Reflection

Jason Lyou

My name is Jason, I was accepted into OCAC’s 2007 AID Volunteer Program to travel to Taiwan to tutor students in the English language.  I was assigned to Daling Elementary School of Taichong along with four others.  I volunteered to teach class B out of class A to E where A is the most advanced and E is the least.  Now, teaching is over after two weeks in school.

            When I devised my original thoughts of my students and my teaching plan for them, I underestimated the amount of English my students were capable of displaying.  They are very familiar with the most basic of English vocabulary along with the alphabet; such as, colors, animals, and numbers.  My initial teaching plan involved teaching these subjects, making class a rather unsatisfying and boring experience for my students and myself. Afterwards, I attempted to touch on new frontiers with more difficult subjects such as family members, months, seasons, and even grammar.  However, they proved too difficult. On some days, teaching is too easy and the children become restless; on the next, they are helpless to remember new vocabulary.

            Learning new things make the students and teacher feel uncomfortable because the students can’t take in the material and the teacher feels they didn’t deliver it well enough.  Small children can be difficult to predict and are even harder to control.  Sometimes, some teaching tactics I will find to be ineffective but enjoyable for the students and vice-versa.  I discover that in an elementary classroom environment, there must be an ample amount of variety so as to not bore the students and increase their desire to learn.  However, if students constantly play games, they may not learn as effectively as perhaps writing it down.  On the other hand, everyday class work will make children restless and lose patience.

            This experience in teaching children has taught me that to acquire the most effectiveness, there must be a balance; too much of an extreme calls for bad results.  Though teaching may not have been the most successful that it could have been, I have learned much for the next time I do teach.  Hopefully, next year I will be able to exercise my newfound experience and skill.