Reflection

Winny Chao

This experience is one that I will not forget, yes that sounds extremely cliché but it is true.  Not only did I step outside my comfort zone and leave the continent of North America, but I went into living environments I never thought I would be able to handle.

              I taught at WuFong Junior High School in Hsinh Zhu County (of course, that could be spelled incredibly wrong).  The first day we arrived, the students were not there but we made friends with the kids participating in the archery camp at the school.  It was quite an interesting experience having to deal with the flying cockroaches, and mass amounts of mosquitoes and the misc. other bugs that felt the need to inhabit our room, the school and the outside.  The heat was what seemed utterly unbearable but we managed.  I didn’t sleep for the first two or three nights due to the broken fan in our room only hitting one of the beds in our dorm room.  Other than those things previously listed, the bathroom wasn’t too bad, it was my first time using the shower floor as the floor to the rest of the bathroom – but really, no complaints there.

               Teaching the students was quite the experience because they were (as the program would call them) “disadvantaged.”  They come from families and parts of Taiwan that are not as rich as say, Taipei.  They weren’t eager to learn at first, and of course, they’re kids so they wanted to stay with their friends and they were full of energy.  For me, it was a little hard to teach them due to my very awful ability to speak Chinese.  But it worked out in the end.  I don’t know how much I taught my students because they knew more coming into this program that I thought they did.  At first I was under the impression that they knew their ABCs and that was it, but instead they could read, they could write and they could handle basic phonics.  At first my partner and I tried to plan out lesson plans for them, but they completed them in first one or two periods and then we would have to wing it the rest of the time.  It really became dependent on what the kids wanted to learn, because if you taught them something else, they were not interested and you could always tell.

               Besides the teaching experience, it was more of a growing experience.  I saw kids as young as 12 doing things that Americans at the age of 17 start to do.  But at the same time, I saw kids as young as 12 doing things that Americans at the age of 21 still have yet to learn how to do.  These kids are more mature than you can imagine, and they’re lives are a lot harder than you can imagine.  I was touched by one of my students when I saw her ability to be such a mother like figure to many of the students staying in our dorm.  I don’t quite know what to say about this experience actually. 

               All I can really say is that I learned a lot.  The training didn’t help me at all, but the friends I made during the time I complained and the friends I made during the time I was at WuFong are some that I am still missing.  I’ve never spent 24/7 (literally) for four weeks with anyone until this program and I loved every minute of it.  Yes we had our differences but we all got over it.  I feel blessed to have been with those five others in my school and if I didn’t have them, then I don’t know how I would have liked this experience.  This is cliché, but how can it not be?  I hated the heat, the bugs, the cockroaches.  I got frustrated when the kids wouldn’t pay attention or wouldn’t participate, but I was touched when the students sang a song for us.  I was on the verge of tears when a student gave me her favorite stuffed animal as a going away present.  This experience is what you make it, and I had a blast (for the most part).