, a lot actually, when people give that kind of advice to me, I go straight on the defensive.

housecat: Oh yeah, you’re looking at the wrong person if you want advice for dealing effectively with people or dealing effectively with other cultures, and it’s even worse if you put the two together. We all know that I’m pretty much like a bull in a china shop when dealing with people.

tom: When presented with irrationality in superiors, I tend to get really subversive.

19

I also read Loretta’s response as a way of trying to get from a “Why” kind of question to a “How can I” kind of question, and it’s an important distinction.

E.g. How can I become better understood? / How can I get others to better understand me? / What can I do to better understand…?

20

[quote=“Tempo Gain”][quote=“ironlady”]
I guess you’ll have to cut Loretta some slack, and forgive the patronizing tone of that post. The next time Loretta deals with a Taiwanese work situation in an all-Taiwanese office in Chinese, as a single parent with the stress that entails, I’m sure any and all advice from that quarter will be welcome. [/quote]

I didn’t read it that way. Loretta’s advice could be right or wrong, but I think it was simply considerate of him to go out of his way to make it.[/quote]

Patronising? The point is that Loretta manages to get along just fine without even understanding the language or culture, and if I can do it then anyone can do it.

Clue: if you keep reminding yourself and everyone else that you are an American, you may find that less productive than constantly reminding yourself that you are in Taiwan.

I understand the need to vent, we all have that from time to time, but venting doesn’t change the situation. It just focuses your attention on how things should be, instead of how they are. You need a strategy to help you manage these situations, a commitment to change, a way to move forward. Venting is not moving forward, it’s resistance to reality. Resistance is useless.

Either you learn to deal with reality, the reality of working for people in Taiwan, or you leave Taiwan. This has nothing to do with what you deserve or what you can afford. It has nothing to do with whether your expectations are reasonable or better than anyone else’s. It has nothing to do with whether you are a good or popular teacher, or whether I’m being patronising. It’s a simple choice: adapt and survive, or keep having the same problems.

Obviously, as I’m not a single parent and not in your situation, I can’t give you any advice about what will work best for you. You will have to work that out for yourself, and maybe someone here can advise you. But I can tell you with absolute certainty that if you quit this job because the people are so hard to deal with, the next one will not be any better.