Forty 16-year-old girls, all attention focused on me.  This was much different than teaching at the all boys’ high school, where a group of 14 of us gave a presentation in a lecture hall.  This was a classroom, and I was sent in alone.  No backup here.  But honestly, I wasn’t too worried.  I was older than these students, and plus, I was an expert on my topic: life in America.  What could go wrong?

But let’s start from the beginning.  When we walked onto the school’s grounds, we were escorted into a room where two girls gave us a virtual tour of their school.  I was very impressed with their speed and fluency in English.  National Tainan Girls’ Senior High School was the high school that my language partner, Tammy, went to before coming to NCKU, and it’s the best girls’ high school in Tainan.  After our brief introduction to the school, we were escorted to separate classrooms.  I was quickly greeted with milk bubble tea, winter melon shaved ice, and a pineapple cake.  For me?  I hadn’t even said anything yet!

Once I got my powerpoint presentation up on the screen, things got real.  The class got silent.  I started with asking them about what came to mind when they thought of stereotypes of Americans, and then I introduced myself.  I spoke about what classes American high school students take, high school traditions like prom and homecoming, and how high school students go about picking their college and major.  In Taiwan, students’ majors are largely based off of their score on an aptitude test.  In the United States, you can basically choose whatever you want, as long as you can get into the major.  I also spoke about the length of the school day and tutors.  In Taiwan, they are in school from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and then attend “cram school” where good students will go to even further improve in certain subjects.  I described how in the United States, tutors are more common for students who are practically failing out of their classes.  And that a school day until 5 p.m. is unheard of.  Except, in Taiwan, extracurriculars are built into the middle of the day and are mandatory.  With extracurriculars, I could see the American school day going until about 5 p.m., or sometimes past, especially if you have a sporting match against another school.  I also showed them the clip from Mean Girls as an exaggeration of the high school cafeteria scene:

I thought it was funny that some of the girls were wearing uniforms and others weren’t, so I asked them about it.  Wasn’t the point of a uniform to make students, well, uniform?  They said you have to enter the school wearing a uniform, but you could change afterwards.  That didn’t make much sense to me.  What’s the point in even having one at all?  No one knew.

So I ran out of stuff to say with about an hour left.  But not to fear!  I had game ideas.  I had the students write a common English word on a piece of paper and hold it in place on their forehead.  Then they had to ask yes or no questions to each other, in English, to figure out what object they were.  During the game, a group of students came up to me and told me that they understood my questions during my presentation, but they didn’t know how to answer in English, and that’s why no one raised their hand.  I didn’t really have a solution for this problem.  At least they understood me.  Sometimes I thought they didn’t, even though I tried to speak slowly and clearly.

A few pictures of me answering questions students submitted, details below.

After this game I had them all write down an anonymous question for me about anything.  I got questions ranging from “Why did you choose to come to Taiwan?” to “Do you have a boyfriend?”  One student asked if I liked stinky tofu.  I said no (because it’s gross) and then I asked them if they did.  Everyone here likes it!  I don’t see how.

There were even a few surprisingly controversial questions thrown in there.  Like “Is racial discrimination still existent in America?” and “Do you like Obama?”  I had a hard time trying to describe institutional racism in simple terms to a class of people whose second language was English.  As for the Obama question, I told them that I like some of the things Obama’s done, but not all of them.  I’m not sure they realized how politically charged that question was.

Once I finished answering the questions, I still had about 20 minutes left.  So I just went on my facebook and showed them pictures of things I’ve done.  They were quite impressed with the stadium at the US Open.  The students were so shy during my presentation, I wasn’t sure how much they understood it or enjoyed it.  But I got this message from one of the students after class:

Hey,Allison I am one of the students in your class today.well,I think you told many things we don’t know before. Actually,you did great. Many people could understand what you said but they were too shy to speak to you:))

That made me feel a lot better!  Many students came up to talk to me during the game, but I couldn’t really make a smaller environment where students would open up more during class since there was only one of me and 40 of them.  When I taught at the boys’ high school, there were two Americans for each table of about 10 students.  My table had four Americans.  They were still incredibly shy, even in the small group.  Such a difference from American high schools, where you can’t get students to stop talking.  Here’s the whole group from the girl’s high school after a day of teaching.

At the boys’ high school, National Tainan First Senior High School, we gave a speech for the first half of our stay, on similar topics to what I talked about at the girls’ high school, and then we did interactive games for the second half.  We untangled ourselves from the human knot (where you hold hands with someone across from you in a circle and then try to “untie the knot”), played the game with objects/people/places on our foreheads, and then did a variety of other games.  We asked them about hobbies and interests that they had.  One boy was into hip hop dancing and was able to show us part of his routine.  He was so good!

After we led the group of Taiwanese students in a series of games, they showed us around their school’s gallery.  Like the girls’ high school, this was the best high school for boys in Tainan.  They had all sorts of artifacts in their gallery.  Even coins and bills from all over the world, and currency dating back for centuries.  They had an ENTIRE SHEET of $2 bills.  I’ve never seen so many in my life.  The relic I was most taken aback by was three ceramic, rectangular prisms, all decorated with beautiful designs.  They were pillows!!  I couldn’t imagine resting on one of those.

All in all, teaching at the two high schools was a difficult, but rewarding experience.  Even though the students were shy, I think they understood more of what we said than they let on to.  And I got to see two Taiwanese high schools.  I got to observe the demeanor of their students, and compare my high school life to theirs.  And my language partner said that these sessions would really motivate students to study harder and keep improving their English.  I hope my visit to each school will inspire at least some of the students to travel to the United States, and not give up on my first language, their second.

Now I can truly say that I know how hard it is to learn English, having studied Mandarin, even just for a month.  It’s an entirely new set of characters and sounds.  It’s very unnatural for me to pronounce some of their words, and it’s definitely not easy to remember every line in just one character.  So I know making the switch to English has to be equally as foreign to them. I just hope one day, English can seem less foreign to them, and that they can experience a similar exchange to mine, which has been fulfilling in so many ways.