So, we left Taiwan on March 29th on a flight bound for Singapore. I left Taiwan with mixed emotions. It's been a pretty crazy 6 months for us since we left Ireland on the Stena Line to England. I've mentioned all the new things that have happened to us so I won't go into it again but I will say that the experience has had a huge impact on me personally.
I've learned a lot about myself and how I deal with different situations which are thrown at me. Our whole time in Taiwan has been brilliant. Yes, some things really annoyed us at times but everyone loves to complain, right? Right.
Overall, we met brilliant people and have great memories from Taiwan. Along with how much I actually enjoyed living in Taiwan, the teaching was an unexpected surprise. It took me a little while to get into it but I ended up really enjoying it.
I haven't spoken a whole lot about the actual job we did in Taiwan so I'll try to explain it a bit more now.
I've learned a lot about myself and how I deal with different situations which are thrown at me. Our whole time in Taiwan has been brilliant. Yes, some things really annoyed us at times but everyone loves to complain, right? Right.
Overall, we met brilliant people and have great memories from Taiwan. Along with how much I actually enjoyed living in Taiwan, the teaching was an unexpected surprise. It took me a little while to get into it but I ended up really enjoying it.
I haven't spoken a whole lot about the actual job we did in Taiwan so I'll try to explain it a bit more now.
As far as I could see, everyone in Taiwan wants to learn English. The children told me it's compulsory in secondary school but I've heard conflicting reports whether it's actually compulsory or they all just take it.
The point is that everyone wants to learn English. Sometimes I wondered the reasons behind this. The benefits are pretty obvious in terms of job prospects and so on but I felt a bit of a keeping up with the Jones' element at work. It seemed like if one child on the street was sent to do extra classes then the others would soon follow. This opinion has no facts to back it up, just my own view of it.
This has all resulted in the phenomenon of 'cram schools'. These would translate as grinds schools for everyone at home. They're after school school, if you know what I mean. The kids go there a few times a week and do extra English classes after regular school hours have finished.
This meant that our work hours were from 2 p.m. - 9 p.m. each weekday alone with 9 a.m. - 12:30 p.m. on Saturdays, which caused it's own set of problems.
Some cram schools teach other subjects as well, usually Maths. But on the whole they specialize in English. This trend has meant that there's a cram school everywhere you look. This is usually a mix of local run schools and nation wide franchises. We worked for the latter.
The name of our franchise was Joy English School. This is kind of the 'cheap' school for lack of a better description. The way they keep it cheap is to only employ one native speaker per school and have the other classes taught by Chinese teachers.
(There is a marketing element to having a foreign teacher - a white face in the school means extra students. Sometimes I felt like I was on display.)
Joy school has a pretty bad rep amongst other foreigners in Taiwan and I think it's a bit unfair. People would usually scoff when we said we worked for Joy but we had a pretty good experience.
However, because we were the only foreign teachers in our respective schools we had to teach every child. For me, this meant I took one hour from another teacher's two hour class each week. I taught almost 250 kids per week. Our remit was to make English fun. How do you do that?
The answer is games upon games upon games. Hitting games, spelling games, running games, who's quickest games etc.... Teaching for a franchise like this means there is a pretty set curriculum and sometimes it felt like 'fast food English'. However, I got a bit more freedom than other places because I was the only foreign teacher. This meant I could get away with a bit more and do what I wanted myself sometimes.
Each school has it's own unique problems though. No one school is going to be the perfect working environment and Joy was no different. Starting out, I had serious problems bedding in to the job. The school had been without a foreign teacher for a long time and they didn't seem to know how to deal with me.
This was the same with the students. They were extremely nervous around me for the first while. So, it was a bit like the blind leading the bind at the start. Or more accurately, the nervous being led by the crapping himself.
This meant that I spent nearly two months settling in, which was an extremely tough period for me. Katie found it easier because she had taught before, obviously, but I didn't have a notion what I was doing. I think the Chinese staff were afraid to tell me if I was doing anything wrong in case I left, so they just let me get on with it.
Each school has it's own unique problems though. No one school is going to be the perfect working environment and Joy was no different. Starting out, I had serious problems bedding in to the job. The school had been without a foreign teacher for a long time and they didn't seem to know how to deal with me.
This was the same with the students. They were extremely nervous around me for the first while. So, it was a bit like the blind leading the bind at the start. Or more accurately, the nervous being led by the crapping himself.
This meant that I spent nearly two months settling in, which was an extremely tough period for me. Katie found it easier because she had taught before, obviously, but I didn't have a notion what I was doing. I think the Chinese staff were afraid to tell me if I was doing anything wrong in case I left, so they just let me get on with it.
I liked this after a while but it was infuriating at the beginning.
I knew the lessons weren't going great but no one was giving me feedback so I was getting really frustrated. This kind of led to a breakdown in communication with my co-workers. Well, it's hard to have a breakdown of communication when there was no real communication in the first place and sometimes we couldn't understand each other anyway.
If I'm honest a lot of this was probably down to me being a bit proud. I was too proud to ask questions in case they thought I was stupid or something. In essence I was afraid of what the Taiwanese are afraid of and it's something I constantly gave out about: losing face.
Pure and simple I didn't want to look like an idiot so I didn't ask any of the many questions I should have. Instead, I blundered along blindly for two months until I figured out what to do.
In this time I confused most of my classes with inconsistent discipline as a result of my lack of training. This meant that some classes were afraid to get involved, some were too eager to get involved and the rest thought I was a walkover.
Those first two months were, in many ways, hell. I dreaded going to work, I shuddered when I though of spending an hour with some classes and I stayed up too late because I knew sleep only brought work closer.
Outside of work I was having a great time getting to know a new culture and new people but work took up 6 days of my week!
This was not how I'd pictured my idyllic year off before I got down the 'serious' stuff back home. I was faced with way more challenges teaching English in Taiwan than I ever thought I'd come up against.
But it was bloody brilliant.
I learned so much about myself. I'd always prided myself on being very determined and having great perseverance. These traits were sorely tested by those first two months.
Katie gave me a huge amount of support and this really helped me to see it through. She helped me out with problems in lesson planning and class control. I don't know what I would have done if I was actually on my own.
Those first few months seem crazy to me now when I look back. Everything was so difficult for me. It took ages to plan a lesson or think of ideas, I took every piece of cheek from a kid personally and it destroyed my confidence if a class went badly.
As time wore on though, I really grew into the job. Once I realized that I was never going to be universally liked it became so much easier. Another realization was that most kids will respond to a bit of good natured banter. Once I got a bit of banter going with them I really started to build a rapport with the students.
When I realized these two things, the tide began to turn in my favour. Classes which had almost given me nightmares before started to actually become fun. There were classes I'd spent the first few months battling with in a stupid bid to assert my authority on them and not having any fun with. I'd basically been an arsehole to them from the start and (surprise, surprise) they didn't seem to enjoy my classes very much.
Friday used to be worst day. I hated it. I had three classes that always went bad and the other one was touch and go. I was always in bad form going in and this negativity obviously effected my teaching. Then one Friday I decided to be super positive. I wasn't really a conscious decision, more of a spur of the moment thing.
It worked a treat.
It was a simple change but it was the catalyst for a huge increase in job satisfaction for me. When the students saw me being positive, they relaxed and had more fun. When they had fun, I had more fun, then they had more fun etc…. until we all nearly exploded with happiness and laughter and fun.
Well, it wasn't quite that good but almost!
I still remember that Friday as a bit of a landmark for me. I took a huge amount of confidence from it and really started to improve as a teacher.
Confidence is such a funny thing. Once I had some of that, everything got easier. I was better and quicker at lesson planning, I dealt with discipline much better because the kids knew where I stood more and the lines of communication began to ope once more.
I'm not saying that either I or the job was perfect but at least I started to have more craic with it. And for those last few months I had loads of fun. Working with children is fun, rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. At least it's two-thirds positive though, eh?
As I mentioned above, I had 250 kids and it's hard to imagine getting to know all of them but I tried. I knew all of their names and had really started to form a bond with them at the end. By the time the new teacher came to replace me he thought it came really easy to me which was flattering to hear but it really wasn't true.
I think it makes for a better memory that it didn't though, don't you agree?
I'd like to think I was pretty good by the end and that the majority of the kids liked me. It would also be great to think I'd had an impact on my students lives like in the movies but teaching in Taiwan just isn't like that. It's a money game and it's hard to change a kid's life in 50 minutes once a week.
I have to say, and it sounds terrible cheesy, they actually have changed mine.
I knew the lessons weren't going great but no one was giving me feedback so I was getting really frustrated. This kind of led to a breakdown in communication with my co-workers. Well, it's hard to have a breakdown of communication when there was no real communication in the first place and sometimes we couldn't understand each other anyway.
If I'm honest a lot of this was probably down to me being a bit proud. I was too proud to ask questions in case they thought I was stupid or something. In essence I was afraid of what the Taiwanese are afraid of and it's something I constantly gave out about: losing face.
Pure and simple I didn't want to look like an idiot so I didn't ask any of the many questions I should have. Instead, I blundered along blindly for two months until I figured out what to do.
In this time I confused most of my classes with inconsistent discipline as a result of my lack of training. This meant that some classes were afraid to get involved, some were too eager to get involved and the rest thought I was a walkover.
Those first two months were, in many ways, hell. I dreaded going to work, I shuddered when I though of spending an hour with some classes and I stayed up too late because I knew sleep only brought work closer.
Outside of work I was having a great time getting to know a new culture and new people but work took up 6 days of my week!
This was not how I'd pictured my idyllic year off before I got down the 'serious' stuff back home. I was faced with way more challenges teaching English in Taiwan than I ever thought I'd come up against.
But it was bloody brilliant.
I learned so much about myself. I'd always prided myself on being very determined and having great perseverance. These traits were sorely tested by those first two months.
Katie gave me a huge amount of support and this really helped me to see it through. She helped me out with problems in lesson planning and class control. I don't know what I would have done if I was actually on my own.
Those first few months seem crazy to me now when I look back. Everything was so difficult for me. It took ages to plan a lesson or think of ideas, I took every piece of cheek from a kid personally and it destroyed my confidence if a class went badly.
As time wore on though, I really grew into the job. Once I realized that I was never going to be universally liked it became so much easier. Another realization was that most kids will respond to a bit of good natured banter. Once I got a bit of banter going with them I really started to build a rapport with the students.
When I realized these two things, the tide began to turn in my favour. Classes which had almost given me nightmares before started to actually become fun. There were classes I'd spent the first few months battling with in a stupid bid to assert my authority on them and not having any fun with. I'd basically been an arsehole to them from the start and (surprise, surprise) they didn't seem to enjoy my classes very much.
Friday used to be worst day. I hated it. I had three classes that always went bad and the other one was touch and go. I was always in bad form going in and this negativity obviously effected my teaching. Then one Friday I decided to be super positive. I wasn't really a conscious decision, more of a spur of the moment thing.
It worked a treat.
It was a simple change but it was the catalyst for a huge increase in job satisfaction for me. When the students saw me being positive, they relaxed and had more fun. When they had fun, I had more fun, then they had more fun etc…. until we all nearly exploded with happiness and laughter and fun.
Well, it wasn't quite that good but almost!
I still remember that Friday as a bit of a landmark for me. I took a huge amount of confidence from it and really started to improve as a teacher.
Confidence is such a funny thing. Once I had some of that, everything got easier. I was better and quicker at lesson planning, I dealt with discipline much better because the kids knew where I stood more and the lines of communication began to ope once more.
I'm not saying that either I or the job was perfect but at least I started to have more craic with it. And for those last few months I had loads of fun. Working with children is fun, rewarding and frustrating in equal measure. At least it's two-thirds positive though, eh?
As I mentioned above, I had 250 kids and it's hard to imagine getting to know all of them but I tried. I knew all of their names and had really started to form a bond with them at the end. By the time the new teacher came to replace me he thought it came really easy to me which was flattering to hear but it really wasn't true.
I think it makes for a better memory that it didn't though, don't you agree?
I'd like to think I was pretty good by the end and that the majority of the kids liked me. It would also be great to think I'd had an impact on my students lives like in the movies but teaching in Taiwan just isn't like that. It's a money game and it's hard to change a kid's life in 50 minutes once a week.
I have to say, and it sounds terrible cheesy, they actually have changed mine.
