Two Months

It's now been almost two months since I began my Taipei adventure, or hell ( I'm still trying to figure it out). So far things have been going 100x better than when I first started. The Taiwanese staff have finally begun to warm up to me. I think because cram schools have such a high turn over, they don't bother getting to know you until they know that you're going to stick around. Teaching has also become more manageable because it's basically the same thing every lesson.

One thing I'm not so happy about is the amount of unpaid work. I have a child who hates English school and doesn't do his homework, so I have to sit with him everyday after
class and help him. There are also the reports and tests that I have to mark. My kindergarten Chinese teacher will often tell me about the amount of work she has to do,
but I see her doing most of it during my English time.

I was told that I should quit and try to find a higher payed job, but I don't want to go through the settling in process again, and I don't believe the conditions at other school are really that much better. I would rather leave and teach in another country (If you
want money Korea is the place to go).

On the brighter side I finally received my health insurance after two months.(Two months!! WTF Taiwan, I could have been hit by a scooter by now.) Apparently seeing a doctor now becomes incredibly cheap. Taiwan has one of the best health care systems in the world.

I would also like to share some classroom management techniques that I've come up with in the last two months.

If taking stars away isn't working, I now write the individual student's names on the whiteboard and make them stay ten minutes after class. It's a really easy punishment on
my side because I have to be there anyway to mark their homework and tests. If they continue to misbehave I just keep adding some more minutes.  It's also great because it's punishing individual students instead of half the class.
The only problem is if you have two many students stay after class, then it becomes a
mini party.

I've also come up with countdown star. If the children are failing to get their stuff out, or are just playing around, I start the countdown from 5, and 0 = bye bye star. Sometimes I'll even do a zombie walk to the board. The only problem with this is if the child is an arse and doesn't care about stars.

If they start pulling funny noises, faces, or start chewing their clothes I now do an impression of them. E.g, "I'm Frank, I like to eat my clothes, yummy yummy yummy." I'm not sure whybut this makes them stop. It's also entertaining.

I think that it's important to try and have fun while you teach, not just for the children but for your own sake as well. Those children can really wear you down and drive you
insane.