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Not less than twenty-four hours after touching down in Taipei the second time, I was sitting in a lecture hall among forty other men and women. Some of them were the same age as I was, while others were older with far more teaching credentials than I had. Exhaustion filled me, mostly because I’d spent much of the night chatting with my roommate and one of my now good friends, Rona, after she arrived as well. We awaited our training leaders to start what would be a week’s worth of learning how to teach and more about the HESS curriculum.
The education system in Taiwan, as I have come to learn, is different than that of America. Their experience in school is also vastly different. Anyone who comes from a western culture can recall the process of applying to colleges, especially American colleges. The things that matter most when you apply are your test scores, your grades, and any extracurricular activities you happen to be involved in. Now, just imagine that from kindergarten onward, your potential schools wanted your grades to be in tip top shape, and that you were required to do after school tutoring, sometimes for multiple subjects every week. That, my friends, is what many of the residents of nations like Taiwan are used to.
During my time in Taiwan, I worked for a buxiban (補習班) known as HESS. In Chinese, HESS is called 何嘉仁 (pronounced Héjiārén). It’s one of the largest, if not the largest English buxiban, on the island. They have classes as young as kindergarten and as old as high school students. We were trained to teach nearly every level and type of curriculum that HESS had. I assumed, upon coming to Taiwan, that traditional school and buxiban classes would be the same, but it is a little different than that of regular school classes.
Many parents send their children to English class from a young age after school to give them a leg up on their peers. As I have mentioned before, grades are everything. Kids are taught here to study, study, study, so that they may go to a good junior high school, then senior high school, and then eventually because of their persistent hard work, a great university. Grades in buxiban do not count towards their regular schooling, but instead help them to be way ahead of the curve.
Unfortunately, much of the time, if they fail to get above an 80 or sometimes 90, some kids cry and will be devastated. Parents expect them to do well, and many a times, I have had to comfort a child crying over a 92 on a test, when I would have been leaping for joy knowing I didn’t fail whatever subject it happened to be. Western and eastern culture, as I have learned over the last two years, value education differently.
There have been some rather interesting moments in classes over the last couple of years. Often, I catch my students doing something extremely silly and can’t help but laugh along with them. Other times, they are laughing at me for something I said. And, funny enough, with some of the classes that I have taught from the very start of their English studies at HESS, they have picked up on my sarcasm. That is both a great, and a terrible thing all wrapped into one pleasant bundle. All in all, at the end of even the most trying days, I always feel like I impacted someone as a teacher.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but after being submersed in the buxiban culture in Taiwan, I can’t help but wonder what it would be like for America to pick up something like the sort. Maybe not the intensity of Asian countries, but I would have loved to take classes, like language classes or extra courses, when I had free time. Many of my friends who came from second or third generation families, sometimes first generation, went to language school on the weekends. With a world as diverse and globally connected as the present, it would only be in our best interest to nurture a love for learning in future generations. Especially when it comes to languages. Language is the key to communication, and if we cannot communicate to begin with, how can we work together in the future?
If you would have asked me, back during my sophomore year of university, if I wanted to be a teacher, I probably would have laughed at the thought of teaching anyone just about anything. Even though a professor of mine had told me I had a gift for explaining and speaking to people, I never even let the thought cross my mind until I saw the city lights of Taichung and the gigantic buildings downtown. But now that I have been a teacher, I can honestly say it was liberating.
As much as I guess my students took from me as a teacher, teaching them also taught me a ton. I learned how to be confident, even while standing in front of twenty teenagers and without a second teacher in the classroom. I embraced being completely wild and strange, and came to find that being comfortable with myself made me more likable, because I wasn’t trying to be someone else. I was being me, unconditionally, and that hopefully inspired some of my students to do the same. And of course, I picked up some Chinese and some pop culture references to assure that I wouldn’t become one of those out of touch adults sooner than I wanted to. I realized I loved speaking in front of others and sharing my ideas. It gave me a sense of comfort and confidence all bound together, something that I hope to find in whatever job I take next.
So to anyone reading this who thinks they can’t be a teacher because they are too shy in front of people, worried about the unknowns, or any other reason, here’s your confirmation that you can do it. I went from being terrified out of my mind to stand in front of a bunch of little kids, explaining the alphabet, to hugging students and dancing with them during their music time in class. Anything, and I mean absolutely anything, is possible for you as far as jobs, as long as you remember that you don’t know everything. In fact, you probably will learn way more than you think you need to, but that’s the best part. By the end, you’ll find you’re a very different person than you were at the start, and that’s how you know you did all that you were supposed to do. That’s how you know, despite any trials and tribulations you faced, that you succeeded.
Thanks for indulging! Until then, stay rad!
