Let's welcome the band

I have to admit, I had my doubts when they told us we would be working at a co-school for two months out of the year, in November and March. How much could happen in such a short, fractured time? A lot, it turns out. My co-school is Li Sing Elementary in Yilan, a larger city school close to my apartment. One of the greatest benefits of working there was observing the differences from my main school. Each grade had more classes and each class had more students, so I only worked with grades 3, 4 and 6. We did fewer activities that involved moving around the class or working in groups - for the most part, student stayed in their neat seated rows. Almost every student greeted teachers in the hallways. Many students cared intensely about their grades.

Another advantage was working with 3 new co-teachers and learning from their varied methods. One of the sixth grade classes was composed entirely of students in the band, and since their English teacher Stella was also their homeroom teacher, she gave me a lot of freedom in the classroom. We didn't focus entirely on the textbook and learned fun, musical things like the hokey pokey and yellow submarine. They were such a pleasure to teach, it showed me why people decide to become teachers. For our last class, we had a birthday celebration for a couple students, and Stella and I gave out prizes to students who did well on the last exam. Several members of the band played:

They even made me give a speech and play the erhu for them, and presented me with this card that the whole class had signed. In just a short month, these students truly touched me. I'm going to miss them.