Good Activity for Geometry Students

My geometry students all took the Chapter 6 test yesterday and are about to start learning about geometric transformations in the next chapter. For all of you out there who aren't familiar with the term geometric transformations, I assure you that you probably know exactly what they are! Basically it's reflections of shapes, rotations, and translations (when you just slide something over without changing it). So instead of diving right into the chapter in the book, I decided to do a little activity with them today. I found this lesson plan on PBS, which is the best resource for teachers if you ask me:

http://www.pbs.org/teachers/connect/resources/3945/preview/

The challenge is that given a square split into 8 parts (as seen in that activity), there are 13 unique ways to display 1/2 without simply rotating or reflecting a previous way. The students got 7 minutes to try to come up with all of them in partners of their choosing and then we went one by one in the groups to fill in the boxes online. I was able to get the math department projector for today too so we could all watch as each answer was submitted to see if it was right or wrong.

The cool thing about this lesson was that not only did students get introduced to reflections and rotations (we had a discussion after every rejected answer based on it being a previous box simply flipped or rotated) but they were literally cheering when we got the last one together. It was awesome to see my students that excited about math at 8 a.m.!

All of my little kiddos hard at work!

Busy November

Today is the last day of November already. It seems like just yesterday that I first got here and started teaching; the school year is three whole months under way but it still sort of has that new car smell to it. At home, snow is flying yet here it is still 80 degrees during the day. Thanksgiving came and went, and although I wasn't able to do any Black Friday shopping, I was able to eat turkey and gravy and the works (twice even!). Life in Taiwan seems to be going at warp speed.

Tomorrow is the first day of December and before I blink an eye, I'm sure it will be Christmas break. And judging from how fast fall has gone for me, I think in another few blinks I will find myself in spring and then summer. It all makes me realize how quickly this experience is going to pass me by. It makes me a little sad to think about, but it also makes me excited for the future. Another year (or two???) here, and then who knows...

Thanksgiving in Taiwan

Although this is the first Thanksgiving I have ever spent away from family and loved ones, I think Taiwan did us proud on this one. The school brought in turkey and mashed potatoes and stuffing. There was even pumpkin pie for dessert! Even better was the awesome time I got to have with my group of girls that I sit with at every meal, my advisees.

I'm thankful for this amazing life experience and the chance to get to know so many different people from around the world. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Scooter Owner Maria

Well it's official, I own a scooter!

My friend and coworker, Jane, and I struck a deal with a nice Indian man who has lived in Taichung for the past 5 years about buying two scooters he had for sale. This afternoon while I was teaching, Jane had some preps and went to go meet the Indian man and his cousin at the DMV. These scooters are now safely registered under our names, we have paid full in cash, and I even got a name stamp out of the deal!

Let me explain that last part. Everyone (well, almost everyone) in Taiwan (and possibly other Asian countries as well) signs their name with a personalized name stamp. Since each persons name is generally broken down into three chinese characters, they easily fit on a small square stamp that people just carry with them. So apparently this cousin of the Indian man who sold us our scooters is very good friends with some people at the Taichung DMV and while Jane was waiting for the paperwork to process, this cousin went ahead and had them make us our very own name stamps too!

A scooter AND a personalized name stamp?! Thanks Indian man and your cousin.

Common Good Day

At our school, we decided to have a "Common Good Day" this past weekend. Basically, every house (yes, like Harry Potter) chose a charity they wanted to contribute their time to and used the afternoon of Saturday 20, 2010 to do some community service. Archimedes House (my house) decided to first make some cards to send to children at a children's hospital nearby and then use the afternoon to pick up garbage along a trail close to us.

All in all, I would call Common Good Day 2010 fairly successful only because I hadn't been up in the foothills yet on the trails so I thought it was exceptionally beautiful out! We didn't pick up a TON of trash but I figure, any little bit helps, right? :)

Our whole house after the cleanup...notice the very few bags of trash for the large number of people...

View from the top- worth the climb!

My friend and coworker, Jane, and me at the top

Math Olympiad Success

After a whirlwind of 48 hours, jumping between Taiwan, Hong Kong, China, and back again, I can safely say that my first time as a middle school math olympiad coach was a success. It was a very busy schedule and as I type this on Sunday morning after all of the chaos, I'm extremely exhausted. However, I would say that it's all worth it because my kids did awesome, the trip went off without a hitch, and I didn't loose a 7th grader in China!

In all seriousness, I was very proud of my team. I had three little seventh grade girls and one little seventh grade boy with me. Although we had some interesting situations, like making the emergency bathroom stop within an hour of the start of the trip, but I think that's fairly par for the course when traveling with children. In general they were very well behaved and actually really helpful because they could communicate with more people than I could for obvious language reasons. If I couldn't figure something out, I would send one of them to ask someone nearby and they turned out to be awesome little translators.

As far as the math competition went, I was even more proud of my team. My school has been sending a middle school team to this competition for several years now. I've been told that we always do pretty dismal so going into this trip I had very low expectations. As the teams were busy competing on the first floor of the school we were at, the coaches were up on the second floor grading everything and updating the scores. Throughout the competition, which was four rounds, I watched my team start at a tie for fifth place (out of seven teams), move up to fourth, and seal a third place victory with a perfect score in the third round of nineteen multiple choice questions. When the announcer called our name for the third place team from the 7th grade division during the awards ceremony, no one was yelling louder than me because I was so happy for them and it was cute to see their surprised faces (they kept telling me how bad they thought they did!).

All in all, a great but quick trip to China, an awesome math olympiad tournament and my first international travel with preteens under my belt. You can check out some of the pictures I took below.

The team and me outside the school in Shenzhen, China.
7th graders doing what 7th graders do best.
View of the harbor in Shenzhen.

So I'm an Asian Mother for 48 Hours

Currently, I am using the free wi-fi to write this in the Taipei International Airport. It is a Thursday, yes a school day, and I have four 7th graders with me to travel first to Hong Kong and then onto China for a math competition tomorrow. I am officially the ONLY adult responsible for them for 48 hours and it has been...hectic already to say the least.

This morning a van was supposed to pick us up from school to take us to the airport. However, a car showed up and the driver seemed to think he was only supposed to take one person to Taipei. We lost twenty minutes there arguing with him to try to get us there. In the end I was perfectly comfortable riding in the front while the four kids had to cram in the back together. About an hour into our two hour ride, one of the boys told me he had to go to the bathroom. I asked if he could hold it until we got to the airport and he said yes but his face told me no. So we pulled over at a wayside rest and watched him literally sprint to the public toilets. After ten minutes in there he comes out and the first thing he says upon arrival is "Teacher, I thought you said they would have tissue paper here." Sigh, how was I supposed to know that a random wayside rest between Taichung and Taipei wouldn't have toilet paper in the men's room?

Now I'm patiently waiting for the kiddos to return to me at the gate. We are due to depart at 11:25 and I threatened them that if they were not here by 11:00, I would find them and send them back to the school without being able to go to Hong Kong first! I'm hoping that shallow threats will work so we'll see.

Being an Asian mother for these two days will be interesting to say the least. I am looking forward to the stories I will have after this weekend and you should too! (It will probably be an awesome blog post)

Wish me luck!

If this Weekend Doesn't Kill Me...

Working as a teacher is trying enough for the most part. Living with your students at a boarding school is even more so.

I still really love what I'm doing here in Taiwan but I have definitely hit that point in the year where everything starts piling up on my desk and there doesn't seem to be enough time in the day. Next week I will be traveling with my math olympiad team to China for a whirlwind two day, one night competition. So this week I have been busy making sub plans and figuring out what to do with my four classes the two days I will be gone (not easy to do because I can't have them learn anything new due to the fact that I have English, history and art teachers covering my classes).

Unfortunately, I am not the only one missing school here or there. This week has also been a long parade of missed prep's since so many of my coworkers need to take off work for school related functions and that leaves the rest of us subbing for their classes. I truly believe in this philosophy, no outside subs, but it makes it tough when you are trying to use your prep's to get ready for when you need to leave!

At least we have the weekends to ourselves. Which normally is my saving grace; a time to shut myself in my room and not see, talk to, or think about students for an entire day and a half. However, this weekend also happens to be the weekend I am on duty AND I got stuck with library duty Friday night. Basically this means that tonight (Friday) after my five day work week, I will be the teacher in charge of a dozen or so failing students who are required to be in the library from 7-9 p.m. Then I will wake up tomorrow morning (Saturday) and teach for three hours. I will then go to lunch with the kids and at 1:30 chaperone whatever activity is planned for tomorrow afternoon. At 6:30 I will accompany all 167 students to a night market and return at 10:00 p.m. Sunday I continue supervising students from 1 p.m. till 4 p.m. and then Monday starts a new week.

Like the title of this blog suggests, if this week doesn't kill me, I really think I will live forever because nothing will!

Term 1 Over

This week marks a new term for the school year. I have been teaching for over two months now and even though it's feeling more and more real with each lesson, I still catch myself thinking I'm not actually a teacher yet. However I do realize that I most certainly am by now; I'm just waiting for the first time I have to fill out a form where I can put "teacher" under occupation instead of "student." I'm sure that will be a big day.

After two and a half months of teaching I have learned a lot about myself both professionally and personally. I have also learned, or at least heard, all numbers up to twenty in Chinese, and a select few Chinese curse words as well. And most importantly, I have learned a lot about teaching international students. I know now that a lot of things work with ESL students and also, a lot of things don't (and yes I learned that the hard way as you can imagine). I am by no means an expert on teaching English language learners, but I feel a lot more knowledgable now than I did when we started school in September and I bet I'll be even better by June. It makes me realize that this is a profession in which I can expect to learn something new every single day. It's very exciting to think about how my teaching style will evolve throughout my career and even how I will teach differently by the end of this year alone.

What's also exciting is to think about how I can improve on things for next year. I boarded the plane in August 90% sure that I would work in Taiwan for two years; however I did only have a one year contract so I knew there was a possibility I would only stay for one. After one term though, I am absolutely positive I will be working here next year. Both professionally and personally I am very happy in Taiwan and am very excited to start next year with experience under my belt and actually know what's going on!

Tainan & Kaohsiung

This past weekend was our first break from school and some coworkers and I decided to hop on a train south to explore Tainan and Kaohsiung. Tainan was the former capital of Taiwan and had a lot of cool temples and old Dutch forts to see. Then we took a day trip by train to Kaohsiung, only an hour away. Kaohsiung was equally cool and we rented bikes to see the city all day. Both places are on the ocean which was pretty cool to see because it's been a while since I've seen the ocean!

Our time in Tainan and Kaohsiung was very fun and a much needed break from school. It also made me feel like travel in Taiwan is going to be very easy from now on because this past weekend I really got the hang of it!

Sunset on a beach in Kaohsiung

Looking over Kaohsiung

Kaohsiung, Taiwan

The travelers were thirsty....

Temple in Tainan

Ceiling of a temple in Tainan

Garden outside a temple in Tainan