Well friends, it’s been a while
since my last entry. I keep meaning to write, and I have lots of good things I
want to put down. But you know how it is…if you don’t do it when you have the
idea, it doesn’t get done. Except for the rare occasions when it DOES get done.
But that’s only when we are on our best behavior.
I wanted to write a blog entry for
my one year anniversary in Taiwan. Yes, that’s right. I am on year TWO in
Taiwan. Far away across the big black sea. That country which all those strange
toys at the “Q” Mart come from. That land of chopsticks, that country, right?
It’s OK, I didn’t even know where it was before I came here.
So happy anniversary to me. I arrived here last year on September 9th.
Last Sunday was the Mid-Autumn Festival:中秋節
(Jong Cho Chie). That marks my second here in this country. The lunar calender
is really something. Literally, exactly on the day of the Mid Autumn Festival,
the temperature dropped. Significantly. Autumn is truly here. Although no
leaves will fall to the ground in this place that on the worst of days is wet
and cold or unbearably humid and hot and on the best of days…well, like
anywhere else on the best of days but with more intense sunlight.
They say the excitement fades and
your life abroad becomes normal after a while. Not for me. At lest several
times a week, I remind myself, or am reminded just how cool it is that I am
living in a foreign country. I find myself walking into Chinese buffets and
having conversations in Chinese. We’re
not talking about world politics, but you get the drift. And I don’t care how
bad my Chinese is or how little I know. That’s not the point. The point is that
never in my life did I EVER once think that I would speak ANY Chinese EVER. Yet
here I am and I am immensely proud of the 100 or so words that I pronounce,
albeit probably incorrectly. I can even read like 40 or so characters now. That
only leaves about 2,960 that I don’t know. But on rare occasion, there is a
whole sign I can read or pick out parts of. And sometimes I can infer the
meaning from the other characters in context. So that’s pretty cool.
There are days when I really
realize how different this place is. Like I just was standing in my loft today
and looking at my stuff and just thinking, wow…I am REALLY out of place here.
Because I brought my American mentality with me. I mean my room now is familiar
like my room at home. So I feel familiar here. And locals get a dose of me
daily. The truth is, Taiwanese people are just A LOT different than Americans.
Not in a bad way. But it’s something I must remember frequently.
This difference, however, affords
with it a sort of exotic air. We have here what is sometimes called “foreigners
charm”. People like to practice their English and just think we're generally cool and exotic. So that has lots of perks. However, people kind of stare at us blankly when we talk to them (or just in general) which can get annoying. Of course, it is difficult for
them to understand us because of the language rift. But part of it is the way
they are educated. For example, many Taiwanese people can write English very
well, but they can’t speak it much at all. They are petrified of failure. They
are taught traditionally in a very teacher-centered way where you get lectured
to and you regurgitate the information on a test. This is so cliché as an
example for the difference between Asia and America, but it has turned out to
be much more true than I ever could have imagined.
Taiwanese education decidedly lacks
any training in critical analysis or creative, “outside the box” thinking.
However, their copying skills are phenomenal. They are visual arts whizzes. I
gave worksheets out to a first grade class. The following week they were
instructed to finish them. Of course a few kids lost them and I forgot to bring
more. Well I told a kid to copy it from his neighbor. He begins to copy the
tiny bubble letters exactly as written. It was astoundingly accurate. Remember,
he is 7 years old. This is the age during which if a child writes his/her name
in red crayon the paper will look like a murder scene. OK, that’s an
exaggeration. But listen, when they colored the paper in, 90% of them colored exactly in the lines. I mean these
things were beautiful. Anyway, I was
impressed.
As further evidence of my assertion
that Taiwanese education is teacher centered, I proffer this example: One of my
colleagues teaches a high school class. He wants them to think outside the box
and to answer questions in class. He is always in the kids’ faces asking “why am
I asking you to answer this question?” or “what’s the point of this exercise?”.
You know, “big picture” questions. Anyway, the kids always just stone-face him.
I guess that’s not really a-typical for high-school kids, but here’s the
kicker. The teacher asks “come on, don’t any of your teachers ask you why
you’re learning this stuff!?”. A kid finally speaks up and says rather
aggressively “No! They don’t! Sometimes they lecture on topics for 3 days (without any interacton).” Three
separate classes on the same topic with no variance in teaching style. There
you have it.
I can vouch for the ability of
Chinese (Taiwanese) authority figures to talk and talk. I attended a
professional development (PD) ceremony for teachers. It was all in Chinese. The
principal talked at us for literally
two and a half hours without pause while flipping power-point slides about some
teaching strategy. Then we had to make up some strategies in the group.
Everyone of my Taiwanese colleagues were desperately flipping through the
literature to find the “correct answer”. The trouble is, this was a
brainstorming activity. They were stumped. I said, “here, just give it to me”.
Because I knew this “new strategy” was really nothing new but yet another
theory from on high that 1) has already been said before in a different way,
and 2) has very little real world application. Which would make it no different
from any other of my PD sessions in at any school I’ve ever worked at.
Then we had a break. Then we had to
listen for another 2 hours straight.
Luckily, I brought my trusty macbook with a downloaded version of Elie Wiesel’s Night. I finished more than half of the entire book at the PD and finished the rest later that night. A harrowing read. A harrowing PD session.
Luckily, I brought my trusty macbook with a downloaded version of Elie Wiesel’s Night. I finished more than half of the entire book at the PD and finished the rest later that night. A harrowing read. A harrowing PD session.
And now is the time that I will bid
you goodnight as this blog entry has also become harrowingly long.
