October 22

Well what can I say,

I know it has been awhile since I have blogged, so I would like to begin with a disclaimer. I now realize that I will not have the time to blog as much as I thought I would when I first started this site. With that being the case, I will try to blog a couple of times each month, and this will probably coincide with times that I post pictures on my yahoo photo albums. Lately I have had some issues with the photo website and the pictures I had loaded were not able to be viewed. I hope to have time in the near future to sit down and remedy the situation. I would like encourage all of you to read the blogs of my friends here in Taiwan. They are posted as links on this website, and I know some of them are better about blogging than I am. Plus we all write about different things and this can give a better perspective of the total experience for those of you who are interested.

At school, these past two weeks have revolved around the students’ monthly tests. This last Monday and Tuesday the kids took their first set of monthly tests. They have these in October, November, and December. For two days each month, the students take tests in all of their classes. They have 4 extended periods each day, and school gets out an hour and a half earlier than normal. The atmosphere is similar to a finals week in college. Us teachers proctor the tests over those two days, and do not watch our own test. I watched chemistry, physics, and junior high English tests.

Before the tests, much time was spent to prepare students for their test in my class. After the tests, we have to check those tests. The obvious disadvantage to this system is that we have all of our test grading at the same time. So I had about 170 tests to check, from my Senior 1 and Senior 2 classes. They were not multiple choice tests, but rather creative written tests. So that is how I had been spending much of my time in the past week. Thank God that I am done checking the tests though.

Also in this post I would like to comment the importance of the test in Taiwanese society. I know in America there is debate about teaching to the test, and various concerns about No Child Left Behind and putting great emphasis on tests. Well, here in Taiwan teaching to the test is taken to a new level.

School here is designed to teach to “the Test”. In the final year of school, students take a big test that showcases their intelligence in all of the subjects. This test will determine their lives. Universities admit students based on their scores on this test. A good score on the test allows students to go to a good university, a poor showing means they cannot go to a school they would otherwise like to attend. The pressure for this test is immense. Beginning in Junior High School, the entire education system is designed to prepare students for this test. The goal of every class is to help students do better on this test, so they can go to a good school. So the entire goal of education here is to teach to the test.

During my first week here in Taiwan, I remember meeting a student who was entering his last year of high school. I asked him what he thought about it, and his reply was that it was too much pressure. He was nervous, and the test was months away.

There are so many more things that I could reflect on about education over here, and I can do this in another entry. For now, I should get going.

May God bless all of you, and I pray that you remember me and my students in your prayers. May God bless our efforts as we learn, and may God give us peace, strength, and faith.