Family Fun Day

At the end of the year, the school always has a family fun day, where activities are set up in each room and parents and siblings are invited. It's always lots of fun. Michael and I had our portraits sketched in under three minutes (it looks nothing like us) and then Michael was free to run around anywhere he wanted. I was in charge of the bubbles station. I made different types of blowers, aided by the assistants of course, out of coat hangers, chopsticks and netting (those were pretty neat - and mostly my own idea!), straws and string, and the good old standby, pipe cleaners. I had a big bucket of water to wash off sticky hands, and no one spilled it, so I think it was a huge success!


Michael's favourite activity was the bouncing castle. The teacher in charge of it told me later that Michael spent almost the entire time jumping in and out of it. And, he didn't crack heads with anyone else. Another success!

After all the kids had left, I took a peek inside my old class to see if the new teacher had finished setting it up for the kids to arrive on Monday. Nope. No toys, no decorations, no change in furniture layout. Nothing. Then she started saying goodbye to everyone, so I took her aside and, as gently as I could, asked if she was all ready for Monday. She went back to the class, took a look around, and left fifteen minutes later without doing anything. I felt sorry for my little class, but I can only do so much.

Getting Curriculum Back on Track

I do not have a degree in Early Childhood Education, nor do I have any formal training in correct ECE practices. However, I do have compulsive reading disorder (I made up the term myself) and a little streak of perfectionism. (Unfortunately, although this streak applies to parenting - which has caused me no end of grief and anxiety - it does not apply to household management as the state of my house can attest to). So, when I was hired to be a preschool teacher, I read everything I could (the National Association for the Education of Young Children has a great magazine) and learned a lot from my principals and co-teacher (who were ECE trained). To give you a glimpse of how little I knew, my New Zealand co-teacher (who is the best preschool teacher I have ever met) asked me during my first week if I knew "The Wiggles." I had no idea what she was talking about. I'm surprised that she didn't recommend my dismissal right then and there. Luckily, she put up with my ineptitude and actually told me at the end of the year that I was the best co-teacher she had ever had.

I, too, discovered that the best teaching assistants are the ones with no formal training or experience with other preschools. They are the hardest workers and the most willing to learn because they appreciate the fact that you gave them a chance despite their lack of education. I was the same way. I worked at school everyday from 8-6, with a half hour break to eat lunch with my husband, then went home and often worked until 10pm. By my second year, I knew a lot more, and only rarely had to take work home.

As a mother, I have kept up with current ECE practices and so it wasn't too difficult to get back into teaching this past semester. I had heard that many things had changed at the school before coming, and I knew that without a principal, curriculum would be dictated by the parents (ie. memorize as much English vocabulary as possible and learn to read by age four). And that is exactly what was happening. As I knew that I would only be at the school for a few months, I consciously decided not to get involved with what was going on in the other classes. I would do the best I could for my little ones and educate their parents about what was really important for children to learn at this age (ie. social skills, independence, creativity, problem solving skills) and that would be it.

My resolve started weakening after that terrible PD day. I started giving more and more little impromptu lessons to any teachers and staff that seemed interested. Again, it was those with the least formal training who were the most receptive. I finally sat down with the owner and talked about my concerns about the school. She wondered why it had taken me so long. Then, she started going through all the excuses about how parents were more demanding now and there was so much more competition than four years ago. Personally, I think the parents are exactly the same, but we've just started giving into them more because there wasn't a strong principal in place to defend our practices. And yes, there is more competition now, but in such an environment, you find a way to differentiate yourself, and from my point of view, the school was heading in the opposite direction. They were becoming more and more like all the other preschools, but still charging double the amount. No wonder enrollment had fallen. Of course, I couldn't really say those things, so I offered to do what I could in the little time I had left.

The first thing was to prepare a workshop on the value of quality, free, unstructured play. Even in North America this is something that is being pushed out of preschools in favour of more "educational" curriculums (with emphasis on reading and math skills), despite all the research that shows that this is unnecessary and even harmful. All parents want to give their child a head start, and teaching children reading and math skills does give them an advantage when they start school. However, this advantage disappears sometime between grades three and six. Why? Because the older children get, the more mature they get, and they develop skills that help them learn these academic subjects faster. Thus, while it may take hundreds if not thousands of hours to teach a three or four year old to read, a seven year old will take a fraction of that time, and by the time they're both ten, they'll probably be reading at exactly the same level. It's a mistaken belief held by many parents that if their kids start out behind, that they'll always be behind.

Just as I learned in university that research has shown that the best age to learn a second language is at age 13 (unless of course, you're brought up in a bilingual home). The only advantage to learning a language while young is that your pronunciation will be better. Thinking about it, it makes sense. Little kids have little vocabularies. They use the same few hundred words over and over and it takes a lot of exposure (or a high level of interest) for them to learn new ones. The kids in Kindergarten spoke like natives (well, two of them were...), but they probably only knew a couple of hundred English words. Most of them had been in the school for three if not four years for a minimum of six hours a day. Now, if a 13 year old spent the same number of hours learning a second language, he would be able to read, write and converse using thousands of words, because he has much better concentration and study skills.

But, if we're not teaching them reading and math, why should parents pay for them to go to preschool? Simple. For them to learn all the other life skills that were (once upon a time) learned from siblings and other neighbourhood kids while playing. Research has shown that the quality of children's play has decreased dramatically in the past few decades. This can be attributed to TV, fancy toys, smaller families and less free time (not necessarily in that order). And by quality play, I mean imaginative and creative play involving many different skill sets.

Okay. Enough of the ramble. It is now December 2008 and I have still not finished this blog, mostly because I've been too caught up on my high horse with this post. So, to actually get back to what I did in Taiwan...

I prepared my workshop and had about three hours worth of material that I tried to fit into one. After a little over an hour, I asked if they wanted to continue, and everyone agreed. By the end, they were all thoroughly convinced that the children needed to play more and that we needed to do more to promote a higher quality of play at every age level. Too bad I know that everything I taught will have been forgotten within the month, and I won't be there to keep things on track. You can only do so much when you're an ocean apart...

Last Day of School

My first year in Taiwan, I must admit, I got a little teary eyed when I lined up my preschool class to go home for the last time. It had been a hard, but rewarding, year and I had put a lot of effort into making my class the best that it could be. I loved each and every one of those kids. One of my favourite memories was when I was telling my 21 kids that I soon would no longer be their teacher. My most difficult student, an aggressive four year boy who had joined us halfway through the year, immediately piped up, "But I love you Ms. Hurdman!" (in English I might add!).

This year's last day felt like any other day. Part of the reason was because I knew I was still going to see them next week, even if it wasn't as their teacher, and the other part was because I had not invested as much of myself into them. They were a good little class and had progressed very quickly in the short time I had with them, but I never connected emotionally with them as I had with other classes. This is probably due to the fact that only one of them spoke any English. In any case, the last day proceeded without fanfare.

I did, however, forget to send home their progress reports. Oops. The school secretary even asked me if they were in the kid's bags as we were lining them up to go and I said yes because I thought that I had seen my TA pack them. It wasn't a big deal, because, as I said, they're all coming back next week anyways, but it was still a little embarassing.

Michael's class was doing a fantasy unit this past month, and had a dress-up party with all the parents for the last day. May dug through some boxes and found a prince's costume that she had designed and had made for her son over ten years ago. Since Michael had said that he wanted to be a king for the party, it worked out well.


Michael and I made the crown ourselves (obviously). He chose the colour. I cut it out and he decorated it with a package of dragon stickers that his grandma had sent him from Canada.

When I got to his classroom after saying goodbye to my class, the party had already been going on for over a half hour. There was tonnes of food brought in by the parents, and the kids were all going crazy while the parents chatted with each other or took pictures. It was also a furnace in there. I lasted about ten minutes, then just grabbed a plate of food and Michael and headed back to my classroom. Michael was glad to get out of the heat, and he always likes skipping out on nap time, so he was happy to join me in cleaning up my classroom.

All in all, a pretty uneventful last day...

The 2x4 That Broke the Camel's Back

I can deal with the crazy bus drivers who always start moving before the doors are closed, and couldn't drive smoothly to save their lives. I can deal with cab drivers who don't make the slightest effort to understand my Chinese. I can deal with the cold and rainy weather in winter, and the thunderstorms in spring. I can deal with buildings with gaping holes in windows and doorways that let out heat in the winter, and cool air in the summer. I can deal with all the ugly buildings and lack of green or even open spaces. I can deal with the pollution and less than appealing smells. I can deal with the pushy crowds and crazy traffic (pedestrians do NOT have the right of way). I can deal with not being able to understand anything that anyone is saying. I can deal with sleeping on a bed that feels like a brick wall. I can deal with having to wait three hours for my clothes to dry in the dryer because it's so humid. I can deal with no shower curtain in the bathroom and having to bend over because the showerhead is so low. I can even deal with geckos in my apartment. However, a few weeks ago, something that tested my adaptability started to pop up with increasing frequency.

Cockroaches.

At first they were few and far between, therefore somewhat tolerable. Robert even caught one for me to take to the Kindergarten class during their bug unit. It also helped that most of them were dead. Someone must have been putting poison out because dead, or near dead cockroaches started appearing with increasing frequency after that. I even found one swimming around the toilet bowl the other morning.

Michael found a huge (live) one in the cupboard under the stove when he went to get a juice box. He came running to me, "There's a big one!". I didn't even have to ask about what he was referring. He was right. It was one of the huge ones that I normally only see squished on the streets and sidewalks. YUCK. That's when I began counting down the days until it was time to go home.

Tonight however was the last straw. I was very tired and looking forward to getting to bed early when the infestation started. It had been thunderstorming for the past few hours, which might explain why they decided to appear en masse, in my bedroom at 9pm at night. Luckily, they weren't cockroaches, or I might have just checked into a hotel for the remainder of our stay in Taiwan. I don't know what they were. They seemed like skinny long earwigs, and they were everywhere.

I killed a few using Kleenex before I realized the extent of the situation. That's when I decided to bring out the big guns, in this case, my vacuum, and I started vacuuming them up. They seemed to be coming in from all the cracks around the air conditioner in the window, so I stuffed some more cloths around it and kept on vacuuming. Everytime I thought they were all gone, Michael would point out another one. We spent an hour combing through our room making sure that we had gotten them all before Michael fell asleep.

I, however, was afraid that as soon as I lay down, I would feel one crawling on me, so I went and played on the computer for another hour until I was tired enough that I felt I could fall asleep fairly quickly. I sheltered Michael's face and turned on the light to do one last visual sweep of the room before turning off the light and going to sleep.

Approximately two minutes later, I felt something crawling up my leg. EWWWWWW!!!

I jumped out of bed, turned the light back on and found two more in the bed that I had so carefully inspected just a few minutes ago. After taking care of them, I do another thorough sweep of the room and again turn off the light.

Luckily, those were the last two. At least I never found any more during the rest of my stay in Taiwan. I even unpacked and repacked an entire suitcase that I had in my room to make sure that none were hiding inside.

Dead cockroaches kept appearing around the apartment until the day I left and joined the cemetary of insects inside my vacuum bag. But after that night, I told myself that I was never living in Taiwan again. And although I said that last time, this time I mean it!

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Only two more weeks before I leave and there are so many things I wanted to do for the last time. I can't belive I've only had a mango ice once the entire time I've been here! I also want to go to Jiufen, because I've never been. I want to take Michael on bumper cars again. I want to go back to my 10NT store and have traditional ice in that night market again. I want to take Michael to the cool new waterpark they built here.

However, it doesn't look like I will be able to do any of those things as there is rain in the forecast for forever more... Now, all I want to do is go back to Canada. What's the point of staying in a rainy country far from home with an active three year old?

So, back to IKEA and Toys 'R Us, to search for Thomas the Tank Engine plates once more. Robert informed me that two had broken on his trip back, so we needed replacements. Still no plates, but we did find a Thomas Snakes and Ladders game. Not much of a substitute for bumper cars, but it will have to do. It turned from rain to torrential downpour while we were there, so we waited it out in Starbucks with a super large hot chocolate. Can you believe I'm drinking hot chocolate at the end of May in a sub-tropical country!?!

I taught Michael how to play snakes and ladders after we got home. He caught on pretty quick and loves playing it. He got upset the first time I won, but I explained how we needed to take turns winning, and although he wasn't happy about it, he conceded that that was only fair.

I must admit that I did cheat a little to let him win a little more often, but that's just what moms do.

Celebrating Mediocrity

Anyone who has watched "The Incredibles" will understand the title of this blog post. Anyone who hasn't - stop reading now and go watch it.

Kindergarten graduation at a rich school takes place at an exclusive club in Taipei called ACC to those in the know. The American Club in China is just like the Yuanshan club, except this one is even better because it's full of rich ex-pats, instead of just rich Taiwanese. The school's Christmas concerts and Kindergarten graduations have always taken place at ACC, so I was already familiar with the grandiose ballroom where the ceremony was to take place. I should mention right now, that our Kindergarten class is comprised of ten students, one of which never attends large functions due to shyness.

As I have been helping out twice a week with the Kindergarten class, Michael and I were invited to attend. I had been helping the class prepare their performance songs (A Whole New World and a personalized version of Leaving on a Jet Plane) for the past two weeks. May's son, James, was to be the accompanist, but I had to be by his side to point out which lines he should play, especially when it came to our rather creative endings. Next time we'll know to get piano music first instead of teaching the kids how to sing like Celine Dion and Chantal Kreviazuk...

We arrived at ACC an hour and a half before the show was to start in order to help set-up. Michael enjoyed running all over the stage, putting on his own one-man shows, and of course, jumping crazily off to shouts of "Watch out!". I was glad when two of his little girlfriends, Lauren and Audrey (of Mother's Day fame), from his Nursery class showed up so they could all run around together.

I needed to sit close to the piano so that I could jump up when needed, so I vetoed sitting by Audrey's parents and grandparents, so we ended up with Lauren's parents. They were very nice and willingly played musical chairs throughout the ceremony as the kids (Audrey came over later) kept on changing their minds about which seat they wanted.

Before the show started, I asked Michael if he was hungry as he hadn't eaten much before leaving. He said yes, so I gave him a granola bar. As Lauren was watching with great interest, I gave her one, too. She then stands on her chair and yells across the ballroom to Audrey, "Look what Michael's mommy gave me!". As I didn't have any more granola bars, I gave Audrey a Squiggle (dried fruit) when she came running over. She then ran back to her parents, but reappeared a few minutes later and announced to me, "I'm still hungry". You've got to love the subtlety of three year olds... I explained that there would be food after the ceremony and that she would have to wait. She didn't quite think that was fair as she could see one more Squiggle in my open purse, and was a little put out that I wouldn't give it to her. Life's tough, isn't it?

I had brought Michael's video MP3 player to occupy him during the show as I knew he would not sit still. Unfortunately, that only kept him busy for about five minutes. Luckily, this being a graduation ceremony, there were two cameras for every person in the room. Michael just had to put on his charming smile and flash those blue eyes of his, and strangers were giving him their expensive cameras and tripods to play with. It was insane. Michael completely pulled apart the tripod behind us as the owners looked on in enjoyment. They found him more entertaining than the ceremony I'm sure, but I was afraid he was going to lose all the little pieces. When I got back from helping James with the piano, Michael had a lady's camera and was taking dozens of pictures of the floor, his knees and the back of people's heads. I was so afraid that he was going to drop it, that I got out my camera and let him have it (with the wrist strap on!), just so he would give the other one back.

Due to the small number of graduates, the ceremony did not last long and then the food began. This being ACC, it was all very fancy and all very good. I loved the grilled eggplant and zucchini sandwiches, while Michael loved all the fresh fruit platters. When he had had his fill, I took him down to the supervised playroom (that they had just finished renovating the week before) and signed him in. They had a huge play structure in there with lots of different toys and activities to do. Then I had to fulfill my teaching responsibilities by taking pictures with all of the kids, the parents, their grandparents, their third cousins, etc...

Traditionally, the owner then takes all the staff to lunch at one of the fancy restaurants there, but we were all so full already, that we didn't order much. They had the nicest kids menu that I had ever seen. Basically, everything that a regular adult menu would have, except in kids portions. Michael, being a little boy, wouldn't hear of having anything but a hamburger. But, oh what a hamburger. I have never tasted a nicer one and was actually happy to eat Michael's leftovers.

Somehow, I don't think that Michael's Kindergarten graduation is going to be quite so fancy...

Michael's New Favourite Place

I took Michael to the Children's Museum today because I knew that it would be raining all afternoon. They built it after Robert and I had left, on the fifth floor of Taipei's largest bookstore (unfortunately also built after we left), so I had never been there before. We found it fairly easily and there weren't many other children there. I was especially glad about the lack of school groups. Our receipt says that we entered at 1:53pm and the cashier told us that we could go in and out as often as we wished until it closed at 9:30pm that evening. Well, I had no intention of staying there anywhere near that long. In fact, after thirty minutes, I wondered if we would even stay an hour and a half. Michael seemed to wander around, trying everything out for a minute or two and then move on. I couldn't get him involved in anything. After an hour or so, we went out for afternoon tea. They had a pretty good food court in the basement.

As soon as we got back, Michael really started to focus and concentrate. I guess he needed that first hour just to get oriented and discover all the options before settling down. In the end, I had to drag him away at 8pm. We did have a thirty minute break for dinner, and one other potty break, but the rest of the time, he played happily. I had originally thought that the 500NT price tag for both of us was a little steep, but for almost six hours of keeping Michael engaged, it was a deal.

The whole place is just like a massive preschool classroom, except they have way cooler equipment (Annie's adjectives are starting to rub off on me). There are 15 different centers for the kids to explore. Below are some of Michael's favourites.

Here he is in the Cotton Kid's Fashion Shop where he's basically sticking bits of different types of cloth and yarn onto the outline of a paper doll. His favourite part was cutting the yarn.


This is Michael in the Kid's Stage area. They had a tonne of dress up clothes in a massive walk in closet, but Michael wasn't too interested in dressing up.


However, he was interested in putting on little "shows." His favourite part was opening and closing the curtains.


In the construction area, I liked how they had the great view of 101 out the window. Of course, Michael liked it, too. It was great inspiration for the little builders!


In the raceway area they had all these open tubes with light rubber balls. The tubes are magnetically stuck to the wall, so Michael could move them around to create his own different raceways. Michael had a lot of fun moving all the pieces around and dropping balls in at the top. It was nice that they even provided stools, so that he could start higher.


The TV studio was cute, but it didn't hold Michael's interest for long.


So, I asked him to sing a song. Here he is doing the Itsy Bitsy Spider on TV.


Here's my little Mikey the Builder. He was pretty sad that there were other kids on this when we first arrived, but he soon got his turn.


He was really happy about getting to put on the vest, goggles and helmet as well.


But this was Michael's favourite activity of all. They had a mini supermarket set up with a real scanner and cash register. They even had their own play money. Michael would take turns with me being the shopper and the cashier. He loved scanning in the items and popping open the cash register.


He took it very seriously.


Especially since money was involved.


When he was the shopper, after he finished paying, he would run over to the next center which contained an Austin Mini, climbed in, put his shopping basket in the back seat, and drove home.


Brrooom, brrooom...


Sometimes the car broke down and he'd have to use a motorbike, or a motorscooter as he calls them.


Notice the basket of food carefully placed behind him.


There were other places as well, but those were Michael's favourites. He spent hours playing in that supermarket and in that Mini with me.

We were both really glad that we went. It wasn't even raining anymore by the time we left.