A Few Short Pictures Before Tainan...

This morning we're heading off to Tainan, so I figured I'd post a few pictures before we left. The sisters and I are enjoying the vacation thus far, so I'll keep you updated!

The Sister's enjoyed the soft-shell crab at the Vietnamese restaurant on Friday night!

The big golden Budda near our house.

Seesters on their Way!

Well, it's official: my sisters are somewhere in the air between Los Angeles and Taipei! I have waited patiently, and now that the time is here, I am getting very nervous! I'm obviously excited to see them too, but I'm really starting to wonder how they'll like Taiwan and how well Tina will sleep (my guess, not well!). It's just a little pressure hosting your only two sisters!

Thus far the schedule is pretty set, and since I don't think I'll get a chance to update my blog while they're here, I'll outline our trip right now. Tonight, Thursday, they land in Taipei at 8:30 and I will meet them and bring them back down to Taichung. Tomorrow they will come to school with me for our half day before the start of spring break; they get to meet all of my little darlings and even get to play SAT Math Jeopardy with 10th graders. Friday night a bunch of coworkers and I will take the sisters to our favorite Vietnamese seafood restaurant for some Taiwan Beer and deep fried soft-shell crap (um, YUM!).

Saturday will bring lots of goodies, especially for Melissa! We're going to hit two pearl/jade markets and then dinner somewhere that night- perhaps up the mountains at a place we refer to as the "Mushroom Palace." Then Sunday we take off for Tainan, a smaller city South of Taichung about 35 minutes by high speed rail. We'll spend the night, return to Taichung on Monday, and fly out to Beijing on Tuesday!

Now I can't give you an itinerary on Beijing because I'm not going to be planning anything once we're in China: I had to plan all of the Taiwan stuff! So we will see what those days bring, but I'm sure we'll see the Great Wall, The Forbidden Palace, and Mao (his body is perserved for viewing...).

If I can, I'll try to post some pictures before we leave Taiwan on Tuesday, but that will depend on how busy the seesters keep me! Wish us/me luck!

What I Love and Will Miss about our Students

There is no doubt that Asian students have more of an aptitude for mathematics. I think it has more to do with their schooling from a young age rather than genetics, but that's just my opinion. Either way, most of my students are ahead of their American counterparts as far as age groups go. One special group of students that makes this fact very obvious is the math olympiad team, whom I have worked with for two years now. They are 8th graders who can do more math than most college freshmen in the States.

It's an understatement to say I will miss them, for obvious and multiple reasons, but I will specifically really miss their intrinsic motivation to do math of all things. Just now the bell rang to release students from their last hour of the day to go to their dorms to change for activity. Michael, one of my math olympiads from the fall, came right over from art class (next door) only moments after the ringing of the bell left my ears. His purpose? "Do you have any hard math questions for me, Teacher?"

He does this from time to time; I don't teach him and never have, I just coached him in math olympiad in the fall of both of my years here. He just simply loves math so he comes and visits me sometimes. I don't have normal math problems just laying around my classroom, so I generally give him SAT math prep tests. And you know what, he does well on them. I love these kids' natural math ability!

Now we'll just see how he does with the special right triangles SAT sheet I just gave him!

They Can't Deny It, The Students Actually Like Math!

We've been working on our all school math competition , Math Wars, since early November and it has been an uphill battle. Entire prep periods devoted to a saturday in which we would put in basically volunteer hours just to have this event. Countless night trips to hardware stores and dollar stores gathering supplies. And of course, the ever constant battle with administration to get exactly what you need to make it happen. Needless to say, we were all really hoping it was be good in the end.

Lucky for us, our hard work paid off in full: Math Wars was a shining success! I knew it would be good when I started with an all school presentation in the auditorium at 1:30 yesterday. The students filed in just like any other day, but when I started talking they were really listening. I don't mean the sort of teenage half-listen and half continue talking with your friends, I mean actually listening. I explained the day to them: five different rooms that they could choose to be in focusing on different applications of math. We had the visual room, the vocabulary room, the construction room, logic room and finally the challenge room. It was up to them which room they wanted to compete in and I think that made a big difference for a lot of students.

I was in charge of the challenge room- "only for the serious mathematicians." As all of the students in the challenge room filed in and sat down at their tables in the cafeteria, I could tell there was definite excitement building. I explained the rules and the process of the day, and then went on to detail the opening activity. Now the opening activity was the only one that was a direct competition for the entire event. Each team had to use two containers, one with 3 units of water marked and the other with 5 units, and pour exactly 4 units of water into my cup which was also marked. As I finished explaining and took one last pause, I literally saw students sitting on the edge of their seats. So I just said "Go!" and I have never seen some of these kids move so fast!

It was really just as intense for the rest of the time; each house (team) was working on what they wanted because we provided them with five or six other challenge problems that they could choose from to try and gain points. Again, I have never seen some of these kids work so hard! I even saw some shaking hands and that is not an exaggeration!

The best part about it was that I was hearing the exact same thing from other teachers in the other four rooms. It seems like all of the students enjoyed their time and really got competitive about it. We had kids getting really pumped about the results which we are refusing to release until Monday at assembly. Little did they know they would like a math competition so much! :)

On the Eve of Math Wars...

Well folks, tomorrow is the day. The day that my math department has been preparing for since November. The video (see previous post to have your mind blown) has been made, posters have been hung around school, and all supplies have been gathered. Tomorrow is Math Wars 2012 at school, an all school math competition!

I am so excited I cannot possibly begin to explain. On one hand, I'm just so curious to see how the students like it and if it is as epic of a success as I am imagining in my head (I think so!). On the other hand, I'm just really excited for it to be over so I can have all of my prep periods back! It's going to be very fun and a great accomplishment to have under my belt, but boy does it take a lot of work to organize an event for 180 kids!

It is Friday at noon and I just put the finishing touches on the trophy for Math Wars. Now we just have to wait and see which house brings home the gold! Stay tuned...

St. Patrick's Day in Asia

Very American holiday's are always interesting when celebrated in Taiwan. As one can imagine, the Taiwanese don't get overly excited about holiday's such as St. Patrick's day. Now we do a pretty good job at picking up the slack and making the best of it, but it's always difficult to get certain essentials.

For St. Patricks day this year, Nichole (my roommate) and I decided to have a little green gathering at our apartment. And since it was such a fun themed party, we wanted to get costumes to really take it to the next level. We go to a costume shop where you can rent full costumes for school a lot. So we drove over there and checked it out last Friday. Sadly enough, we couldn't find any full body leprechaun costumes there, but we got creative and still made the party a hit!

We didn't have any green food coloring to make themed appetizers, but we did get foods in the three main colors of the Irish flag (and of course positioned them in the order of the flag as well). So even though we live in Asia where pots of gold and four leaf clover decorations are impossible to find, we gave it the old American try and did our best with random stuff! It turned out pretty well too!

Math Wars

I have fallen behind, once again, but boy do I have something exciting to tell you! In the time that I left you last, lots has happened obviously. We had our advisees over for dinner at our apartment, had a Ladies Night (teachers only that time) out on the town, and have been doing lots of other little things. So my time has been clearly elsewhere, instead of blogging. But something is in the works right now that I can't help but tell you all about.

We are having an all school math competition in one and a half weeks! I know, exciting. So to build anticipation for the event, we showed a video at assembly. Let me just post the link to the YouTube video of it and I'll let you see for yourselves...it is EPIC.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EAOSEiq7-FQ&feature=youtu.be

Enjoy :)