Experiential Learning: AIDSummer in Taiwan
I participated in AIDSummer in the summer after my sophomore year, in July 2013. I found out about this experience through my friend who had participated before, and it sounded like a great opportunity for me to do something that I love, teach, and also go overseas to my home country. You can find out more about the program here, it is hosted by the OCAC and Taiwan Ministry of Education. The program ran from the end of June to the end of July and consisted of one week in the Chientan Youth Center for training, two weeks of teaching English in a rural elementary or middle school in groups of 4, 6, or 8, and one week of touring Taiwan.
Training week was slow and suffocating at times, because we were in a lecture room for the majority of the morning and afternoon, and in planning sessions during the evening. However, the material that we learned from the education professionals proved to be very useful; I learned how to keep students on track and also how to effectively create lessons that would be useful for them. The professionals emphasized that we were not only teaching them English, but we were also teaching them about America and how the culture there was different than the culture in Taiwan. It was also a great time to meet other volunteers that shared the same passion for teaching, children, or even Taiwan.
I, along with five other volunteers, was assigned to Haiduan Middle School located in the northern part of Taitung (which is in eastern Taiwan). I had no idea what to expect, but I love Taiwan and teaching so I knew that it couldn't be that bad. Environment-wise, I expected Haiduan to be even hotter than Taipei, but because it was located in the countryside and free from pollution and the city life, it was considerably cooler than Taipei. The first weekend, we visited the nearby villages with our teacher/supervisor and got to meet some of the families and our future students. It was very cozy and it almost made me jealous of the lifestyle that they had; they weren't disconnected from the world since they still had technology available to them, but their simple and homely lifestyle seemed to be comforting. The middle school was located off the side of the highway, and the nearest town and convenience store was about 20 minutes away by car/motorbike. In a way, it was a nice break from the buzz of the city and I was able to bond with my other groupmates through movie nights, lesson-planning nights, etc. In fact, once we reunited with the other volunteers for the tour, I craved the solitude and peacefulness that I had experienced in my two weeks at Haiduan.
Teaching ten to fifteen middle schoolers is just as hard as it sounds. My teaching partner and I were assigned Class B, which meant that they had an intermediate level of English. However, I was unprepared for how low their level of English was; it was probably the equivalent of a third grader here in America. I was also unprepared because my two cousins who lived in Taipei and were in fourth and sixth grade had pretty decent English and were on par with fourth and sixth graders back in the US. My friend who was teaching sixth graders in a semi-rural area closer to Taipei had students who were able to write simple letters and make basic conversation, unlike my students. In a way, that only made me want to help them learn English even more. We would usually start off with a powerpoint of vocabulary words to learn today, each incorporating a theme, and then have activities, handouts, and games that helped reinforce the words and their meanings. Overall, I wanted to provide a lasting summer experience for them and engage them in learning while having fun.
Tour week was amazing as well, I had been to Taiwan once before (that I can remember) and I was looking forward to visiting areas that I hadn't been to yet. Now, it was our chance to experience more of Taiwan's culture and see how beautiful the country was.