Math Olympiad Going for Gold this Year!

I have been having a little problem with my Math Olympiad team this year: they yell at each other...a lot. It's not like they call each other names and are mean for no reason, they just get really excited about math. For example, one of them will understand a problem and the others will not. Instead of explaining quietly and rationally, the one who understands will just yell at the other three until all of them are good and frustrated. It is loud and few problems are answered correctly. It's basically a double negative which in this case does not make a positive (get it? Math joke...).

Needless to say, the last few practices we have been working on teamwork and inside voices. Today my work has paid off!

I gave my team a long problem practice sheet (one long problem that has numerous steps and requires a write-up in the end) which they normally struggle on. Instead of the usual shouting and anger, they got to work and had amazing teamwork in solving today. After seeing their work today, I can say confidently that they have learned something from me and it is not any sort of mathematics- they already know more than me.

If they keep this up, I think we have a real chance at getting better than 3rd this year. Keep your fingers crossed that they keep this mellow attitude!

Oh, My Students

The things that ESL students will say can be down right hilarious. Along the same lines, the things they do can be equally as entertaining.

I have a student in tenth grade who is somewhat notorious throughout the school for being a clown. The kids all call him "Show Pan" which literally means "Little Fat." He always has something bizarre to say and usually sits in class randomly touching his stomach and chest (yes, UNDER the shirt...it is alarming when you first see it).

So last weekend the kids all went to an amusement park and Jason got a new water mug. Now everyday in class I look out to see Jason sipping water out of a huge pink elephant cup. I cannot help but smile when I look at him now! I love these kids :)

My New Lunch Table

Even lunch time is work time at our school. While other teachers sit in a teachers lounge and eat their brown paper bag lunches, we sit with our students and eat somewhat-strange Asian cafeteria food. Some days it can be draining to not have a break from the students, but it's days like today that make it totally worth it!

For the first few weeks of school, students are placed randomly with teachers. My lunch table for the first few weeks was ok; almost all of the kids had great English so conversations were easy and they liked to talk to me. But it was always sort of a chore to make conversation and get along with all of them (we had some interesting personality combinations at that table).

Lucky for me though, today the new lunch table assignments took affect. Last Friday the students chose their advisors for the year, a teacher they like and trust to sort of watch out for them. I ended up with 5 completely awesome students! I don't teach any of them this year, which is actually nice because I don't have to be their teacher and their advisor/friend, but I taught all of them last year. It is the best group of kids I could ask for!

I have two returning advisees, ReRe and ViVi, who were awesome last year and taught me a ton of Chinese. I also have Gwendeline who is quiet but super nice and two boys: Henry and Bill. Henry and Bill are these awesome 11th graders who always made me smile last year when I taught then first hour every day. Now I get to see them all for lunch each day! I am so excited, lunch is going to be great this year!

Long Time no Post!

Sorry about the lack of posting for the last week- it has been very busy around here! Ok, so where to begin?

Last weekend was a great weekend for me. On Saturday we had house competitions at school which basically means we make all of the kids go out to the track and run around for two hours. Normally my house, Archimedes, is not a very competitive house; we got 8th place out of 8 teams last year. But this house competition our kids really kicked it into gear and we actually won the whole competition!

As you can see, the house teachers get really into it also :)

That night a lot of the staff went out to eat at our favorite Greek restaurant in town. Everyone came over after to our apartment which was fun to play host again (with less cooking this time!). Sunday was a normal lazy Sunday and then the madness of the week began again.

Monday brought all of the normal teaching and miscellaneous tasks as normal with one exception: I got to play badminton with my students after school. I hate to say it, but it was a very stereo-typical moment for me because I was playing hard-core badminton with my Asian students. I was so tired afterwords! But it was very fun and totally worth the lost prep time I normally have after school.

Wednesday brought more badminton because I was a referee for the badminton match at our school. Two other schools from a nearby city, Hsinchu, came to play our ICA badminton team. It was really fun to see the kids compete and for me to pretend to be a referee for a night!

Thursday was also an exciting day because the students were asked to pick their advisor for the year. It was fun watching all of them excitedly huddle over their paper with their friends to pick their teachers- it tends to be a very strategic process. I was told countless times that I was chosen as a "number 1" and thus am anxiously waiting to see what kids I get to sit with at lunch for the rest of the year!

And finally, it was the weekend again. My Saturday classes were good, I went to the jade market afterwards, and did a lot of sleeping; sounds pretty dorky but sometimes that's exactly what you need after a long week. So now I'm gearing up for another week and I promise to post more than just once a week from now on!

My Love Affair with Mangos and Teaching

This past week I have been able to discover (or rediscover in the latter case) my love for things in my life. The first: mangos in Taiwan. The second: teaching.

Mangos in Taiwan taste five million times better than any mango I have ever eaten in the States. I think it has something to do with Taiwan being a tropical island. Other than that though, I have no idea why they taste so much better here, they just do. In the past five days, I have eaten three mangos completely by myself. All three of them I have eaten with my bare hands, standing over the cutting board. My roommate has been somewhat appalled/amused.

As far as teaching goes, I have always known I loved it. Some days are obviously better than others, but this week it seems like I really remembered what it's like to teach and teach well. I am getting into a groove with all of my classes as far as figuring out how fast or slow I can go with the content. I'm getting to know my students well, just like last year, but much quicker. Most importantly, I walk away from my days thinking that the actual teaching periods of my day are the best parts of my day (it's the administrative and other school obligations that cause me stress).

This week has been so fun for me, trying new methods of teaching and improving on my plans from last year. Every time I ask a question and can literally see my students thinking and synthesizing in their heads, it makes me smile. I'm curious to see how my A-level geometry students do on the homework for tonight- "draw a cartoon or series of pictures that shows/explains all vocabulary in chapter 1." Now I just need to plan next week! And maybe buy another mango....

Movie Soundtrack

I love Asian pop music. My students know this, my family (for the most part) knows this, and if you've been reading this blog at all over the past year, you know this too. My advisee ReRe gave me over a hundred k-pop songs last year (Korean pop music) which I listened to all summer. So I felt as if my music selection needed some additions. Thank god for my advisee Vivi.

The students just went to see a movie together, a Taiwanese movie called You are the Apple of My Eye. the kids said it was just ok, but Vivi said the music in it was awesome. THEN she told me she ha the soundtrack and asked if I wanted to import it to my iTuned library. Um, yes I want to!

I am importing 15 new Asian pop songs as I type this and it is making my Wednesday a very happy day! Check out the trailer here:

http://youtu.be/MFb0pKRFDTM

Hostesses with the Mostesses

Last night was our first official dinner party in our apartment. I don't think I've ever played hostess before and thus was a little stressed at times. It doesn't help that I really am an invalid in the kitchen- I set an oven mitt on fire and burned my arm throughout the course of the night. I also called our friends Kate and Jane at 4:45 and yelled into the phone, "When can you get here!?!" I was perhaps overreacting prematurely however because everything turned out perfect!

Nichole and I planned on making Veggie Enchiladas, a recipe she found online (it was super awesome, I suggest you try it! http://www.perrysplate.com/2011/03/stacked-roasted-vegetable-enchiladas.html) . We got tortillas from an American type deli downtown on Friday and then went to a dark and scary market on Saturday to barter with the local farmers for our veggies. Thus all day yesterday was devoted to chopping vegetables.

Then the issues with the enchiladas was the fact that we had to roast ALL the veggies before baking the dish and we only have a small toaster over to work with. As you can see from this picture, we also had about a million veggies to roast!

It took way longer than anticipated because we had to do two separate roastings and each took about 40 minutes. Then there was the assembly of the enchiladas and the baking again, and this was the point in the evening when neither of us had showered yet and I was getting very frazzled! But like I said, we just kicked it into gear and somehow everything got accomplished.

Our friends Jane and Kate showed up just as we were getting things completely under control so it was time for them to get their appetizers ready- homemade humus and homemade bruschetta. Both delicious, and just in time because people started arriving just after they finished!

Jane making her Bruschetta which was DELICIOUS.

As people were walking through the door, we put our enchiladas in our tiny oven and crossed our fingers that everything would work out. After we watched our friends and coworkers take the first bites and heard the subsequent hush that falls over a crowd when they are stuffing their faces, we knew we had a hit. When I tasted it myself, I was pretty impressed as well and thus continued to silently inhale my food with the rest of them :)

Sous chef checking the finished product. Oh, and this was not the oven mitt that I burned, that one is below the pan in this picture and if you look close enough, you can tell where I burned it on a coil. I'm just glad the fire alarms didn't go off...on second thought, there was a LOT of smoke so now I'm concerned that they didn't go off. That seems like somewhat of a safety hazard...

Our awesome chef and Dan, who was very excited to eat apparently.

The girls enjoying our balcony.

Happy, well-fed house guests.

All in all, an excellent first hostessing experience! I think we'll try it again sometime. Maybe next time I will keep my cool and stay away from the oven in general!

Funny Translations

I've always said that Chinese and English do NOT translate well. They are structurally very different so it's hard to literally change words back and forth. Chinese can also have confusing and complicated combinations of sounds and words that mean totally different things when combined as such.

The funniest translations us American teachers have come across thus far though, are the names of animals. Most often, animals have two chinese characters or sounds to their name. When you literally translate them, it can be hilarious! Here are some of my favorites: giraffe translates to "long-neck deer"and turkey translates to "fire chicken." These definitely make sense to me, I can see where they came from.

A new one I learned today is a little less obvious: penguin literally translates to "Industrious Goose." I can't imagine how that came to be, but I like it anyway!

First Math Olympiad Practice of the Year

There is a pretty strong stereotype of Asian students that most people believe to be true. If you read any of my blog posts from last year about my 7th graders or had a chance to talk to me this summer, you know now that is not always true. However, there are days as a teacher in Taiwan when they do live up to the expectations of the masses.

Today was our first math olympiad practice. Our competition will be on October 29th so we only have about a month and a half of twice a week practices to prepare. Last year we took third, this year we are all aiming for gold. I have the exact same four kids as I did last year and even after one practice with them again, I am reminded at how amazingly smart they all are.

What was more impressive than their logical thinking skills however, was the fact that they diligently worked on a practice sheet the moment I put it in front of their noses for the full 50 minutes of activity this evening. Moreover, they already sat through 8 hours of school before doing that (after only a 20 minute break also). As eighth graders full of energy, it s astonishing to me when they completely flip a switch and become focused because they have such a drive to answer all of the math questions correctly. I love my students sometimes!

Sunday Funday

So today was my first day off since getting here that wasn't devoted to power cleaning our apartment. Thus today was spent checking out our new neighborhood! Check it out:

This is in the courtyard of our apartment building. It's like our own little garden of zen in the middle of a crazy Asian city.

Down the street from our apartment; note the blue truck coming towards you (standard for Taiwan).

We found our favorite type of grocery store just down the street from us! You will also see a foreigner in this picture, do not worry, that is actually just my roommate Nichole.

Where we park our scooters every day. Very important to remember your license plate number because it is the quickest way to find yours!

Back to School, Back to School

It is Saturday night at 8 p.m. We had 1.5 days of school this week and already I'm exhausted; it makes me a little nervous for next week which will be the normal 5.5 days (yikes). But all in all, it was an excellent 1.5 days this first week of school.

This year, as far as teaching is concerned, will be amazing. Last year I had all lower level classes which just meant that my students' English and math skills were low. It was really fun and I loved all of my students. This year however, I get the department chair pick of classes and I teach really high level kids. I only teach 9th and 10th graders this year, totally different from last year when I spanned from 7th to 11th grade, and only A and B classes (the best English and math skills for their respective grades- score!). I can tell already, after only one full day of classes, that this year will be much more intensive in the math and less on the ESL side. Since I am not trained in ESL and am trained in math, this is a good switch. I am excited to challenge my students this year which will also be an appropriate challenge for myself professionally.

I am also really excited to see how the new staff works out this year. Last year I was one of the newbies, and it's really fun for me to be on the other side of the table now. I am mentoring the new TOEFL teacher, Bella, who is an ABC (American Born Chinese...or I guess Taiwanese) and she is amazing which makes my job as a mentor very easy. She is very intelligent and really fun so it's great to work with her. And it's fun to help my friend Tricia out in the math department since it's her first year here as well.

Above everything else though, it is so amazing to see the students again. I don't know if it was the distance over the summer that made our bonds stronger, or maybe I just forgot how much fun they can be, but it is SOO fun seeing them again. Even some of the students who I didn't really have a strong connection with last year have been so excited to see me, and in return, I'm really interested in talking to them again too. Reuniting with my students from last year was something I completely underestimated coming back for a second year and I'm glad because it is a total bonus now that I'm here! I've never been hugged more in my life I think.

Tomorrow is the only full day off I have this week and since I stayed at school until 5 tonight (after teaching classes this morning that is) I have absolutely no work to do during my day off. I am greatly looking forward to it as you can imagine! I can only hope I won't get bored (joke).