Jon and Jen’s Travels

Well, both Jon and I are now teaching little Taiwanese kids English. We are both teaching at “cram schools” which are schools that kids go to here after their regular school. The kids here in Taiwan do so much school it’s absolutely ridiculous. They are literally in some type of class for 10-12 hours a day. So we get to teach them when they really should be playing, running around, or filling their brains with video games, which means that sometimes the kids can be a little crazy. The one thing we never really thought much about when we were getting into the teaching thing was discipline.

We kind of assumed that Asian kids would be little angels who are rigidly trained to do as they are told, sit quiet and be the best students ever. Well, not the case. Because really, Asian kids are just like all other kids. They’re very energetic, they speak exactly what they are thinking, they cry and they let snot hang out of their noses. So after our first few days of teaching, Jon and I quickly realized that we would have to figure out some effective classroom management techniques fast, otherwise the kids would be reeling out of our control, and teaching English would become utter chaos… Ha, ha, I bet all you parents and teachers reading this have a nice picture in your mind.

But really, Jon and I are having a ton of fun teaching! We’ve learned pretty quickly what works in class and what doesn’t, and surprisingly we’ve found that the actual English teaching comes pretty naturally to us. We thought that it could be hard communicating with the kids, but in actuality they’re very quick to pick things up and understand what you are saying. The classes that I teach have about 8 students in each and the kids range between 8 and 10 years old. Some of Jon’s classes are a bit bigger than mine, but he’s got a pretty awesome deal at his school, he gets to teach not only regular English class, but computer, art and physed! Ultimately, the best part is the kids. You get super attached to them (most of them) really fast, and they’re friggin’ hilarious. They literally crack me up every day! The questions and comments are awesome: “Teacher, why do you always wear the same pants?” or “Teacher, why is your hair yellow?” or “Nooo… not grammar. It is very bad!” or “Teacher, you have a big bum. It is very fat” (yes, I got that one).

So far it has been a very rewarding experience. And even though we’re the teachers, we seem to be learning a whole lot.