MICHAEL WARD TAKES ON TAIWAN!
The FULBRIGHT U.S. STUDENT PROGRAM offers students and young professionals opportunities to pursue international graduate study, advanced research, and primary and secondary school teaching in over 140 countries worldwide. Our own Michael Ward (Pops Class of 2019) was recently awarded a Fulbright grant and now finds himself teaching English in Taiwan. Let’s check in on how he is doing!
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MPAC: Michael, tell us about your Fulbright experience so far!
MW: I am in the Fulbright program working as an ETA – English teaching assistant -- in Hualien County, Taiwan. We arrived on August 1st, and from August to September we had orientation, where advisors came and did workshops on topics such as classroom management, story-telling, and critical thinking. Then we went to visit all the schools in the county where we would be teaching. Taiwan has 129 ETAs spread out over nine sites.
At each site, there was a different story for housing and school-matching. At the Hualien school visits, we talked to the English teachers about their curriculum, and at the end of the month we ranked our choices and got matched with a school. My school is the biggest school with over nine hundred kids. It is an elementary school (1st through 6th grade) in Hualien County, where students start learning English in 3rd grade.
So I primarily teach 3rd - 6th graders (this semester I’m only teaching 4th-6th). I work together with two LETs (Local English Teachers) to organize lesson plans and think of activities. We try to implement co-teaching strategies during class. Often one teacher will the lead. For the students, it’s very helpful to see my native English-speaking. As a foreign teacher, I can interact with the kids on a more friendly level - I’m not the disciplinarian. This morning we had a teacher vs student basketball game. All the students wanted me to be on their team!
I am really enjoying Fulbright, and the kids are all very sweet. Planning a lesson is very fun, and we consider many aspects such as how to increase student talk time (STT) and limit teacher talk time (TTT), and how to make lessons engaging, as well as educational. It’s a great feeling when we actually implement the lesson, the lesson works out, and students learn from what you planned. For Taiwan, Fulbright makes sure that we are very prepared and have a lot of support. Most of the Taiwan ETA’s didn’t study education; however, for me, teaching English after my year in Taiwan now seems like more of an interesting option.
MPAC: Why did you choose Taiwan?
MW: For the ETA role, there are many countries you can pick from. I’ve had the fortune to travel to a lot of countries and study several languages. For me, it was hard to think about what place to apply to. I ultimately decided to apply to Taiwan to improve my Chinese and learn more about Taiwanese culture. I’ve studied Chinese for seven years, and lived in China for two months. Throughout my Chinese language education, no one ever really talked about Taiwan there because it was a touchy subject. The Fulbright program represented an opportunity for me to learn more about the Chinese speaking world in general. I hope to learn more about the Taiwanese culture and its customs. Taiwan is also a relatively small country -- its entire surface is smaller than that of Lake Michigan! Because of that, I felt that I would really be able to see a lot of what Taiwan has to offer. So far, I’ve been to a few different cities in Hualien, Taipei, Tainan, and Taitung. I hope to spend at least a few days in every county!
MPAC: Have you noticed any customs/quirks in Taiwan?
MW: A big cultural thing in Taiwan is trash and recycling. If you have trash, you keep it in your house, you can’t put it out on the curb or in a trash bin. The trash truck comes five days a week; when the truck comes by (it plays a song like an ice cream truck to let you know it’s coming), everyone runs out and throws their trash in the back of the truck. There is one truck for trash and one for recycling, and people are very strict about recycling. If you drink from a plastic cup or eat out of a paper container, you rinse it and put it in recycling.
In the U.S., people would likely just throw these recyclable items in the trash. There are seven forms of recycling at the school I teach at – Styrofoam, plastic, batteries, etc.. You can’t throw away trash at school, so I take it home. For example, if I eat fruit, I have to take the core home. This is the biggest change I’ve been getting used to. It really makes you take a look at how much waste you are producing. For instance, I have had ten bubble teas in the past week, and the cups are sitting on my kitchen counter. There’s nowhere else I can put the cups, so they all sit there until it’s recycling day.
MPAC: How is the food?
MW: The food is amazing! Friday is Chun Qiu Jie (Mid-Autumn Festival), and we’ve been eating a lot of pomelo, a citrus fruit. I’d never heard of pomelo before coming to Taiwan. My favorite local dish is soup dumplings – it’s not something I can really find in Michigan. Wonton and beef noodles are also my go-to. Taiwan has similar food to China, but there is a lot more dried tofu skin and seafood. The ubiquity of bubble tea stores and tea in general is astonishing as well. A lot of people here buy a reusable cup and a plastic/glass bubble tea straw. Many stores give you a discount if you use your own cup. I am planning to get one. Drinks are so cheap, and easy to justify; here, it costs ~$1.50 USD for a bubble tea versus $4-$5 in the U.S. The food at school is also very healthy.
There are a lot of night markets too where I can buy almost anything. I don’t have a kitchen at home, which is why the night market exists. That’s where people go to get food at night. The closest market is huge, 8-10 streets, and nice to walk around. On the east coast of Taiwan, there is also a notable presence of indigenous peoples and a lot of Taroko and Amis cuisine at the night market; they have several stands, and sell unique foods like wild boar sausages and salt-baked fish.
MPAC: Michael, if students are interested in following in your footsteps, how can they get in touch with you?
MW: This year, there are eleven total University of Michigan alumni serving as Fulbright ETAs in countries such as Taiwan, France, Spain, Andorra, and South Africa. If there are any juniors who are interested in applying, be sure to contact me at mdward1547@gmail.com. Feel free to reach out with any questions!
* None of the views expressed here are representative of those of Fulbright Taiwan, the Fulbright program, or the US Department of State