Taipei American School (TAS)

My only experience with TAS was in a department store in Taipei when I complimented two very pretty high school age Taiwanese girls on their flawless English. Their answer was, verbatum, “Duh! :unamused: " When I then replied, “Escuse me?”, their response was, " :unamused: We go to TAS. :unamused: .” Then they walked off. :noway:

I think I can understand Tigerman’s feelings about the school.

Wow…I’ve heard things about the students that go to TAS, i.e. speaking loudly in English in public, etc. but I’ve never heard this kind of sh*t before. I interned very close to TAS at a government agency and I would sometimes see those kids on the bus. They were speaking loudly in English, so I thought they were ABC (like me), but then they started speaking Chinese, and I was like, oh okay, nvm! I think it’s very good to teach your children like this when they are young, but you just have to be careful not to let them get too stuck up or else they’ll never get along with people in the real world. Yikes Let’s hope they learn!

Btw, I’m sorry you had such a bad experience! It’s such bad manners…and it looks bad for the rest of Taiwanese people.

-moondollars
community.faithvine.com/profiles/moondollars

Taipei European School is a nice alternative. They even make them wear uniforms. New facilities make them quite competitive and their curriculum is quite challenging. I chose it for my kid over TAS and I am American.

Bravo Hobart. I have sub taught at both, and i do prefer the smaller closer less-competitive nature of TES.

it has its drawbacks like a longer trip, less space, and smaller facilities, but wins for smaller classes, closer teacher/student relationships, and a more diverse curriculum format choice, including the IB which i prefer.

online.wsj.com/public/resources/ … -sort.html

I am surprised to see TAS make the list. I expected there to be more schools in Singapore and HK (only one) :idunno:

Yes, that was impressive. Honestly if my child was older than 9 years old, I would send him to TAS mostly because I am American. TES teaches reading in Pre-K and TAS doesn’t even start introduction until K and then really teaches in 1st grade. After several years they are both caught up.

By the way, that review was based on how many of their graduates went to the top colleges in the USA. HK and Singapore graduates often go to college in the UK.

I am gonna date myself terribly here but when I went to TAS the tuition was 40,000nt per semester. But then everything being relative. A “chian ping” was only 20,000nt then. So an apartment on Zhongxiao/Tun-hwa of 50 pings in those days would sell for only 1,000,000 nt dollars. So 80,000nt a year was equivalent to 4 PING. How much is 4 ping today? That apartment would sell for how much today? I think its 400,000 nt / ping so a 50 ping apt would selll for bout 20 million taiwan dolllars? So if you pay bout 500,000 nt/ year at TAS now , thats only one and a quarter ping. IN my day it was 4 ping. So everything is relative.

However , we were lucky to be in the old campus (great campus) and we had a WASP/Chinese ratio of about 50/50 as the US Military was in Taiwan and we had heaps of military kids whose tuition was paid by Uncle Sam (and many TAS teachers got PX privileges because of that). And the lingua franca in school was ENGLISH and English ONLY. We were admonished if caught speaking anything else.

And yes, I couldnt possibly afford to send MY kids to TAS (if I had any).

And I dont remember TAS schoolkids showing off in public their bilingual abilities (ie talking very loudly in public) or people being offended to know we were TAS kids back then.

How things have changed eh?

p.s. And yes the principal was American and so were much of the faculty and high level admin.

My apologies for bumping up an old thread but does anyone have any experiences teachinig at TAS?

Also, what is their Pre-K or K program like?

thank you

edit- I should clarify. Not interested in teaching Pre-K, want to teach secondary English/LA (certified 5-12). Only interested in Pre-K program as I read faculty staff are eligible to receive subsidised (free?) tuition for their dependents

[quote=“housecat”]My only experience with TAS was in a department store in Taipei when I complimented two very pretty high school age Taiwanese girls on their flawless English. Their answer was, verbatum, “Duh! :unamused: " When I then replied, “Escuse me?”, their response was, " :unamused: We go to TAS. :unamused: .” Then they walked off. :noway:

I think I can understand Tigerman’s feelings about the school.[/quote]

Well you assumed they are Taiwanese Housecat. My son has had similar experiences… He usually replies that firstly he is not Taiwanese but Australian, and that you shouldnt judge a persons nationality from looking at them.

Sometimes he is with a group of his friends, and yes they chat away in English, only for others to comment on how good their English is.

And for moonlight… why should you be surprised that young people here switch between English and Chinese, yet you think it shames Taiwanese? I do it and yet that wouldnt be so much of a surprise. Maybe it’s because you think you are an ABC… why dont you just think of yourself as an American, thats what many of the TAS students are by the way, Americans. Just my son is at the American School in Taichung but he’s Australian, and yes he’s a Chinese speaker as well but some of his so called “Taiwanese” looking American friends struggle to speak Chinese.

After all I am Taiwanese, but I doubt you are going to come up to me and say wow, you have really good English.

DUH… is a typical teenagers reply.

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[quote=“Satellite TV”][quote=“housecat”]My only experience with TAS was in a department store in Taipei when I complimented two very pretty high school age Taiwanese girls on their flawless English. Their answer was, verbatum, “Duh! :unamused: " When I then replied, “Escuse me?”, their response was, " :unamused: We go to TAS. :unamused: .” Then they walked off. :noway:

I think I can understand Tigerman’s feelings about the school.[/quote]

Well you assumed they are Taiwanese Housecat.[/quote]

You have a point, satellite, I did make an assumption, and one that likely gets old if they get asked about it much. I was commenting more about their disrespectful behavior towards someone older than they were, but I guess the world is a different place than when I grew up. I would have been expected to be polite to someone older than me, even if they were asking me stupid and irritating questions.

[quote=“housecat”]You have a point, satellite, I did make an assumption, and one that likely gets old if they get asked about it much. I was commenting more about their disrespectful behavior towards someone older than they were, but I guess the world is a different place than when I grew up.

I would have been expected to be polite to someone older than me, even if they were asking me stupid and irritating questions.[/quote]

Yes on the behaviuour side I understand. My son and his friends do it to me too if I ask them about something that think is common knowledge to them but not to me. We were kids once and perhaps acted in a different manner.

But I have seen my son do the same things to Taiwanese as well. He has been asked if his English is so good cause he has that private English teacher… to which my son replies that I’m his father… not an English teacher. :unamused:

Once Housecat, a british chappie and I were in the car park of the American school, waiting for our kids. He was complaining that he thought there would be more British, Americans, Australians etc rather than the Asians he sees.

So I pointed to my son and asked… Oh I see like that Asian kid over there? Yes he replies… not enough Whities in the school :aiyo: to which I replied the Asian kid I was pointing to is my son. :whistle: :whistle:

The British chap was looking rather sheepish after that. :blush:

I had to explain to him that only ARC EXPAT kids with ARC’s could go to the expat schools. But who can tell on the streets of Taiwan anymore, especialy around an international school.

But I can tell you this… when I was in Suzhou recently it’s really easy to spot the Taiwanese kids over there.

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[quote=“She”]My apologies for bumping up an old thread but does anyone have any experiences teachinig at TAS?

Also, what is their Pre-K or K program like?

thank you

edit- I should clarify. Not interested in teaching Pre-K, want to teach secondary English/LA (certified 5-12). Only interested in Pre-K program as I read faculty staff are eligible to receive subsidised (free?) tuition for their dependents[/quote]

I moved my 2 kids (kindergarten and 2nd grade) from TAS to TES after the our first year here. I found the TAS lower school curriculum very poor–glorified daycare/bushiban. My son really struggled the first 2-3 months going from the TAS kindergarten to year2 (grade 1) equivalent) at TES.

If you’re familiar with the TAS math program, Everyday Mathematics, you either love it or hate it. Most parents seem to hate it, many teachers and administrators love it. I could give you a dissertation on the many things wrong with that math program, but I’ll spare you that pain.

In addition, because there are so few native English speaking expat kids, there seems to be an unwritten policy of “seeding” the separate classes with them, e.g., there is a high probability that there will be only one native English speaker in any given class.

TAS lower school has a very montessori style teaching philosophy. Some people find it works great for their children. I didn’t. I’ve been very happy with our experiences at TES, especially working with the adminstration there. TAS, not so much. Not only did I find their curriculum poor, dealing with their office staff, their administration (principals, school board, registrar) was frustrating and unproductive. They are more often than not arrogant and dismissive. Again, I could go on, but you get the gist of the current problems at TAS.

I sent both my kids to TES when they were in Taiwan. They loved it. We, as parents, enjoyed it too.

I graduated from TAS in 2006, and heard that the school went down the tubes thereafter. When I pressed my friends to tell me why, they couldn’t come up with much reasoning other than a lot of the high school teachers left. :ponder:

I will say though that very little learning happens in lower school, and I might even extend that to middle school. High school is where it ramps up, with both AP and IB classes (I might add that I heavily dislike combining AP and IB classes, although it made financial sense to do so. I absolutely resented having to take some classes for two years because they were also IB - I was an AP student. This combination also made me up with 12 AP and IB exams, or something equally ridiculous at the end of my senior year. I almost didn’t have to go to school for the last month thanks to all the study breaks I got with them). I would send your children to another school for the lower levels, but switch them to TAS for high school. High school is very competitive and places students well in colleges.

As for the student body itself, I found it homogeneous. The same personality type could be found wandering the hallways. Students are bilingual though, I count myself as a native speaker of both English and Mandarin.

The new facilities (libraries) make the school an impressive place to be. However, the inflated costs of everything, from meals to student book store, made it annoying. Take your pick.

What type is that?

I hesitate to speak that badly about the student body because my memories are so colored with negative experiences. I’ve also matured quite a bit since then so part of those experiences were probably due to my own fault. But I’ll try to give an impartial description.

They’re all quite… comfortable in their own zone. Not adventurous, pretty much fits into the mold of “High overachieving student with lots and lots of pressure about grades, extracurricular involvement is almost always for the resume, very, and might I emphasize very, clique-ish, and pretty well off families (they’d have to be, to be able to afford the tuition as local parents) - so all the trappings of that”. The family gossip network is also insane. One piece of news can travel the entire TAS community in a day, from matters such as test rankings to someone’s new significant other.

Hope that helps. It might paint a more dire picture of the school than it really is, and I certainly wouldn’t be attending the great school I am without it, but given the choice of doing it again, I’m… not that entirely sure if I would. Probably, if only for high school academic rigor.

I wonder what is it about TAS that is not good. Can anyone share? Thanks


I also know three different women who have taught there at different times who said it was a living hell for women”
Details please…

I don’t know what details you want?

One of them was a classmate of mine from college who was a subject area teacher. The men in the administration would come after her for things beyond her control (like students sneaking off between classes and not coming back to the school until much later in the day, or students smoking after school). To an extent, that’s the responsibility of all teachers, but these would be things that the school guards (and at some point, parents) are typically responsible for, yet the blame fell on her.

Another was a woman I met in a sports group who had a PhD in her field and over ten years of teaching experience. She had male administrators constantly trying to show off to the students that they knew more about the subject than she did. She took a sick day one day and when she came back, her students told her that the male teacher who subbed for her class spent the whole time impressing upon them how little she knew about that subject and how much smarter he was (not even a teacher in that subject), rather than just teaching.

Finally, and I guess this is less about women feeling like it’s a hellhole so much as just an awful environment to create: there was a student suicide and the school administration explicitly told teachers not to talk about it with any of the students. There was also nothing for the students by way of mental health help (ie, therapists). The only thing the students wanted to do during the time immediately following that event was to talk about it (shocker). Administrators got themselves student “spies” to secretly record any teacher that allowed students to discuss anything related to the suicide, that student, or their emotions as a result of the suicide. Naturally, this teacher was caught acknowledging that students have emotions and that it was a difficult time for them.

I’m 3 for 3 of women I know who who worked at TAS and got themselves out as fast as humanly possible. It’s possible it’s not awful for everyone, but I know a good 10 or so men who have worked there over the years, and not one of them sees any problem there. So my guess is, if you can grin and bare it, maybe it’s not bad. But who wants to suck it up at a job that’s a toxic environment? At some point, the money isn’t worth it.

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As living hells go your examples don’t seem so out of the ordinary. One instance of a teacher getting blamed for things beyond her control and another who was undermined by someone possibly trying to take her job when she was off sick. Neither of these are exceptional situations for any teacher. As for the student “spies” recording teachers discussing suicide - that is bizarre and very bad. I’m incredulous that TAS would pull a stunt like that. In fact I’d bet a chickpea curry it didn’t happen.

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