High school visit

Last Tuesday, I was able to arrange to visit the high school that the Rotary club foreign exchange student attended this past year. I met him mid-morning at the subway station; he doesn't go to school early because he doesn't attend classes anymore. Apparently, the school gradually stopped requiring him and the other exchange students (5 in total at his school, all from the Rotary program) to go to class or be at school when it started; he said they didn't understand much in the regular classes anyway. (The first semester, all of the Rotary students from the Taipei district, about 50 total, took a Chinese class together at a University.)

Instead of going to class, the exchange students go to the teachers' office and study Chinese on their own (and/or play on the computers). The teachers' office was a big room with many desks (probably 50 or more) pushed together in lines. Several teachers were there during my time there; one was sleeping at his desk, 3 were talking together about something (it looked like curriculum or student work), and a few others were grading and working on powerpoint presentations.

While I was at the school, I was able to visit a class. It was a Chinese class for 2nd year students (high school is 3 years in Taiwan, equivalent to our 10th to 12th grades). The class had 60 students in it! The teacher asked the exchange students (Michael and another one, Constantine, from Germany, came to the class) and myself to introduce ourselves. The two guys spoke Chinese and I think the students were familiar with seeing them, so their introductions passed quickly. However, when I introduced myself (with the teacher translating), the students asked to learn some French, so I taught them a few phrases.

Then, the teacher started her lesson, which was introducing vocabulary from a photocopied sheet that she passed out. At the beginning of the class, about 5 students had their heads down sleeping. Some were eating, some were messing with their hair or cell phones, and many were talking with their friends. This all continued throughout her lesson, with maybe 30 students taking notes and occasionally engaged to some extent with the lesson. By the end of the hour long class, half of the students had their heads down sleeping. The teacher was at the front of the room with a microphone, writing on the board. (I forgot to mention that Michael had warned me that the school wasn't good, despite it being private.) Here's a picture from the end of class:



Here's a picture of the courtyard during lunch:



The school has a performing arts focus, so we watched one of their end-of-year performances. Here's a picture from the finale with all of the students on stage: