(Belated) Breakthroughs

There are some things I've just had to accept about my experience here in Taiwan. For instance, that I will never be able to remember the names of every one of my students. And that those students will never be able to properly pronounce the letter "z."

Then today happened.

This first thing is embarrassing to admit, but a breakthrough nonetheless: today I realized, after 7 months of teaching them, that my 3rd class of 5th graders on Fridays at Qingshan has four twins from three pairs in it. I already knew that Bess and Kyle were in that class, while their respective twins were in other classes, but I had somehow missed up until today that this class also has Bruce and Chris in it--identical brothers whom I'd failed to notice were, in fact, twins.

I guess I just thought they were the same person or something? Weird.

Pictured here on the right: either Chris or Bruce. Chruce?

The letter "z" has been a major headache for me this year. It's an incredibly difficult sound for Chinese speakers learning English, yet for some unfathomable reason, it features pretty prominently in textbooks. Rachel's told me about her adventures trying to get kids to say the word "zebra," and I have had run-in after run-in with the word "zoo," which invariably comes out as "loo" or "lroo" or "roo."

To me, "l" and "r" bear almost no phonetic similarity to "z"--so why do they always resort to this? Why is this sound so hard? I honestly don't know. But I was thinking about it the other day, and realized that at least Chinese has the initial sound of "在" (tzai), which is admittedly not perfect, with the t sound before the z, but does at least feature a sound that, if said with "oo," would be recognizable as "zoo" (tzoo), not as "bathroom" (loo) or "regret" (roo/rue).

So I mentioned this breakthrough to Patty, who liked it and shared it with the classes via BoPoMoFo (Taiwanese phonetic system). The results? Whereas at the beginning of the class maybe 30% of the students could say their "zoo" correctly, towards the end I'd say about 75% could. Not bad! Now, just to retroactively teach this breakthrough to all of my students...

But it's pointless to "rue" the consequences of being slow on the uptake on this one. Just because I left my brain in the "loo" before doesn't mean its retrieval can't be meaningful--and it is, for Chris, Bruce, and the letter "z"!

沒有

9:05--how is it 9:05? I'm five minutes behind already...but that's okay, I guess, I can make up that time on my commute if I need to--wait, why isn't my scooter starting? Come on, come on! I do not want to waste money on a cab, and there's no way the MRT would get me there on time. Come on...finally! 9:10? Ah! Now--wait, why is my gas gauge not moving? SHOOT I'm completely empty. Going to have to stop on the way, and...wait, is it raining? And why are all these lights red?

It was Monday at its worst. By the time I speed-walked past my cheery students and colleagues' questions into the subject teachers' office, just 3 minutes ahead of the bell, my mind was everywhere and nowhere, and certainly not centered on the class of 5th graders I would be teaching in a few short minutes.

Maggie and I walked into class 5-10 and I flipped open my notebook (discovering along the way that one of the pictures I applied to the cover yesterday had already fallen off) to refresh my memory on what we were supposed to be teaching--ah, phonics. I love teaching phonics. "a_e," "ai," and "ay." Nice and simple.

I launched straight into the read-and-repeat phonics words, forgetting momentarily the importance of rehearsing sounds repeatedly first. "Kate"--"Kate"; "cake"--"cake"; "lake"--"lake"; "Gail"--"Gail"; "mail"--"沒有".

Wait, what?

That's right,  "沒有," pronounced "mei-yo," which means, roughly translated, "no" or "don't have." And my entire class of 5th graders said it, without missing a beat, in perfect unison. And just like that, my day was made.

Monday mornings suck: this fact is universal. But, with a class like 5-10 first thing to keep me on my toes, I can't help but think that I'll be able to face them pretty easily, 沒有問題--no problem.

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!

Review

Today, in our 6th grade classes at Hanmin, we did a review of the first three units of our textbook, in preparation for the students' upcoming test later this week. I went all in on this lesson and created a Jeopardy-style game for them to practice on during class, complete with six subject categories (2 for each unit; one word- and sentence-based, one phonics-based), and 5 difficulty levels.

The kids were nervous at first, but within a few turns, they had the game figured out and were working the system; whenever lower-level English students were called to the board, their classmates would tell them to pick the hardest question still available, since they probably wouldn't be able to answer the easier ones either, and, with our ask-a-friend-for-half-points system, picking a hard question was actually their best bet.

As a result, a huge number of the harder questions, such as reading a sentence with brand-new words in it (eg, Read this sentence: "The caged canary is scared of the calico cat." -- 500 points) actually went like this:

Student 1: Uhhhhhhh
Bekah: You can ask a friend for half points!
*Student 1 runs into the sea of waving hands and picks someone*
Student 2: The cage-eh cannery (common mispronunciation on this one) is scare-eyd of the ca-li-co cat.
Bekah: Okay, you can read it first, but he still has to tell me.
Student 2: The cage-eh
Student 1: The cage-eh
Student 2: cannery
Student 1: cannery
Student 2: is scare-eyd
Student 1: is scare-eyd
Student 2: of the
Student 1: of the
Student 2: ca-li-co cat
Student 1: ca-li-co cat
Bekah: Good job! 250 points for the boys' team...

It took a little longer than I might have expected, but I'm actually glad it worked out this way: it enabled lower-level learners to attempt hard questions, assisted by their peers, and to succeed! In the five classes we taught today, not a single student couldn't, in the end, get the answer right. And that was the point of the review, after all: remind everyone of what they'd learned, and remind them that if they continue to study, they will get even better.

The concept of doing review got me thinking. Especially with this whole write-a-blog-post-a-day thing, my entire life has essentially turned into a constant review. I don't mean to say I'm not learning new things, because I am--living in another culture will do that to you--but at the end of every day I come to review what I've done during the day, and come to the realization that the vast majority of it is exactly like what I've done on any other day. (And that's when you get blog posts like this one.)

In college, we did a lot of reflecting and purposeful thinking-about-thinking. I had one professor who was obsessed with the concept of metacognition (being aware of and being able to express what you're learning), and how it actually helps you to learn better. By the time I graduated, I was absolutely sick of metacognition and reflection papers--those two often go hand-in-hand--and I was all but ready to swear off the whole concept.

Not quite ready, though, it would seem. Because in my daily reviews, metacognition is exactly what I'm practicing.

And I learn a lot, much like my students did today. In their review, they learned words like "guzzle" and "calico," and had to stretch their memories to recover old information so that they could apply it in new ways. In my reviews, I discover patterns in my daily life, analyze them, and have the opportunity to either change them or improve on them, applying old experience to new situations and finding a fresh perspective in the mix.

It's not Jeopardy, but it's a useful brain exercise nonetheless. And, as a bonus, it does not feature the annoying theme music.