With Taiwan TEFLing time running out, Laura Carr continues with her efforts to work out her future, teach her young students and care for Charlie (the cat). (17/5/06) Well, it’s been another busy couple of weeks. First of all, I had to judge the last two rounds of the Talk Festival along with all the other foreign teachers. Three of my grade one kids got through to the final round. Jim came storming through in second place with his version of the Rabbit and the Tortoise, Mat came close behind with a Best Performance Award for the Classroom Rap, and teeny tiny Andy got a Most Improved award for his version of ‘We’re Walking in the Air’.
Bizarrely enough, Andy came on stage dressed as an angel, complete with a halo and wings. I have yet to discover who kitted him out in this delightful outfit, although I have a sneaking suspicion that his mother managed to get her paws on him at the very last minute. Also, the May Play is finally over. It was a spectacular event, like nothing that would be put on in a UK nursery. The school has about 350 kids, and each class put on their own five-minute show. Add to that, the various dance, music and sports groups that perform and you have a two-hour extravaganza. I remember my primary school plays well. We made our own costumes out of tea towels and old sheets, and performed on a makeshift stage made out of gym blocks – ah those were the days. In Taiwan, there’s no such thing as a home-made costumes. They hire outfits en masse from fancy dress shops… kids dress up as traditional Chinese, Kung Fu fighters, chickens, monkeys, flowers, swans etc etc etc. The school stage won’t do, so they hire out a massive hall with a professional sound system and lighting; there’s about ten members of staff who act as the crew, who spend about four weeks before the big day planning everything like a military operation. On the day itself they wear black and have walkie-talkies and everything. I'm sorry!So the May Play truly is phenomenal – and the whole while I was watching, the only thing I could think about was how sorry I felt for the staff who have been in charge of planning the event and how stupid I’d been for complaining about having to re-write our skit three times. OK, it wasn’t the only thing I was thinking about. I was also thinking about how daft I looked in my hired Chinese dress which was far too big for me and too short at the same time. I was also thinking about how annoying it was that I was spending my Saturday afternoon in a boiling hot hall surrounded by proud, camera-crazed parents and loud, limelight-crazed kids. But hey, there were a few moments of sympathy aimed at someone other than myself. Back to the futureOnly two more school events to go. On Friday it’s the ESL kids’ parents day, where my grade one children do a skit about friendship and sing a cute song (even I find it a little nauseating, and I’m a sucker for that kind of thing), then in July, it’s my senior kindergarten class’s graduation which promises to be another magnificent event. I’m pushing for my kids to perform Take That’s Never Forget as an ode to the fab four’s (or maybe five?) current tour. I suspect that Barney the Dinosaur will win out on that one. As for future plans, everything’s going pear-shaped. I STILL haven’t heard anything from Northumbria University about the Masters I applied for. As time goes by, I’m feeling less certain that parting with all my savings to do a non-vocational Masters is right for me. As my dad kindly pointed out to me, I’m not twenty-one any more (I’m twenty-five) and doing an academic Masters might just end up putting off the inevitable getting-a-proper-job for another year, but not actually give me a significant lead when it comes to applying for jobs. Added to that, I really can’t figure out whether or not I want to give up teaching, or at least working with kids. Some days I just think to myself how lovely it will be not having to deal with noise and snot and fights and bruised knees, I imagine myself wearing smart-casual and talking to other grown-ups about something other than flashcards. Other days, I think about how awful it will be working in a quiet, dull office with nothing but malicious gossip to keep me entertained, and what’s so good about smart-casual anyway? I like my baggy trousers and ink-stained t-shirts really. Then I remember from past jobs that spending the day with adults is not necessarily that great anyway. Will it ever end?To sum up, despite the fact that I’ve been agonising for years now about what to do with my life, I’m still floundering around with absolutely no idea which direction to take. Every time I think I’ve made a decision, I change my mind again. I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m in the thick of graduate purgatory and maybe there’s nothing I can do about it but bide my time and hope that I come out of it with decision in hand sometime before retirement-age. The only piece of advice I can give to those of you at university is never, ever leave. Stay in the halls of academia, lurk in the darkness of the lecture halls, cling to the door frames if necessary. Mark my words – do not come out! (3/5/06)Two weeks and counting to the kindergarten May Play and the last couple of weeks have been pure hell. It’s impossible to fully describe how stressful putting together a five-minute skit is in my school. The idea of the May Play is that it fits into whatever the kids have been doing in their theme topics, which for the last couple of months has been “Taichung” – Taichung being the city we live in. As my class had been doing sounds of Taichung, it seemed a good idea that our play would be based around a radio show, which was cleared with the mid-range bosses. However, the owner of the school, Miss Tong, decided that the idea was too abstract and wanted us to do a fashion show featuring wedding clothes instead. But the manager thought that a fashion show of a variety of styles would be better, and a bit of a tussle ensued and the manager won the fight of the day. So, we were told that we had to do a fashion show, even though we haven’t even discussed clothes with the children once in our theme classes. The whole point of the May Play is that it’s supposed to reflect the work we’ve done in theme classes, but you know, kids look adorable all dressed up, and all the girls can wear little tiaras and make-up and the parents can take cute photos. Grrrrrrrrrrr. DramaSo, now down to less than a week to go before the first rehearsal, I wrote the play, wrote the lyrics and chose the music. I had a spat with my co-teachers who didn’t like the music and wanted me to change it, even though I’d spent an entire afternoon trawling the internet for something appropriate. We practised with the kids. We showed the script to the manager. The manager didn’t like the script. I re-wrote the script. We practised with the kids. We had the first rehearsal. The owner didn’t like our show. I re-wrote the script again. The manager approved the script. It remains to be seen whether the owner will like our show – we have the next rehearsal in a couple of days. I am not alone in this ridiculous charade – all of the teachers throughout the school suffer the same fate, year on year. It doesn’t matter how brilliant your idea might be, they are guaranteed to change it. I really can’t figure out whether it’s just terribly bad management and the owners/managers don’t know what affect it has on the teachers, or if it’s some sick power-trip designed to show us where our place is in the grand scheme of the school. Thirteen more weeksI am quite literally counting the weeks until I leave Taiwan now. Only 13 weeks of teaching left to go, and 16 ½ weeks until I board that plane home. I still haven’t heard anything back about the Masters I applied for, so what exactly I’ll be doing when I get back is still very much in the air. Even though I’m going crazy at work, I still feel very sad when I think that this could be the last time I teach. I’ll miss my kids so much, and it’s difficult to imagine going back to an office environment if that’s what I end up doing. But, after these last few weeks, there isn’t even an inkling of doubt in my mind that it’s time to leave Taiwan for good! (22/4/06)Work is a bit of a nightmare at the moment because there is just so much to do – we’re all busy with our almost-end of term productions, which means extra meetings, writing the play, choosing music, writing lyrics, and on and on.  On top of all that, we’ve also had the sharing meeting for our last Theme project – Family. After every Theme, we make a Power-point, collect any props and homework sheets we made and do a presentation for the owner of the school, Miss Tong. It’s always nerve-wracking because, although she looks about seventeen (she’s in her forties), she’s actually really, really scary, and has pretty much total control over how the school is run. I always get nervous in these presentations, and tend to ramble a lot.
This meeting I really excelled myself in the humiliation department. During our Family Theme, we spent a lot of time looking at babies: in the womb, how to take care of them, what they eat etc. Inevitably, I taught the kids a bit about sperm and eggs. Now, any normal person would just skirt quickly over the issue at a big meeting with the scary boss. Not me. I ended up giving a demonstration of how I drilled the sentence pattern (‘the man has sperm’ – basically by whispering it and then shouting it as loudly as I could) and then went on and on and on about how during playtime the boys had been spotted running around shouting ‘I am a sperm, let me in!’ I knew the boss wasn’t over-impressed with me but I was so nervous I just couldn’t shut up. When I’d finally run out of steam, everything went quiet and we moved swiftly on! Postgrad valueI haven’t heard anything back from Northumbria University yet, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing, a bad thing, or has no meaning at all. I’ve been checking my e-mail account about five times a day, waiting for a response and thinking non-stop about life as a student again – cheap deals in the cinema, student nights in clubs, sipping hot chocolate mid-afternoon when all non-students are stuck at work, fitting in my essay-writing around East Enders, economy white bread, economy kidney beans, economy fish fingers, economy… everything, always having to watch my pennies and plan ahead, binge-buying in the summer and winter sales, and relying on Primark for the rest of the year – self-inflicted poverty. I can’t help but think about all the other things I could buy with the £3,600 (all my savings from two years in Taiwan) I’ll have to part with if I get onto the course. I could buy … - a 2002 Fiat Punto for £3,495 and have an extra 105 pounds for petrol
- or a 1998 Peugeot 106 for £3,000 AND a laptop computer
- or a small conservatory for £3,587 and have 13 pounds left over for plants
- or a baby grand Hofmann piano for £3,000 with extra cash left over for lessons
Or I could be... - unemployed for around six months; this would allow me to catch up on British culture via daytime TV
- unemployed for three months AND buy an upright piano for about £1,000
Or I could - have ten package holidays to Spain at £339 a go
- relive those heady childhood summer holidays in the South of France by treating my entire family to a camping holiday for £2,040 and still have enough spending money left over for everyone,
- have a contingency plan for when my feet get itchy – two week safari in Botswana £1,670, AND trek the Inca trail in Peru for £1,539 pounds
And since my aim of this Masters is to eventually get a job doing something useful, why not just give the money to a good cause right now and get it over and done with? - My money could build a classroom (£1,700) and buy a mango plantation (£1,600) and I’d still have £300 left to spend on 126 boxes of fair trade tea, which would keep me sipping until I was about 38 years old.
- I could provide safe drinking-water for 5,000 people (£720 x 5) (Oxfam)
- I could provide operations for 211 people with cataracts so they could see again (£17 each). (Sight Savers)
Oh my God. I don’t think I want to do that Masters any more. (5/4/06)Only four more months to go until the semester is over – which means things are getting busier by the day. Firstly, there’s the Talk-Festival to think about – a competition between the ESL students (primary aged) from the three campuses. The kids get up on stage and sing a song, recite a poem, story or speech. Then there’s the May Play to prepare for: all the kindergarten classes do a little play and song. Then there’s the graduation ceremony to start thinking about! The festivalSo, the Talk Festival: These speech competitions are huge in Taiwan, and in a lot of schools the children are put under massive amounts of pressure from the teachers and the parents. Luckily, my school is artsy and all about developing confidence so there’s a lot less pressure on the kids and it’s all about them having fun (in theory, at least). I’ve been busy preparing my Grade 1 class’s performances. I’ve written a little rap for the adorable Matt (Jump to the left, Jump to the right, Crouch under your desk ‘til you’re out of sight – High, high, Low, low, Keep on going, don’t be slow etc etc etc), Dino and Penny are declaring their love of colours and singing ‘The Rainbow Song’, Minson is reading a poem I concocted about animals in the jungle (which I thought he would think was cool, but apparently he wanted to tell a story about a dinosaur coming to school and smashing it to pieces…), Jim’s doing a one-child performance of The Tortoise and the Hare with the aid of hand puppets, Jacky’s performing ‘There Were Ten in the Bed’ and teeny tiny little Andy, with his even teenier tinier little voice is singing ‘We’re Walking in The Air’! My competitive streak may be lacking when it comes to getting a job in the real world, but give me a school performance to prepare for and I’m all fired up (they’ve never seen me so animated!) The playThe May Play: This is THE event of the year! It’s huge, way bigger than any school performance I was ever in. All the kindergarten classes take part, the teachers stress out over how to make their seven minutes on the stage unique and fun and impressive and, well, perfect. We’ve already come up with our concept for our seven minutes in the limelight, (a radio news broadcast on something undecided as of yet), now it just has to be written and rehearsed. Oooh, the next month is going to be fun, fun, fun! The ceremonyGraduation: Each year, the seniors (the five-year olds) have a fancy graduation ceremony. I don’t have to worry about this quite yet as we still have a few months to go. This week was their photo shoot, so all the seniors came to school dressed up to the nines. The little girls wore fancy white dresses and tiaras and glittery makeup, all the boys were in their black shorts, white shirts and dickie-bows or ties. I know, I know, it’s all very over the top, but they just looked so cute, you couldn’t imagine. I had a lump in my throat just seeing how grown-up they looked! Not only did they get to pose in their fancy outfits, they also had a photo shoot in mini-sized graduation gowns too! Strange, very very strange, but oh, so adorable! The form Even though I’ve been super-busy at school, I’ve finally gotten around to filling in my application form for the Masters (in Social Justice and Society). I’m feeling very proud of myself, it may seem like a small task but I’m so good at procrastinating that it’s actually quite a big achievement for me! Now I just have to wait and see if I’ll be accepted, and there’s quite a big possibility that I won’t be. In the course bumph it states: ‘This is a course for people who want to change the world.’ And I do want to change the world, I really do, but sadly I don’t have the track record to back up my good intentions. The last five completely selfless acts I’ve done in reverse order are: 1. Bought a fish tank for two needy terrapins; 2. Picked up a motherless street- kitten and re-homed her with some friends. 3. Picked up a lost little dog and re-homed him with some other friends. 4. Took in and kept a little ginger street-kitten (the beloved Charlie – see pictures here and on oage 2). 5. (By far the most impressive) Organised a car-boot sale to raise funds for Romanian orphans – I was ten at the time. Even if you can consider helping animals as changing the world, I don’t think the fifteen year gap between good deeds bodes well for me. But all I can do now is keep my fingers crossed, and hope for the best. If I don’t get on, I don’t know what I’ll do - I’ll probably spend another year dreaming up fantastic, yet highly delusional life-plans. Still, there are worse things I could do with my time. (22/03/06) School sports days. Do you remember those? Kids running and jumping and hopping and skipping, egg-and-spoon races, sack races, three-legged sprints; parents on the side line cheering us on, hands stuffed in pockets, feet shuffling to keep warm. Yep, I distinctly remember the parental shuffling, perhaps the occasional jiggle of the knees, but other than that they were pretty much stationary…. Not so in Taiwan. I sulkily gave up my Saturday morning to go to the kindergarten sports day, which is held once a year in a massive athletics field close to the school. Still sleepy and bitter, I made my grand entrance to the sound of a tinny Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes/The Chicken Dance/The Hokey Kokey medley blasting out over loud speakers, with the PE teacher (yes, the treasured 4-year olds do have their very own PE teacher… and art teacher, and music teacher) MC-ing on a huge stage. This hideous music is distinct to Taiwan. Any event, big or small, will be accompanied by cheesy, high-pitched pop-songs or medleys. Before school, the kids do their aerobics (mmm hmm, that’s right, organised keep-fit for the under-fives) to the eighties classic ‘Hey, Mickey (you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind, hey Mickey, hey Mickey etc etc)’, they’re woken up from their lunchtime nap by a kind of synthesised medley of what I can only guess to be Taiwanese classics. Personally, being woken up in this manner day in, day out would be enough to tip me over the edge completely, but the kids love it. In fact, the adults love it too. It’s one of those incomprehensible cultural differences. Programme of eventsAnyway, where was I? Oh yes, the sports day. It’s not about the kids doing sport at all. On the contrary, it’s the mums and dads who do all the hard work. First of all, there’s the bamboo log race, where the parents carry their precariously perched sprogs on a piece of bamboo. Then there’s the kid-in-a-sack race (not to be confused with our sack-race – here the parents are hauling their kids along). Then there’s the skateboard race where the parent lies on a skateboard, the kid balances on their parent’s back, and the poor adult drags him/herself along the floor with their arms. Then there’s the… oh I forget the multiple, ingenious varieties in which a child can be transported from a-to-b. Once my resentment and cynicism had faded, I found myself enjoying the day. Despite the bizarre activities, and headache-inducing musical faux-pas, I was quite touched by the child-centered nature of the whole event. Most parents here only have one or two kids, and they really dote on their children. The sports day is not just another event in the school calendar, but about families spending time together - the parents get stuck in there and do really stupid things for the sake of their kids. Now that’s love for you! Terrapin rightsSo, aside from surviving and kind of enjoying the sports day, I also embarked on a little animal-rights task this week. While kids get lavished with everything they could possibly want and great pains are taken to keep them happy and healthy, the same can’t be said for animals here. In one of the classes I teach in, I noticed two baby terrapins flapping about on top of each other in a teeny little jar. At first, I thought it must be a bring-your-pet to school project, but after a couple of days I realised the poor little blighters were there to stay. In my mission-mode, I bought a little fish tank and did an impromptu lesson on why you shouldn’t keep terrapins in jars. Of course, the kids didn’t understand what I was rambling on about and I think the Taiwanese teachers may have been a bit put out by my self-righteousness, but at least the little terrapins can move around a little bit now. Decisions, decisions...So that’s been the last two weeks of my work-life. A sports day and a terrapin mission, can things get any more exciting? In terms of what to do next year, I’ve decided against applying for a journalism course – I think I would have figured out a bit earlier in my life if journalism was my true calling. I’m going to apply for the Masters in Social Justice and Society at Northumbria University. Amazingly, I have actually sent off for and received the application form, so I’m feeling very pro-active and proud of myself at the moment. I haven’t actually filled it in yet; that was on my to-do list for today (Sunday), but unfortunately I got side-tracked by three back-to-back episodes of Lost – what can I say? Jack’s beauty demands an attentive audience… and the story line’s quite riveting too.
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