Being a teacher sort of makes you feel bad for the teachers
that you had years ago, because you start to realize your own youthful
behaviors. For instance, I spent the
week thinking, ‘my students are out of control, are struggling to focus, are
acting out in unusual ways, what could be wrong?’, but the answer was obvious,
this was the week before Winter Break.
The kids can see the light at the end of the tunnel, they are on the
brink of a two-week vacation and the last thing they want to do is learn English. I can’t pretend I was different when I was a
kid, however, those last few weeks before summer or winter vacation were always
a struggle on my attention span. To help
keep their attention I’ve tried to add a few more memorable aspects to my
classes through art projects (everybody loves collages, right?), field trips
(to the front stoop of the school), and some temporary shoe thievery (in an
attempt to teach possessive pronouns to my youngest class stole a shoe from
each of my students and they had to identify the shoes using the target
language of “It’s my shoe” or “It’s his/her shoe”). It may not have been as fun as a day at home
with friends and video games, but I’m sure my lessons beat reading text books
or taking exams.
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| Hard at work making a tree collage in our weekly science lesson. |
One of the ‘selling points’ for a lot of people when they
consider moving to Taiwan is the friendliness and hospitality of the residents,
but what does that mean. Do you move to
a country because people smile at you?
Do people need to give you things for you to see their kindness? Don’t live in a naïve bubble when you travel
or you will be taken advantage of, but don’t shy away from kindness either. This morning I was disappointed to discover
that my scooter tire was flat, so I pushed it around the corner to the nearest
scooter repair shop, and as I was walking I passed an older Taiwanese couple
out on a walk. For whatever reason the
shop was closed this evening, so I turned around and made my way to a main road,
where I crossed paths with that same couple.
The man, seeing my struggle directed me forward and began pushing the
back of the bike to lighten the load.
Within two minutes he told me to stop, and I looked around confused, not
seeing the scooter shop he must be taking me to, only to see him open the door
to his own apartment, pull out a tire pump and inflate re-inflate my tire for
me. If that wasn’t enough of a favor,
he then brought out his squirt bottle and inspected the tire for cracks (a
technique the repair shops seem to rely on here) before fetching his children
to translate that the tire was not broken, it just had no air. I
wasn’t asking for help, this family had no obligation to me, but they saw
someone in need, so they helped. Wouldn’t
it be nice if everyone thought that way?
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