Reflection

Robert Chen

I attended the AID program not knowing what to expect, other than a general idea of the timeline.  Now that I’m back in Canada, a part of me wishes that I’m still in Taiwan, despite the heat, humidity, and bugs.  In the past, my only teaching experience was a few one-on-one tutoring sessions.  Because being a tutor exhausted me of all my patience, I thought to myself that I would never do teaching because it’s too stressful.  But when I entered university, one of my professors put in so much effort and passion into teaching that I was moved and decided to try teaching again.  I’m so glad that the AID program was well worth the time and airfare.

 The biggest piece of teaching advice that helped me throughout the program (even before I left for Taiwan) is whenever you’re “stuck” on ideas to teach, always think back to when you were learning a foreign language either in regular school or Chinese school on Saturdays.  I took French class from Grade 3 to Grade 10, which allows me to draw ideas suitable for any education level.  If I’m teaching elementary kids, I’d take ideas from Grade 3-6 French.  If I’m teaching middle school kids, I’d take ideas from Grade 6-9 French.  And if my middle school kids were especially smart (which, unfortunately, they were), I’d take ideas from Grade 9 and 10 French.

 The reason why I wrote that it was unfortunate that my students were smart is that it made teaching really difficult.  When I was designing lesson plans for the next day, I constantly worry whether my students have already learned what I’m planning to teach (ie. they’ll get bored) or whether what I’m planning to teach is too hard (ie. they’ll give up).  I decided that it would be better to plan “too hard” material; if it was indeed too hard, I can always simplify things on the spot.

There are two important concepts in teaching that I subconsciously decided on.  The first is teaching style.  Because I chose the oldest group (eleven Grade 8 students and one Grade 9 student), I could teach lecture-style.  However, for most people, this isn’t a suitable way of teaching.

 The second concept is to develop a way to control the class, not as in getting them to calm down, but a way to intimidate them and make them do what you want.  Case in point: I was informed that officials from the Ministry of Education would visit our school in the afternoon of August 1.  Of course, in order to not lose face to the MOE officials, I needed my students to be on their absolute best behaviour.  One way to ensure their compliance is to bribe them with candy; however, my students didn’t like my maple syrup candy.  What is a teacher to do? 

The other class, from the beginning, decided that everyday they would have a test in the first period.  So they told their students that if they didn’t lose face in front of the MOE officials, their reward is that they won’t have a test the next morning.  I went the opposite route, with negative reinforcement.  I was searching for harder teaching methods, since my students were too smart.  I tried out a dictation exercise, where I read a paragraph of 10 sentences with each sentence being around 4 to 10 words.  My students completely hated it – I completely loved it, because this is something I can use to control my students.  So I told my students that if they made me lose face in front of the MOE officials, their “reward” for the whole week is a dictation every day. 

Now don’t get me wrong, my students aren’t poorly behaved or anything.  In fact, the only problem I have is that they have too short an attention span (they’re 14 after all).  A bit of me feels guilty that I didn’t do enough to stimulate my students – it’s like us sitting in a math class teaching the multiplication tables, you’d be bored too.  In retrospect, not only should I have made my lessons more difficult, I also should have scheduled the first day with more activities to better estimate my students’ abilities.