Experience.Adapt.Grow: Week #1

It has been 2 weeks since I first landed in Taoyuan Airport and I'm finally starting on my first blog post. I remembered leaving Singapore with almost an empty mind not being too sure of what to expect for the next 6 weeks even though I had been mentally preparing myself for this trip before the flight. But I must say that things are going great so far despite the many unforeseen circumstances that appeared along the way.

So upon arrival at Taoyuan Airport, I was greeted by 2 of Fengchia University LC's members welcoming me with a board which has my name written on it. And soon we were on our way to Taichung, the place where I'll be at for the next 6 weeks.

JianXing Elementary School (健行國小)

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Stepping foot into Jianxing Elementary School on my first day, I was greeted by students sweeping and cleaning the school! I was pretty surprised and later learned that every single morning, students will spend at least 20 minutes cleaning the school compound, which even includes washing of the toilets. Classes are assigned to different parts of the school to clean at the beginning of their academic year. The school does not engage the service of outside cleaners at all. I thought the practice is really good as it helps enforce the idea of shared responsibility among students in keeping the school compound clean, instead of just pasting posters around the school reminding students to keep the school compound clean. So the brief timeline for a student in JXES goes like this:

Before 7.50am: Cleaning of school compound
After 7.50am: Late
0800: Free time (settle unfinished business, play videos, story-telling, etc)

0840: Start of first lesson for the day

0920: Break

0930: Resume lesson

1010: Break

1030: Resume lesson

1110: Break

1120: Resume lesson

1200: Lunch

1240: Noon nap

1310: Break

1320: Resume lesson

1410: Break

1420: Resume lesson

1500: Break

1510: Resume lesson

1600: End school

So basically the entire school will have a break time (either 10 mins or 20mins) after every lesson. And they have time allocated for the entire school to take noon nap after lunch! That definitely caught me by surprise (maybe because I was never aware that such practices exists in other parts of the world, such as Taiwan) And the practice of noon nap continues all the way up to different levels of the education system till before university level.

Students and teachers taking their noon nap

(continuing with the cleaning of school compound)
Students do not arrive in school just few minutes before 7.50am on purpose just so they can spend lesser time cleaning. By 7.30am, most of the students would already be in school and starting to clean. And for the past 2 weeks that I'm here, I actually do not hear any students complain about having to clean. Instead, they are happily catching up with their friends while cleaning and their faces were beaming with smiles.
I find it amazing how students of such a young age are taking up the responsibility of being responsible. They may not be aware that they are actually being responsible but the way the school enforces it is a good practice. This may be something that schools in Singapore can slowly adopt and there are so many things that schools in Singapore can adopt from the elementary schools in Taichung.

I was briefed by a teacher-in-charge about my basic workload during the 6 weeks here and that includes entering classes and spending about 1 lesson to share the culture of Singapore with them, conducting morning classes for students with higher competency level in English, doing voice recording of English stories which will then be played over the radio system every Tuesday afternoons and basically interacting with students in English

The classes that I started off with during my 1st week were mainly students from Grade 2. They were all amazed by the fact that Singapore will not experience natural disasters such as earthquake and that it is summer season all year long for us. And! Local Jack Neo productions such as "I not stupid" is so popular here in Taiwan that every class that I went to, there will be at least either a student or a teacher who mentions about the show and asks if receiving caning is a legal form of punishment in Singapore. On top of that, bak ku teh seems to be a dish where most teachers will always associate with Singapore.

Overall, my first week in Jianxing Elementary had been great. Every other day I will be learning a new culture that the school practices which differs from that of the education system in Singapore. Let the pictures do the talking.