Thursday, May 11, 2017

Saying Goodbye



















My time here flew by, when I started it seemed like an eternity until I would return home. Now that it is over, I know to not let the little moments slip by without recognizing just how special they are before they end.
Here are some pictures that were captured during my last week that I will have forever to remember my students by. Leaving here knowing I have touched the hearts of over 450 students is the coolest feeling ever. I will never forget all the things I have learned to better me as a future teacher from all of these students.












































I could have never dreamed of a better group to spend this time with. We created the strongest bonds throughout our time together. Meeting your best friends in college still holds true; but study abroad and you will form the best of relationships that will last a lifetime. No one else, but these three, will be able to truly share, understand, and appreciate the experiences we have encountered over the past few months, and that is pretty cool.





















Jack, our dearest and most incredible discovery in Taiwan, made it all more difficult to say goodbye. We can all say,that we had days that would have been unbearable without Jack and his ice cream to save the day. This man is the most generous and down the earth person that I have ever met. He went out of his way from day one to make us, four strangers, feel at home. Jesse Claire Ice Cream will be a huge memory when looking back on our time here.





A huge shout-out to Joyce, Peter, our teachers and everyone else who made our student teaching time here an incredible unforgettable time!


Goodbye Kaohsiung, Taiwan! Visiting you was the best decision I have ever made. I will never forget this chapter of my life, it will be something that I will always cherish and be thankful for! πŸ’™

Concluding Thoughts


Obtaining the opportunity to student teach abroad has brought me many experiences that will influence me as a person and future teacher in the 21st century. The entire placement in Taiwan was going to bring me into a completely different world; I had no idea what all I was going to get the opportunity to experience. I have felt myself make great accomplishments personally; completing this placement has really made me grow as a person. Being thrown into a totally different environment causes you to solve problems, go with the flow, mentally grow, communicate often, become more independent, and be okay with making mistakes. I felt a survival instinct almost kick in, making it less difficult to adjust to the potential culture shock.  These are all attributes that I have practiced using throughout this experience and have watched grow within myself; making them the real souvenir I am bringing home. At the beginning of my seventh week here in Taiwan some events unfolded back home that turned my entire current and future life upside down. It alone was probably the hardest thing I have ever had to deal with, and here I was student teaching halfway around the world. I had a few really rough days, I will not lie, but once gaining a positive perspective on the situation and reaching out to my friends, I was able to eventually start the process of growing from it. Through everything over the course of this trip, good and bad; I now feel I have the training, mental capacity, and strength to overcome almost any obstacle that I will face in my future, it is a very satisfying and empowering feeling. Something else I was able to conceptualize during my experience, was being the odd one out. I got to feel what it was like to be the one that was experiencing the lash back of the language and cultural barrier. I was the new one, the different one, the one that everyone looked at and I could not understand a word people were saying or a thing people were doing. Although I was the one that everyone was admiring, I still felt singled out; this feeling is something I will be able to connect to, in order to empathize with students that might be in the same boat in my future classrooms.


Along with giving me perspective through the lens of a student, I have had many growing opportunities from the teacher perspective. I am only teaching English classes, at first, it made me concerned that I would quickly lose my sharpness to teach in other subjects like math, science, and reading. However, I soon realized that I might be teaching only English classes, but I am still utilizing various teaching strategies. Not only am I getting to practice various strategies, I am learning completely new ones that are not so common in our culture that is used more here. Another benefit to the teaching set-up here is that I get exposure to many grade levels at one time. I can compare and contrast different strategies and how they work in each of the grades. A final aspect that I have taken away from this experience in regards to my teaching career is making changes to my lesson plans and being able to re-implement them. Since teaching in an English classroom, I only see my first and second graders once a week and my sixth graders twice a week; it is similar to our students in the States only going to PE, art, or music once a week. That being said, I only plan about four lessons a week, teaching them all week long. I had no experience with this type of schedule prior to this and I was unsure how I would feel about it. Teaching the same thing over all week you think would get repetitive, but it all depends on the way you look at it; I started taking advantage of the opportunity to alter my lessons after teaching it once to make it more engaging and more effective for the next class. I was seeing a huge difference between the first and last time a lesson was taught, they looked completely different! After practicing this for a while, I was able to make the drastic alterations to my first lesson of the week rather than my second or third because I was familiar with the classes and strategies that did or did not work. This skill that I have practiced a lot here and one will be extremely beneficial to my future teaching practices. Each of these skills and attributes is ones that I have gained from my experiences teaching abroad, they are the main contributing factors that will shape me as a person and future educator in the 21st century.

After spending eight weeks living and teaching in a Taiwanese classroom and environment, I have found myself understanding the culture so much better. My new knowledge and experience of the culture has instilled a bit of confidence in my ability to relay that knowledge to others. This is a great opportunity not only for me but for my future students, I will be able to take this information and use it to incorporate global experiences within my classroom instruction. It was inspiring to be able to teach my students here about America, and it was easy for me because I have experienced it for my entire life. It is exciting to know that I will be able to have that same thrill teaching my students about the Asian culture; I can feel confident doing so after my extended experience living and teaching in it. On a simpler level, I at least hope to show my students my excitement for another culture or country; hoping that it rubs off on them and motivates them to involve themselves into any other country or culture. A very different way I will be able to incorporate global experiences into my future classroom is experimenting with implementing various teaching strategies that are not common to the US teaching culture. I have learned a few management and instructional strategies that are not as commonly used, it would so neat to be able to explain to my students that they might not be used to this method and tell them where I learned it from and where it is used. An example of this would most commonly come in the form of certain games to instill memory of various information. These are a few of many ways that I will be able to bring from my student teaching abroad to incorporate global experiences into my classroom.

My experiences from teaching internationally go even further than just influencing me as a teacher or person, and even further than allowing me to bring global experiences into my classroom; it has gone to the extent of simply assisting me in overall future encounters I will endure. Communication was a huge component of my time in Taiwan, you were personally responsible for your communication with teachers, students, co-workers, principals, directors, coordinators, and supervisors; even with store vendors, and people we encountered outside of school. Communicating became something that was not as natural, you had to go out of your way to find someone who could help you communicate with some, you occasionally had to express yourself in multiple ways using various gestures. It took patients to communicate at any level here, especially when misunderstandings occur; which occurred often with the language barrier. Being able to have practice trying to communicate with speakers of not my own native language is a beneficial skill to have; I will have an understanding of students that may come into my classroom not being able to speak our native language right away. Another future encounter as an educator I have had the experience dealing with is involvement in school activities. I was able to see how hard work and involvement can pay off and directly affect the students and parents of the school, specifically through our Sports Day. I have seen another overall advantage come about from this experience, and it has been being able to work with multiple grade levels in a wide range, all at once. I was able to then get a good feel for what ages I enjoy working with more but was also able to allow myself to open up to the ages I was not so fond of at the beginning of this experience.

This experience has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for me. Upon completion, I gained so much through all of the adventures, personally and professionally. I could not have gained this type of growth with any other student teaching placement. The things I have learned I will take home with me and be able to use in the future. The encounters I made and relationships I built, will forever reflect on this trip. I am thankful for the opportunity I received, and will always cherish it as I take my next steps.

Here is to finding myself and personal happiness while student teaching abroad and getting the experience of a lifetime while doing it! I am truly coming home a whole new person, in the most positive way possible.

My Taiwanese Birthday!

Spending my Birthday in Taiwan was the only thing I needed to celebrate, that in itself was enough, it would be the coolest birthday memory yet! However, we had to celebrate the last day of school... so mine as well celebrate the birthday along side of it too😎

My lovely friends were awesome enough to sacrifice some sleep, and got up early to all go out for breakfast in the morning before school. There was no reason not to though, we had more to celebrate than a birthday, we were ten hours away from being done with student teaching; closing another chapter in our books.

At school, it was just another normal day until lunch rolled around. I was surprised by a few of my sixth grade students with a few gifts and cards that all of my first, second, and sixth grade students had made for my last day and birthday! We got to play the pie in face game and the teachers stuck around afterward and sang happy birthday to me (in English and Chinese) and presented me with a traditional Chinese cake wishing and cutting ceremony!























After school; Ashley, Zoey, and I went to get dinner just at the night market around our apartment and then off to Jack's of course to get ice cream! No better way to start the celebration than with the est ice cream in the whole world.
We came back to the apartments to get ready, we had big plans to explore a different side of the city we had yet to see. We met up with some of the teachers and coordinators and a new rooftop bar/lounge that just recently opened called Indigo. It had a crazy cool view of the city lights at night. It was nice to be in a friendly environment with the people we had gotten so close with over the past few months.






















We hung out with the crew for a couple hours, then the four of us teachers adventured the more college atmosphere of the city by going to a disco club literally called "Lamp"! The three of us girls got in for free with a student ID card and had unlimited free drinks inside, poor Ky could not get in on this deal! haha Never the less, we met some super nice ladies there that we all wish we would have met sooner in our trip to show us around the town become closer with. The disco atmosphere was no let down, it held up to our high expectations! We ended up going home around 1:30 am, but it was acceptable for one last college hoorah! Plus, the next day (Saturday, we only had plans to go to the beach one last time) πŸ˜„



Friday, April 28, 2017

Bringing the Schmidts' and Webers' to Taiwan

A few weeks ago I got this crazy idea in order to show my sixth grades students what life is like for a student living in the USA. Coincidentally, I happen to know two sixth graders that live and go to school in the US. I thought about how cool it would be to involve my cousins, Garrett and Gwyneth, into one of my lessons. Of course, I contacted their parents as soon as I had a some what solid plan, to see if they would be interested. Not to disappoint, they were both very excited to participate!

Each of them created a short five minute video showing what they do on a normal school day. Including what they do to get ready for school, how they get to school, what their school day looks like, how long they are there, and what they enjoy to do after school. This is such a fun experience for my sixth graders here in Taiwan because the student life is so much different from their own. Garrett and Gwyneth put in so much work in order to create top of the line videos, I was looking forward to this day for weeks, and it was finally here!

My sixth grade classes absolutely loved them!! This is such an authentic way of learning, that they will hopefully remember for a very long time. Not all students comprehension level is as high as others, but they were still able to watch and enjoy the pictures while picking up on a few words. After watching the videos and discussing them with the students, I explained how we were going to write thank you notes to Garrett and Gwyneth. With a few prompts, the students were able to write thank you notes to the two telling them what their favorite thing about their day was, what they wished they could do in the US, and more.

I was so excited about this lesson because it stimulated multiple modes of how they are learning English; through watching, listening, comprehension, reading, and even writing. Overall, this lesson was so rich in content, engaging, and super successful. I was so happy that students were interested in watching the videos, and ended up learning quite a bit form them. It is cool to think about students being able to teach other students, very inspiring. Inspiring enough that most of my sixth grade classes want to make videos to send back to Gwyneth, Siena, and Garrett. Most of them put their best work in writing the thank-yous and it was really evident; each student brought contributed weather it was writing, drawing, or directing; they worked together to create something that had little structure for them to fall back on and I am very proud of them.

Below are the two videos that Gwyneth and Siena, and Garrett made. I also included short videos of the students reacting to various parts of the videos and some pictures of them working on their thank you cards!





































Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Supervisor weekend

Saturday
We had a full day on Saturday (4/22). We woke up early and headed to Lambai Island. We took the MRT to then take a bus to get to the fairy, and took a fairy to the island. Here we were supposed to have a snorkeling outing, but a storm had just passed over the island, so the waves were too high to do any snorkeling. Instead we rented scooters and decided to explore the island. We had to rent 8 scooters, there were sixteen of us on our adventures today. It sounds chaotic with so many people, and not really a plan of action anymore, but the whole day went smoothly and everyone was very go with the flow. The first thing we did was grab a bunch of lunch items and snacks from the store and then brought them to the beach where we had a picnic and did some swimming. We had scooters for the entire afternoon and it was great, it is one of our favorite things to here! We made it around to various monumental sports around the island, and even grabbed some snow ice! When we made it back to Kaohsiung, we went to the most famous night market to get some dinner! As we headed back home, it started pouring on us, our ponchos that Joyce gave us came in handy on our walk home! We had a great day, and ready for a good sleep!











Sunday
A more relaxing day (4/23), but still very busy! We left our apartment at 10 am and drove to Tainan again to visit the Guanziling mud hot springs! There is a park near by that has a natural gas production near a small area of water where the fire naturally burns and meets the water. We spent most of the afternoon relaxing in the hot springs, covering our selves in mud, and getting out feet nibbled on my tiny fish. After we cleaned and finished up, we had worked up quite the appetite. We went to a famous chicken restaurant near the hot spring and got served the freshest chicken I think that anyone has ever had. We were warned that it was cooked with its head, feet, and all! I was a bit nervous to have my food be looking at me; but people here actually enjoy to eat that part of the chicken. Lucky, Joyce ordered one without those parts so we did not have to get starred down by our food. It was the most delicious chicken that I have ever eaten. When we got back to Kaohsiung, we went to the Mega mall to do a little shopping and get some ice cream, our favorite thing to do! We went home to rest and get ready for our last week in the classroom, a crazy thought that I do not think any of us have fully realized yet.






Chicken dinner


Rural Day

We spent Friday (4/21) morning teaching at a local rural school, about thirty minutes outside of Kaohsiung. We read aloud a story to a group of fourth graders and sang a song with them. Some of the students put on an amazing performance for us that I have a small video of below. After our large group time with students we went down the the courtyard area and split up to set up our own stations. Each of us teachers had planned a fifteen minute lesson around Mother's Day to teach to four groups of fifth and sixth graders. My station was making a Mother's Day card for students to be able to give to their moms or grandmas by drawing a flower and writing a few English sentences. It was fun to be in a new environment and working with new students all over again.




















Friday Afternoon:
We took a trip on a bus to Tainan again as a big group. The road trip went fast because we were singing KTV (karaoke) the whole way there, it was great! After we grabbed a bite to eat, at a traditional Chinese style restaurant, we went to 'Chikan Tower' which served as a Dutch castle, Chinese pagoda, and Japanese army hospital under different Taiwanese reign a long time ago. I love visiting all of the historic places with the locals because they are so knowledgeable about them and are able to rely information onto us very easy, making it fun to learn in good company. After this we checked out the famous department store in Tainan that was the very first one ever in Taiwan. It was a special feeling to be able to walk through all of the floors with unique shopping areas within it. The last stop was Confucius temple, which served as the first school in Taiwan years ago when going to school was not available to every student, and was a special opportunity. People go here to make a wish on the wall before the big teacher exam or for luck finding a job. Naturally, with graduation upon us, we had to make a wish in hopes to soon find the perfect job for all of us. It was time to head home on the bus and get cleaned up for dinner!















































Friday Evening Host Dinner:
With our professor being in town, it is tradition to have an ISU host dinner that we invite our teachers, principals, directors and the bureau to. It is a way for us Iowa States students and Iowa State in general to thank everyone who has made this experience possible. We went to a pasta/Italian restaurant called Pasadena in Kaohsiung. It was great to be in company of all of the influential people in our lives here and to thank them for everything they have done for us. The only picture I have from this event right now is my meal, hopefully I will have more soon! haha