First Teaching Gig, Taiwan - Robert Vogt

I just got off the plane from L.A. to Taipei. My supervisors the Taiwanese Mr. Yang and Singaporean Gerald Chen picked me up at Chiang Kai Shek airport.

I’m in Mr. Yang’s car when Gerald asks, “What lessons have you got planned for tomorrow?”

“Wha-ha…, what?” I come back. “I got all the textbooks and I bought some kids’ books.”

Next day I’m scurrying around a classroom deep in the sticks in Taiwan with a book I had got at Walmart with pictures of deer and other animals.

“Deer…, deer!” I’m yelling scared to death running around placing the book in front of kids’ faces. “This is a deer!”

I haven’t got a clue what I’m doing. A friend of mine had said his father was looking for an English teacher in Taiwan and within that week I was on a plane to Taipei.

“The parents are paying a lot of money for you to teach here,” Gerald’s wife Cheryl tells me. “You need to spend time preparing lessons. The Sycamore Tree School in Costa Mesa that sent you here is expecting results. You are the first foreign teacher in this program and if it fails you will be letting them down.”

I arrive four hours before class the next day. I’ve got to get this English teaching thing figured out. I’ve got to figure out how to teach!

Then I write a dialogue out on the whiteboard. A bunch of what’s your name? And I’m from such and such town stuff.

I had walked away from grad school at a prestigious art school in the U.S. because of substance abuse issues and now I’m here in Taiwan trying to figure out how to teach.

So now I’ve got an entire American kindergarten school curriculum I’m supposed to teach Taiwanese kids after they finish their school day. It doesn’t really add up.

The kids file in at 4:30 p.m. and when they are all sitting down I notice a boy pulling out a can of Mr. Coffee. “A 10 year old all hopped up on caffeine,” I’m thinking. “That should be fun.”

We turn to the letter ‘B’ in the Jumbo Alphabet Book.

“Boy, bedroom, bat, baseball, baseball bat,” I start.

The kids mimic and mock my English, then we began to go through the sentences relating to words that start with the letter ‘B’.

“The boy plays baseball with his baseball bat,” I model.

The students repeat after me and we go to the next sentence.

This gets stale and we take a break. I head to the restroom.

When I get back my student Don is sitting on the floor looking angry.

“I no egg-ah! I no egg-ah! He is yelling as some kids have been taunting him about his name which sounds almost the same as the word for egg in Chinese.

“Teach-ah! I no egg-ah! I change my name!”

“No, I don’t think teacher Cheryl would like that.”

“But teach-ah! My name is egg-ah!”

“No it’s not,” I point to another boy. “His name is Donald. It’s the same name.”

He stares fiercely at nothing in front of him vehemently screaming, “I NO EGG-AH!”

Wanting to get the class going again not caring what he calls himself even if it’s Teofilo Stevenson I give in.

“OK Don, what do you want your name to be?”

“Freddy! I want my name is Freddy!”

“OK Freddy…, ah could you please go back to your seat now.

He does and soon I’m leading the class out in a rousing rendition of, “Head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes, knees and toes.” With all of the actions being carried out by myself and all the students including Freddy. “Head and shoulders knees and toes, knees and toes, knees and toes, knees and toe-ooh-oh-ooh-ohs,” I improvise.

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