Thoughts on Taiwan

We recently finished our first month of teaching, which also means that we both received our first paychecks. Because Sarah's school is an international school, she gets to keep her entire paycheck (except for tithe, of course). However, since my school is not international, I pay 10% and an additional 20% in tax to Taiwan (mot to mention tax in America too). That fact makes getting paid a whole lot less exciting. Such is life.

Having taught in public school in America, I was aware of some of the atrocities (students) that walk through the classroom door. I knew that the students I would encounter here would (in general) have better attitudes and be more interested in learning. "Great!" I thought, "Teaching will be much easier in Taiwan." Part of what makes teaching such a tough job is expending so much energy to make it interesting for the students only to find out that they don't care what you do - they hate it anyway. I thought teaching in Taiwan would eliminate that depressing aspect of teaching.

Well, it's true. Students do care more about their education in Taiwan. They care because their parents care and because they know it is the only way they are going to get ahead in life. Many of them want to get into American colleges, and they know grades are the biggest way they will accomplish that. So, I don't have to deal with the bad attitudes, or the missing homework, or the absent students. It's nice.

But even with all those positives, there is still something I miss. I don't even know how to explain it. There are so many times that I ask questions in class, and I hear a teacher's bane: crickets chirping. Everyone is attentive, but no one is willing to give a response. Some days, I feel like I am the only one who talks during the whole class period. It is a terribly unnerving feeling. It makes me feel alone - there are twenty students in my classroom, and yet, no one is there. It makes me feel frustrated. It derails my mind. It zaps all the energy that I had stored up to use for teaching that day. Sometimes, it is all I can do to push on with the rest of the lesson. It's almost worse than all the ways American students used to do the same thing to me. No matter what the students' attitudes were in the States, I never experienced this. Technically, I don't even know what this is. But, I do know that this week, for the first time since I have been in Taiwan, I missed my American students.