I know that this has been discussed tangentially to other topics, but I think it deserves a thread of it’s own. Perhaps the marvellous mods can do some cobbling together?
What are your experiences of teaching in High Schools in Taiwan? Plenty of gripes, I’m sure, but the good news should also be shared. What are the best and worse programs you know of?
One of the most unusual I know of was at a Girl’s High School that uses its NSTs to teach western things in English, instead of just teaching English. They have cookery classes, girl scouts, etc. where other schools have ‘can you dunk the basketball?’. Good stuff.
I agree! There is so much time spent in Taiwan practicing grammar…I am, You are, bla bla. And what happens? They still get it wrong when they are speaking because they get nervous or careless (or whatever!) Put students in a natural fun situations where they can be creative using the language! I am tired of teaching grammar rules that I don’t know the answers too. I can’t remember a time in school where we learned that sort of thing!
Highschools are the bees’ knees as long as you don’t care about teaching. If you are a bit shaky ethically and don’t really want to do much work if you have to, you can be very successful in some of the highschools. As with buxibans, your performance is evaluated by one criteria: how popular you are with the students. I knew one guy whose classes were all variations of this:
walks into class
“Teacher, it is sunny outside! Can’t we go out and play ball?”
“O.K. The rest of you do whatever.” kicks back, smokes cigarettes all period
Needless to say, he was the most popular teacher in school. The kids all loved him. If the kids want to see English class as playtime, give’em playtime. If you start to try to actually teach them English, they will resent and hate you and complain about the “bad teacher” trying to make them learn. I know, because I substituted for that guy’s classes for a few days. The students were pissed off that I wouldn’t let them go outside to play basketball and kept trying to sneak out of the classroom.
Mod Lang said: "As with buxibans, your performance is evaluated by one criteria: how popular you are with the students. I knew one guy whose classes were all variations of this:
walks into class
“Teacher, it is sunny outside! Can’t we go out and play ball?”
“O.K. The rest of you do whatever.” kicks back, smokes cigarettes all period "
You’ve got to be exagerating!..but, maybe you’re not.
The foreign teacher last year was very popular as she didn’t stick to the textbooks which are much too difficult for the kids anyway. God knows why she chose those books in the first place. She played music and games with them and gave them endless handouts of what? I don’t know.
I’m trying to do something meaningful and my popularity varies. In some classes I’m enormously popular and in others where I have to yell at the kids so I can be heard, they hate me, I think. So, probably I’ll mellow out next semester. My expectations are already lowering.
I took a job at Wen Hua Public High school in Taichung last year. I really can’t find anything positive to say about it except for some of the students. It sounded like a great opportunity when I talked to the coordinator at Wegor private school. Unfortunately he had left out a few details.
When I complained I was fired.
kids are not stupid. if you slack off and do nothing, they’ll love you, big surprise! but they know when they’re learning something and when they aren’t. more of them care than you think. if one of them cares, and you jip him so that you can be popular with the other 29 who don’t care, what does that really say? well there’s a lot of ways to make a buck i guess.