Teacher

I wanted to post before I left  this Saturday for a trip down south. I'm doing quite well and beating the heat, so to  speak. My classes are going wonderfully. I started a new system for the naughty students where if they get 3 strikes on the board, then they can't play a game at  the end of class and all of my students have been adhering to that. I don't do that for my high school kids (I teach ages 6-18). To the right is a picture of 2 of my students. They are about 6 or 7 and I see them twice a week . We're currently learning the letter "n" and practicing the song, "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes."

Everyone calls me "teacher" here. It's hard to get used to, I think. The way that we educate here is completely different from how we do it in the U.S. In Taiwan, we are focused on repetition; sometimes my kids will copy everything I say because I am the teacher and  I know everything... or so they are taught. I always tell my high school students that in America kids always fight their teachers and it makes for good conversation. I will ask them, "What are you doing this weekend?" They respond, "Studying." I tell them, "No, no more studying." This attitude is so different from American school students and, I think, studying is integral to not only my students' school lives but also to how they define themselves as people. They find it hard to describe or even talk about themselves, and I try to get them to talk about 'who they are' and 'where they see themselves going.' I think it's important to build a classroom community, often hard, but in one of my upper level classes I give them a writing prompt as soon as they enter class. It's questions all about them, which they're not used to answering, but these questions are important to me. 

More to come...