My kids

Technically, I don't have any kids. I'm not a mom; I'm not even an aunt or anything. But over the last four or five years, I've taken care of, and cared deeply about, numerous kids and, as I've observed pretty much my whole life, seeing my mom in her role as a teacher, when you spend enough time and care enough about the kids you work with, you can't help but think of them as 'yours.'

So really, I've had quite a few kids. In the parks program, there was a whole posse of them, and I thought I got the whole 'my kids' thing. Then I started college and began nannying, and realized I had been wrong.

'My kids' in Seattle are Ian and Sam, who I watched grow up from ages 6 and 4 when I started college to 11 and 9 when I finished, and Sophia and Isabel, who I watched grow up from ages 9 and 7 to 13 and 11. Being involved in these kids lives was fantastic; I loved getting to hear about their most recent sports exploits, drive them to music practice, play with them on the playground, and generally just get to be a presence in their lives. Having the privilege to hang out with them always outweighed whatever else I had going on; we always had so much fun together, and I felt like a part of their families. Just thinking about them makes me smile. I love those kids a lot, and I really miss them this year.

And that's not to mention the kids I watched in Seattle for shorter periods of time, and who I also cared, and care, a lot about--Matthew and Kaitlin, Scotty and Erin, Allie and Gigi, Finn and Devin, Janie and Meg, Johanna and Philip. (Incidentally, two is undoubtedly the number of choice in Seattle!) They're all, in a way, 'my kids.'

Now I'm a teacher in Taiwan. And that, of course, comes with its own whole group of 'my kids,' on a whole different scale--550-some of them, now. And, like a parent, I want to show them off. Therefore, I give you--long-lost (eh, a few months old...) videos.

So...yes. This was, in fact, the longest, sappiest introduction of YouTube clips ever written. But it also all happens to be true. :)

This first clip is from when I was just observing, before I even began teaching; it's the kids doing phonics--and sounding like a room full of crickets in the mean time!

 

And, in this one, we were playing a game where I would say "'I'm going to the..." and they had to run to the right flashcard/item. At the end, the kids in the front row trick their classmate into going to the wrong item--hence the laughter. :)

Finally, here's the special class of dancers learning an English chant and attempting to keep a beat with various musical instruments--to a chant which, really, was never that rhythmic to begin with.

I love all my kids--hope you enjoy the little snippets of them that I can give you here!

6 Days of Pirate-hood

After spending 6 of the past 7 days dressed as a pirate, and spending 5 of those 6 teaching Halloween to 5th and 6th graders, I feel like I've learned a lot. For instance...

Eye patches are cool. And they also suck. Not too long before I "became" a pirate, my online browsing took me to this article (warning: some language), where #5 of their list of 6 Absurd Pirate Myths informed me that pirates did not, in fact, wear eye patches to cover missing eyes, but rather wore them to keep one eye adjusted to the dark when attacking ships, at which point they would need to be able to move quickly--and non-blindly--from the bright light of the deck into the pitch darkness of the cabins, all while swinging a sword and trying not to get killed.

Turns out, this works for haunted houses, too. With kids cycling through a darkened room, letting in streams of light at each end, it helps to work the door with an eye patch on--lower it when the door's open, lift it when it's closed. It actually helped: a lot. Visible difference when I was using the eye-patched eye. So yeah, pirates had a nifty idea for looting ships! And, you know, scaring 5th graders.

The sucky part? More accurate: parts. First off, there's the obvious discomfort--it's just weird to have something covering one of your eyes for an extended period of time; I found myself scrunching up one side of my face trying to keep that eye close for some bizarre subconscious reason. I made mine out of felt, which is pretty good on a skin irritability scale, especially when coupled with the fact that it was held on not with an elastic round-head strap, but a normal headband beneath my hat. But still uncomfortable; a large number of my pictures from teaching this week feature my eye patch folded up on itself and pushed under the brim of my hat to keep it out of the way, and by the end of the day, I was always ready to tear that thing off my head.

See the thin strap of black on my forehead? Yeah...and this was my FIRST  DAY!

And that's not to mention the inevitable loss of depth perception and peripheral vision. Many missed steps, missed food portions and misshapen letters later (in an unfortunate coincidence, the week I was a pirate brought with it the most board-writing I've had in a lesson plan in quite some time), I've never valued my ability to see what's around me--and know where it is around me--more.

Not pictured: six other hand-written  flashcard words

If you think your students have gotten used to having a foreign teacher around, donning an eye patch, hat, and sword will turn that assumption right around! It was kind of funny how much attention I suddenly got once I donned my costume. I hadn't realized how used to me students had gotten until I changed the stakes a bit--if a foreign teacher is normal, how about a pirate foreign teacher! Along the same lines, I was surprised at how many kids were actually a little nervous because of my costume--it wasn't anything particularly scary; to my mind, it was actually pretty tame. But an eye patch, watch out! And, on a related note...

Wooden swords work well as attention-getting objects. For some reason, this did not occur to me until I was halfway through the week, but it's fantastic! Teaching vocabulary words on a blackboard has never been more fun than when you can smack it with a wooden sword and ask "What is this?" And kids pay more attention when you're swinging a sword around anyway--highly unusual, and so highly worth paying attention to.

Yarr, matey!

And, of course, if they're still not paying attention, a quick rap on the desk (I said desk, not hand, just to be clear) works infinitely better than a ruler to get a student to sit up and listen! I'm only half joking in all of this, of course. :)

I never want to hear "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" again. Yes, I know, this is not directly related to being a pirate, but in the context of Halloween, it fits perfectly. Over the past week, I have read a simplified version of that story precisely eleven times, line by line, as I waited for my co-teachers to translate into Chinese. The original story is okay, but when you take a kids' version from the Internet and simplify it further for kids who don't speak English, the story becomes unbearable and odd.

Each translation pause opened up a gulf of self-doubting questions about the story: should I have left that detail in? Should I have cut this one out? Why in the world did Washington Irving have a fake ghost in the middle of the story? Should I have read that sentence on its own, or should I have read those two together? And how impactful can a ghost story really be when kids hear each line twice, just in two different languages? Which leads me to...

If you hear the same thing in two different languages enough times, you start to understand bits and pieces of both. This is the one upside of reading "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" so many times. Among other things, I now have the word "誰" ("who," as in "Wh-who are you," or "你, 你 是 誰?") and the word "南瓜" ("pumpkin"--not hard to think of where that fits in the story), as well as "馬" (horse) and "頭" ("head," as in "he was headless," or "他沒有投"). So yeah, at least Teacher Bekah was learning from the story! Hopefully the kiddos were as well, but it's less likely since they only heard it once.

他們的南瓜! / Their pumpkins!

And now, at last, I can retire my trusty pirate costume of hat, belt, sword, and eye patch. Perhaps in another year I will have achieved enough distance between my over-exposure to don it again, maybe even unite it with my trusty pirate costume which I stupidly left at home in the States, but for now, I'll just sit back and relax...no rum required.

Teachers' Day!

Today was Teachers' Day, which is, as you may have guessed, a day honoring teachers. Apparently there's one in the US, too, but I had never heard of it before 10 seconds ago, when I searched it on Wikipedia. Not possible here!

Here in Taiwan, Teachers' Day is a really big deal--according to Maggie, Kaohsiung used to give teachers $5,000NT each on this day, and according to Alison, they still give New Taipei teachers $1,000NT. (We didn't get money, though, for the record.) Here, Teachers' Day celebrates the attributed birthday of Confucius, he of the hundreds of wise sayings and seemingly the wellspring of all Chinese wisdom. Basically, he's a superstar--and a superstar at teaching. Which means that we, as modern-day teachers, are by extension superstars as well!

Teachers' Day celebrations actually began earlier this week. On Monday, I arrived at Han-Min to find this sitting (not bitten yet, of course; that was me) on my desk:

It's a rice bun filled with red bean and (a single) strawberry! Quite good, actually.

I think it may have been from one of the other teachers or from the administration (all the teachers in the Subject Teachers' Office had one), but still.

And not to worry: you can't say students don't know how to appreciate their teachers here in Taiwan! Later that day, I witnessed this wonderful little moment:

No, your eyes do not deceive you: that's a student rubbing Alison's shoulders while another waits behind her--they were literally in line a second before I snapped this; a second before that, they were fighting over who got to give her the back rub. Would this happen in America? I think NOT. (Incidentally, the boy in this picture is named Louis; he's a total teachers pet and especially loves Alison. The girl, however, is just there to rub her shoulders.)

And that wasn't even on the day.

Today, after teaching Morning English, I found, first of all, that Alison had bought me coffee. (She is so sweet!) Second of all, I discovered that I, like all other teachers, was a temporary rock star.

(Of course, all it really takes to make me feel like a rockstar is this, but still...)

Anyway, today, in addition to the carefully-scripted "Laoshi hao" and/or "Good Morning Teacher Bekah" in the halls and in the classrooms (where either greeting is accompanied by a group bow), I heard "Happy Teachers' Day!" more times than I could count. And they were genuinely excited about it! This could be evidenced by the growing pile of stuff on my desk that students gave me--I think this was the bulk of it, sans a couple candies I ate.

Worth noting: the flower was from the school

Not pictured is one of my favorite cards, a handmade postcard showing the beach, an umbrella and a big cloud cut out against an inexplicably yellow sky. Actually, now that I'm looking at it again to describe it, you've just got to see it:

Sorry--webcam quality.

I love this card all the more because two girls came literally running up to Maggie and I today while we were on our way to class to deliver it--they were that excited to show us their appreciation. And, terrible teacher that I am (or, you know, just teacher-with-540-students-I-see-once-a-week that I am), I couldn't even tell you their names. I know that they were in class 5-01, so I know I taught them yesterday, and I know that they are super sweet, and made me the best card ever! Yet another reason I need to take individual pictures of my students holding their name cards or something--I can't stand not knowing simple stuff like this!

Aherm--back to topic. Another fun discovery today was that my name has apparently changed its spelling without my knowledge: the standard attempt was "Bkka," which I guess sounds about right if you sound it out, and especially makes sense given that there is no "eh" sound in the Chinese language, but it was a bit funny to see written out over and over.

And once on a crane!

Then there was the absolutely adorable card Alison and I got from a student named Madeline:

Outside...(It reads "Lead; Knowledge; Kind; Humorous; Inspirit; Likes Playing; friend?" Last three are my favorites. :)

And the inside: melts your heart!

But the most extravagant, wow-this-is-fantastic moment came in the second class of the day, when Maggie and I walked in to find...this:

 It was beautiful! All over, it read "Happy Teachers' Day" in two languages, plus "I love teacher" and "You are beautiful" in Chinese. I had forgotten my camera, but instantly ran to get it. This was not a board that could be erased before being captured forever!

The artists and their creation.

Had to get a close-up, too, to capture the vividness!

Feeling very honored as a teacher (and very awkward to be having my picture taken--Maggie's idea)

 We did, of course, have to erase it for the lesson, but the kids didn't seem to mind. They actually did it themselves, going at it with a gusto I thought amazing, given the time they seemed to have put into making it. But they were enthusiastic, and we then had a great class!

After class: even the home room teacher got in there! Can you spot the adults?

Feeling very blessed to be here in Taiwan, and to have the co-teachers and schools that I do. And not just because they give me stuff on Teachers' Day--they are genuinely some of the best people I've ever met, and I just love spending time with each of them!