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| Placing the star on the Christmas Tree. |
It was a good week around work and the time really flew by, even though I haven't ad a typical work week in a few weeks now. I seem to have taken on the role of Monday cover teacher around the franchise, and after tomorrow will have visited 4 of the 5 schools on consecutive Mondays. Being a cover teacher can be really fun because the students generally love your games and are more enthusiastic during your lesson because they like the new experience, but I would always prefer teaching my own classes rather than someone else's. Mainly this is because there is a comfort level with your own school and your own classes. Every time I cover another school I worry that my timing will be wrong, or I will miss a section of the lesson plan that exists in one school but not the other, and everything takes twice as long to plan. When you teach your own classes, before you even open the book you know what will work and what won't and you know which students to watch out for and which ones will lead the discussion, cover teachers don't have this luxury. Thankfully, over a year of experience has helped me cope with all of this, but it is still a thought that goes through my mind every time I am sent to another school.
This week also held the dreaded work meeting. Why ‘dreaded’? I don’t know, really it was a
wonderful meeting, and it was very nice to discuss issues from each of the
schools in a forum where we could actually consider the possible solutions for
them. I’d say the main reason why people
were so opposed to the idea of a work meeting were that this is the first job
most of us have had which holds unpaid work meetings (and the idea of donating
any more of our time to the company is unappealing) and the fear of the unknown
in terms of structuring (whether we would be allowed to discuss the topics that
really affect us). Luckily, the way it
worked out is that we were allowed to assign our own agenda and fuel it with
our on problems and ideas, which led to some lively discussions on a lot of
topics, and while not all of the advice shared might have been brilliant, it
was nice to remember how many different ways there are to go about conducting
your classes.
My culture note expands to the world this week, though it
mainly involves the reactions of Taiwanese Children. As I’m sure you are aware, among the many
people that undoubtedly died this week, two names are being widely discussed:
Nelson Mandela and Paul Walker. Of the
two, Nelson Mandela is the more influential, but amongst my students he is
often unheard of. This is likely due to
the age difference, and potentially due to the difference in topics discussed
in world history in school, but what surprised me was not that my student’s
hadn’t heard of Mandela, but that they had heard of Paul Walker (a man I didn’t
know of by name (in fact, I originally thought of Scott Walker and was exceptionally)). Why do my students all know who he is but most
American students couldn’t even name a Chinese actor (let alone tell me if
he/she died)? It’s because movies are a major export of the United States, and
I think that is something we simultaneously assume and forget. I’m sure you expect everyone to have seen the
classics, whether that be The Godfather, or James Bond, or Star Wars, and so
on, and you’d be right, these and many more have made it around the world, so
it must follow that the new ones are even more widely circulated, but if you
knew that most of these movies weren’t translated when they were sent over seas
would you still assume they were widely viewed? I can't imagine most English speakers would sit through 2 hours of a subtitles every time they wanted to see a new movie, but in Taiwan, that doesn’t seem to be a problem (I can’t speak for the whole
world). Think about that the next time you go to the theaters.
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