I guess if you send your child away to live and attend school, you sort of wash your hands of them in many aspects. Obviously my students' parents love them and want the best for them, but they realize that they can't do much when they don't live under the same roof.
What baffles me still though, is the relative wealth of our students, and parents day is always a good reminder of that. On the whole, our students are very modest for being how wealthy they actually are. However, the other day one of my students was telling me how their "servant" got arrested for being an illegal immigrant after serving his family for his entire life. I had literally nothing to say to that story in response because I couldn't relate in the slightest. After a few moments, I finally managed to asked where she was from and he told me he didn't know.
Stories like that make me realize that the parents I'm about to talk to are from an entirely different social class from me along with an extremely different culture. What I take comfort in though is that Taiwanese people are very gracious and very interested in being good hosts. I am never looked down upon here, even when I am talking to a parent who owns five factories in China that make all of the Nikes supplied to the West Coast. It is such a comfort and also something that I'm not sure I could say were true if the situation were reversed and they were teaching at an elite school in America...
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