Got my visa today. Come Wednesday I’m on my way to find more places like this.

From left to right: Felicia, Karen, Dylan, Shawn, Michael, Lucille

Tomorrow will be a week since the last day of the regular semester. What I miss about going to work in the buxiban is being around the kids and seeing their happy faces smiling and laughing. During the last week of school the kids were so wild up. They had finished their exams at elementary school and didn’t have any homework. These kids in Taiwan that go to afterschool school (去補習) don’t havce much free time. It’s good to see them let it all out.

This is my Cupid Class, foundation level students. They are 1st and 2nd grade elementary students. I’ve enjoyed teaching them a lot and have also learned a lot. Like, how much patience I have and to practice what you preach. During the fall semester I just had 3 boys . One very, very well behaved but easily impressionable student, a boy that was full of energy, a little naughty and was treated like a baby at home and another who was really clever, really lazy and cared more about cars and clothes than about getting along with his classmates.

Throughout the semester the good student studied the bad habits of the others. Luckily, he got a talking to at home and towards the end of the school year started being his old self again. He would be a great policeman, though he said he wanted to be a carpenter first and then a fireman. The spring semester started before Chinese New Year and by that time I was really ready for a break. That is because the two other boys made me repeat “sit properly” and “work quietly” about 400 times. “Hey, you signed the class rules!”

After Chinese New Year, I got the news that I was going to have 3 new students. This usually is not good news. Who wants new students in the middle of the year. When you have to teach students who are at different levels it makes the class hard to manage and in the end not fun. But, I was blessed with 3 angels that could keep up with the boys.

The 3 new girls in my class didn’t climb the Great Word Wall (the word wall with our vocabulary words) but were all very hard workers and learned quickly. They weren’t as outspoken as the boys but only one of them was really shy. After they joined the class I could split up the class up into teams. The teams could lose points for not following the rules. Girls are always good at enforcing the rules. Towards the end of the semester they would tell the boys to “sit properly” or to “be quiet” and I would have to tell them to add a “please” in there. They were picking up after me.

I lost my cool quite a few times with the two boys. Shawn didn’t understand that he had to be quiet and play only during break time. He had too much energy and I don’t think he was disciplined much at home. The one that really gave me a hard time was Dylan. He is a special case. He was a 2nd grader while the other two boys were 1st graders. His parents are separated. His dad is a busy businessman and Dylan is looked after mostly by his grandparents. To me, he knows how to keep up appearences but doesn’t really know what discipline or respect is. Unfortunately, he cares more about how things look than how useful or good they are. Like having a really cool looking mechanical pencil with no lead during test time. When the kids would draw pictures in their free time, most of them would draw pretty landscapes or themselves playing. Every time Dylan would draw an expensive car, a Mercedes, Porsche or something. It’s not like a boy in love with race cars kinda thing, it’s a young boy who’s father has all these cars and his favorite thing is to go on to the mountain in the Porsche with the roof down. That’s fine to enjoy and care about those things if you can still be a good student and do your classwork and be a good classmate, but that’s not the case. One time, he drew a picture of himself drawing a porsche, smoking a cigarete and waving to a pretty girl on the side of the road.

During the spring semester I was getting pretty hard on him. He’s the smartest student in the class but his grades don’t show it because he has lazy habits. He doesn’t finish his classwork, sometimes does his homework and then doesn’t perform well on quizzes and tests. I had a talk with a friend towards the end of the semester. She told me I should try to give him a chance. He’s still a kid and needs to be shown the right way.

For the last month of school I tried not to raise my voice with him. I started talking to him one-on-one before and afer class, like a friend and not as a teacher. I tried to drop some knowledge for him. He could see what I was saying when I was talking to him but it wouldn’t stick. That’s because of what he was learning at home (有樣學樣). If he aspired to do something he could do it. He has talent and can rise up to the occasion when necessary. The boy can sing Italian songs by just listening to them.

I was told that his elementary school teacher had given up on him. In class, what do you say to the other students when they come to you saying Dylan has done what I told him not to do many times again. He could be a singer, or a well to do businessman like his father…

A picture says a thousand words

Dynamite Dylan, Energizer Shawn, Memory King Michael, Fantastic Felicia, Multi-Talented Lucille and Quite Karen, it was fun to teach them. Lucille and Felicia both went to an art class once a week. Lucille would take home these copied black and white My Own Little books and turn them into works of art. She gave me this handmade thank you card with a photo of her and her younger brother inside. She’s so sweet. Her parents also gave me a chop made of liuli (琉璃), colored glaze, decorated with my Chinese zodiac sign. I won’t forget her like she told me to in her card.

One more thing. If you work hard you’ll see improvement. If you try your best you’ll make it. At the beginning of the school year Michael’s English needed the most improvement. By the end of the school year he had improved the most and was even the Spelling Bee Champion for all of the Foundation Level. Michael had confidence. His hard work and good behavior in class had built up that confidence.

The Flat Stanely Project

My cousin sent Stanley to me from Australia. I sent him home long overdue for his nap. I hope the kids that sent Stanley abroad will still be able to find out about his latest adventure. While in Taiwan he had fun at the Dragonboat Festival and watched the boats race from the Bitan suspension bridge (碧潭吊橋).