Teaching English In Taiwan

We spent a year teaching English in Taiwan from June 2007 to July 2008.

My older sister had spent two years teaching there and she had had a very positive experience of it. My brother had also spent 8 months teaching and had lots of positive things to say about it.

My husband Jaye is always up for adventure, so there was no resistance on his part. We decided to get married and go!

We arrived in Taiwan on the 19th June 2007.

With the help of some old friends of my sister, we found a stunning apartment and both found jobs within the first two weeks.

However, the next semester would only begin at the END of August, two months away! Even then, we would have to work for 4 weeks before we got paid! So the first money we could expect to earn would be at the end of September.

Arrive a week or so before the beginning of the semester, not at the end of a semester!

If you're worried about getting a job teaching English in Taiwan, don't be. There are plenty of jobs available for English teachers if you genuinely like children: it comes across.

Busking For Our Dinner

So we got out the guitar and started busking in the center of town for food money.

Teaching English in Taiwan Sure Ain't Easy

When the semester finally started I was thrown into major stress. If anyone tells you teaching English in Taiwan is easy, they are talking out their a**. If you teach English in Taiwan, you will most probably work for a private English school called a Bushiban.

Children go to their normal school and then attend English school AFTER their normal school hours are complete. So it is like after care, except they are back at school.

So from 9am to 4pm you teach kindergarten: children anywhere from 2 to 6 years old and then from 4pm to 7:30pm you teach children from 7 to 16 years old.

Teaching English in Taiwan is Illegal?

The strange thing is, although everyone does it, teaching English in Taiwan to kindergarten children is actually illegal. The government passed a law stating that only Chinese teachers may teach English to kindergarten children, not foreign teachers.

This is due to a fear of diluting the Chinese culture. However, every parent who places their child in an English school expects and demands a native English speaking teacher. In fact senior members of the foreign police may well have a child in your kindergarten classroom. Bribes are paid and business goes on.

Now and again, however, there is a raid and as a foreign teacher on the school premises during kindergarten hours, you have to run for your life! Jaye dropped from a second floor window onto an air conditioning unit and then jumped down into someone's back garden once to get away from the police. A colleague and I hid under desks in a darkened classroom in the basement. Thankfully it wasn't a full raid and they didn't come down that far.

We found it really funny.

Of all the things we'd ever done in our lives that might have given us cause to run away from police, we never imagined that teaching might be one of them!

For my first week as a teacher teaching English in Taiwan I cried every day. I was convinced the children hated me, I had no idea of how to discipline and keep control.

We were earning good money, we lived in Taoyuan where rents are low, so we had a fabulous, new, two bedroom apartment which cost us very little. However, our money was being eaten up in a different direction. If you eat lots of fresh produce you pay through the nose.

If you eat take out every day you can get by with spending next to nothing, but if you eat healthy food, you pay!

The fruit is DELICIOUS though!

I adored all the children in my classes, and they loved me back. Jaye was like a celebrity at his school. The kids nicknamed him Super J!

I was very gratified to be able to turn some of the most disruptive children in class into the most helpful and happy using some of Supernanny's excellent techniques. My colleagues were shocked to see some of these children who in the previous semester had been labeled by other teachers as 'most problematic' happily carrying my books for me after class, beautifully behaved and thriving on the positive reinforcement they were receiving.

All the previously misbehaving children warmed up to me to the extent that, beyond the first few weeks, I seldom needed to exert any disciplinary measures (which, in Supernanny style, involved standing in the corner for a minute per year of age, followed by some eye contact and straight talking at their level, followed by a massive hug).

I put up my list of class rules on the whiteboard at the beginning of each class, reinforced what I expected from them, and that was that. But I never became one of those teachers that wants every child to be sitting up straight with their hands in their lap. I didn't mind if they ran around and acted like children. In fact, I LOVED it!

The only reason I ever needed to have that control was in case the principal came past: If I said sit down and be quiet, I needed them to listen.

The amount of laughter that I encountered in my kindergarten classes was a delight. If something was even vaguely funny, like I dropped a marker, they would laugh so hard and with such abandon.

Taiwan Weather

We had been told that Taiwan weather was super hot and that we should throw out all our winter clothes and just pack for summer.

When winter came around we discovered that we should have kept some winter clothes. It was freezing! Especially considering that it rained non stop and we only had scooters to get around.

Driving on a scooter in the freezing, driving rain is not my idea of fun. So, while Taiwan weather is generally great, and the winter is generally short, don't be fooled into thinking you won't need your winter woolies!

Teaching English in Taiwan - Language Difficulties

Living in a country where barely anyone speaks English and all the street signs, maps, shop and restaurant names are in Chinese can be enormously challenging.

It is very humbling as you are forced to become very dependent on help from the few people in your circle who speak both English and Chinese.

You need help with everything, dealing with your landlord, opening a bank account, going to the pharmacy, returning something from the store, making a phone call!

I found this the most difficult aspect, as my independence has always been very important to me. I had a little note with my address written on it in Chinese tucked into my wallet, so that I would be able to find my way home should I ever get lost.

A friend told me the story of how she got lost one day but didn't know her own address, so no one could help her! She eventually managed to make her way back, but it was a very stressful situation, and she made sure someone from the school wrote down her address for her after that.

At restaurants, we had to rely on Chinese friends to explain the menu and then we would memorize the places on the menu that had the vegan options and then point to those options if we ever returned to that restaurant.

Below: At our favorite Japanese Vegetarian Restaurant with some friends.

Money Money Money

If you are careful with your money and work full time, there is no reason why you wouldn't be able to have a very high standard of living as well as saving a good amount of money from teaching English in Taiwan.

You are not paid for holidays or sick days, so you have to take this into account as well.

Teaching English in Taiwan - Teaching the Tiny Tots!

If you sincerely love children, it is really enjoyable, but there are always a lot of pressures placed on you, you actually have to teach them a whole heap of stuff, children as young as four are TESTED constantly, they have to memorize enormous amounts of stuff and YOU have to drum that into their heads.

I think of them often and I so miss being surrounded by the spontaneity and joy of living that I experienced in some of those classrooms. I learned so much about people, and love, and laughter, expressing pure joy and the love of life.

I am very grateful for my year teaching English in Taiwan, it taught me an enormous amount and was a tremendous growth experience.

If you want to spend a year in an environment so completely different to anything you could ever have prepared yourself for, then consider spending it teaching English in Taiwan.

Below: My kindergarten class, singing A Whole New World, they spontaneously wrapped their arms around each other and swayed as they sang!

Playing a set at Spring Scream Music Festival in Kenting

Kenting Beach