Mosquitoes

I currently have a mosquito bite on my knuckle. My knuckle. There is nothing like the buzzing of a mosquito in your ear to shock you out of a deep sleep. There is always at least one mosquito buzzing around our room in the night and while they usually bother Rick (who has about 10 mosquito bites), they are still very annoying. From what I'm told, mosquitoes are one of the only bugs that frequent Taiwan. I'm told that no one has ever seen a bee in Taiwan so I will have to wait to find out if that one is true come summer time.

Rick and I have both been given our first regular classes! We both start on Thursday. Rick was actually given two regular classes. I believe that we were given these classes because a teacher who had been living in the dorms just picked up and left without giving any notice, so it worked out well for us! Not so much for our employer who I assume had to scramble to fill the spot. Regardless, we're excited.

Today we have a mini-workshop for yellow book. It is kind of funny how they do things here. We're thrown into subbing classes (I've already subbed two yellow book classes) but I was never actually trained on HOW to teach yellow book. I observed yellow book, but no one explained it to me. You'd think the mini workshops would be first and then training but I digress. My yellow book sub classes went well and now I will actually learn to teach them so they can only go better.

- Melissa

Substitute Teaching

We have officially been in Taiwan for over two weeks and we are almost finished the observation part of our training. We had to sit in on multiple classes and we were supposed to trial teach for the last ten minutes each time. While I usually got away with not trial teaching, Rickie was forced to do so every time. But somewhere in the middle, we have been given sub classes. When another teacher is sick or on vacation, they send you a schedule (usually the day before) that you will be subbing one of their classes. You get a detailed schedule that states which textbook and what pages they are on and you plan their lesson. Usually, you get there and this all changes and you just have to wing it.

For my first sub class, I was nervous as all hell because all I could think about was the way that I, when I was young, used to treat substitute teachers. Having a substitute teacher in Canada was like having a free day where you barely had to do any work and you could sit with anyone you wanted to. This is not the case in Taiwan. The Taiwanese co-teacher is there with you so the students still can't just play around. Having a good co-teacher can really change the class dynamics. I have been lucky with every one of my subs to have an amazing co-teacher but I have heard horror stories of co-teachers undermining the foreign teacher or speaking Chinese all throughout the class to the students. (Which is counter productive when we're trying to provide an all-English environment.)

Anyway the point of this blog was to talk about my sub class that I had yesterday. They were AMAZING. They were a Smartchoice 3 class so they were pretty advanced and I could actually have a conversation with them. I wish they were one of my regular classes and they all seemed to like me a lot as well. But in other news, I have a regular class now! Thursdays from 7-9 I will be teaching a Red Book Class which means they are younger, probably around 8-10. I am so excited!!!! But before that I still have a sub tonight and one tomorrow. Rick hasn't been given a regular class yet which he is happy about because he really doesn't want to work haha he just wants to hang out in Taiwan.

Heading off to a mini workshop now then off to the hospital for a measles shot. Excuse me while I cry.

- Melissa