5/16 School Visit 復興中小

The first impression of this visiting is: RICH. The second impression would be: students are at good language proficiency and most of them are highly motivated. The third impression is: some of the students are a little arrogant (I am sorry to say this but I really want to be honest).

The learning environment is surprisingly good in this school, and even the lighting in the classroom is different. The class I observed is seven graders. Everything in the classroom is clean, delicate, and well arranged. There are more than 50 students in this class, and I think this is the reason why it was little difficult for the teacher to quiet down the class at the beginning. Most of the lesson was lectured in English, and I was surprised that most of the students could understand well, and even more, they could answer questions in very fluent English.

The lesson they were learning that day was about city/country and landmark. The teacher prepared working sheets and powerpoint slides with pictures for students, which I think were good tools to facilitate students’ learning and understanding. While the activity was going on, I found that there were more than 15 students in this class have been traveled or lived abroad. Many of them seemed to have been to more than one country. When the teacher asked students to offer their answers of landmark of a particular city or country, some of them gave answers which could show those students were advanced learners, such as “Forbidden City”, “Opera House”, and “Sphynx”. In fact, I have to say I myself learned a lot from that day’s lesson.

All the students were very concentrated on learning, and most of them were enthusiastically raised their hands to provide different answers. Though they only stood up and said the names of the landmark instead of providing a complete sentence, I found their pronunciation was native-like.

However, it is impossible to have a class of students that are all high proficiency learners, and it is true in this class, too. I noticed that if the student who was singled out by name could not provide an answer to the question, she had to stand till she could think of one. Later, the teacher explained in the discussion after the class that she was trying to promote a cooperative atmosphere among students. She thought, in this way other students would help the standing girl to get an answer. This might really work, but this might make the student who was standing there feel stressed, too. And I believe that to be a slower leaner in this class has been very much stressed already.

Therefore, what happened next made me really angry. A girl who sitting in the first row could not make a complete sentence of “I have been to ~ (name of a country/city)”, so she stood there for a while. Then the teacher was trying to help her to come up with an answer, finally the student said: “I have been to Tainan”. I heard some students laughed, and at the moment I was just wondering that they were laughing because they thought it was interesting, funny, or they were taunting her because she never went abroad, there was a voice came out from the back of the classroom: “好爛喔”. I was shocked, and sad. Looked at the sight of the girl’s (who had difficult to answer the question) back, I started to imagine how stressful for her to be in this class, and then I found myself did not like this school as the moment I first entered it in this afternoon.

Stepped out of the gate of school, I finally realized what is significant to education. Comfortable and cozy learning environment, expensive high-tech equipments, various teaching and learning facilitations, and highly motivated and good language proficiency students, these are all essential elements toward successful learning, but what is success, eventually? Students who get good grades not necessarily know how to respect others, and this is enough to turn the so-called “success” meaningless. I think in this school rich in resources, how to teach students here being rich in their mind and spirit would be a more important lesson.

4/25 School Visit 中山女高

The class I observed was Stephanie's class, which is a math and science gifted class. It was a surprising experience which is far from my imagination, or say, my stereotypical impression. I used to believe that students who are good at math and science won’t be good at language learning, but what I used to believe is not true in Stephanie’s classroom.

At the moment I entered the classroom I could sense their friendly attitude and curiosity. We sat in the back of the classroom. The students turned to smile at us time after time, and this made us feel that we were welcomed.Stephanie asked us to introduce ourselves to the whole class before students give their presentation. It was a little funny, because we (student teachers) were shy and hesitated to go up stage to do the self introduction, instead, students are very breezy and curious about us that one of them even came to us and stretched out her hand to invite us! I was very impressive.

Next, Stephanie asked students to do their presentations. They were divided into several groups two weeks ago and started to do a lot of preparation work before they present it today. Each group had to choose a product and sell the product by auction online. Students took pictures of their product and designed powerpoint slides, and on the slides they listed the advantages of the product, the reasons why we should buy it, and the reasons why they make that price of their product. Finally, they had to go up to the stage and present it to the whole class in English.

As for their performances, first, I can see they really put a lot of efforts on this presentation. Each group had their own style of presenting their unique product. There is no need for them to emphasized how much time they spend on the preparation work, you just can tell from the design of their powerpoint slides, the funny and interesting elements they added in their performance, and the laughter and attention from other students as audience. They really did a great job!

Second, unlike my stereotypical impression of students in Taiwan, those kids were brave and willing to speak up English in front of their classmates, and especially for today, in front of a group of strangers (10 student teachers sitting in the back). Though there were some grammatical errors in their powerpoint slides and spoken language, those errors did not affect our understanding of their presentation. And Stephanie chose to ignore the errors so students could have their presentation not being interrupted. Averagely speaking, their pronunciation was pretty good, and I would say they speak English much better than our freshmen in Tamkang University. At least they were willing to take the risk, and this deserved to be encouraged!

Third, though there may be a lot of preparation work and a little stress for students, I thought they felt happy during the learning process. Every student was concentrated. I could tell from their facial expression that they expected to see other group’s product and performance, and meanwhile they also expected themselves to do a good presentation. They create a wonderful atmosphere for learning! While the presenting group were showing their product and persuading us to buy it, the rest of the students had to finish evaluation sheets to decide which product they want to buy the most. In this way, the best product and group was chosen.

After student’s presentation, Stephanie gave us a short demonstration how she started a new lesson. This new lesson was about Migration of Food. Stephanie raised several questions like: “What comes to your mind when we talk about French desert?”, or “How about American food?”. Students were willing to make a guess, and then Stephanie gradually led them to the topic they were going to learn in the following weeks. Actually, students were finding their way to what they are going to learn.

All in all, no matter it was students’ presentation or learning a new lesson under teacher’s guidance, this is a real student-centered classroom. I used to wonder how student-centered way of teaching can be practiced in a real classroom, and today, Stephanie proves it to me! I really learned a lot from this school visit!