I know this forum specifically says teaching English, however, new initiatives in the taiwanese system aimed at both bilingual and immersion programs mean that many new teachers are expected to teach subjects other than ESL/ELL.
Back in American public school, there were many opportunities to receive training in innovative pedagogy. Here in Taiwan, it seems these opportunities are only provided in Chinese.
Furthermore, schools expect even newer teachers to be experts who can create all the materials and lessons in their entirety by themselves. I think this is both a good and bad thing. For one it allows for much greater flexibility in contrast to the hyper rigid curriculum set by the MOE. On the other hand, it can be difficult to determine what material to cover in what order.
Further, the courses required to gain licensure cannot replace practical experience or more focused training. I think foreign teachers need access to greater training and resources from the experts in the field (Taiwan actually does have some top level educational researchers especially where I am in Taipei). Although itās only my second year, Iāve only had a single training session during the summer that was unfocused due to the other issue. That other issue is ambiguity regarding what bilingual means and what sort of classes/services foreign teachers should be providing.
This ambiguity results in each school interpreting their programs in wildly different ways. Some schools only focus on conversation classes attempting to get their 1 or 2 foreign teachers to teach every single student in the school. Others only have foreign teachers as co teachers to try and adapt subjects into bilingual (when the local staff lack language ability and the foreign teacher lacking content knowledge).
For anyone else working as a public school teacher, what has been your impression of the new bilingual initiatives? Other than the pay and work condition issues which we all know and expect to be a mess.
There are other threads about this where I have rambled at length.
The tldr version is: Taiwan will never be bilingual because everything about their education system still revolves around everyone being able to pass standardized tests that have one of four correct possible answers.
Have you been to teacher training in Chinese? (Maybe with an interpreter?) I sat through a āč·Øé åā (cross curricular) training session wherein we were supposed to cross English with Art for Junior High. The teachers in my group came up with āthey can draw pictures of their vocabulary wordsā. My suggestion that they could use simplified English to learn about the elements of art (line, shape, form, etc) was struck down. As was my suggestion that we further cross it with history as students explore art across cultures using both Chinese and English and complete a project on a period of time in art history. Nope. Junior high kids, with their 30+ new English vocab words per week, would best spend their time drawing pictures of those words. That was the applauded suggestion on how to cross art and English. Taiwan is DOOOOOOOOMED
I havenāt attended any training in Chinese where there was a translator only training where there wasnāt but I couldnāt understand anything (I tried pretty hard but itās too many words way too quickly for my current level of Chinese). Occasionally someone would help me understand but not enough to really understand what they were trying to say.
I feel like thereās actually quite a lot you can do with art and English learning together. You had some pretty great ideas.
Actually, Iām lucky that the teachers at my school are super receptive to new ideas. They listen seriously and give my suggestions a try all the time. Itās my own abilities I worry about. Iām sure thereās a lot more I could be learning to be more effective as a teacher. Some of the more experienced teachers when I was in America had super innovative and engrossing lessons that I really envy