My Time Teaching
I’m usually met with short surprise when others learn of my job as an English teacher at a Taiwan elementary school with an educational background of business/finance. I was lucky enough to have had an office job from a work-study program during college that taught me how ill-disposed I am to the office culture, and I now count it as one of the hidden blessings of my life. Working this position part-time during two school years and full-time during one summer break granted me the priceless insight to look in a different direction to stay happy at work.

It was after graduation that I applied and was hired for something I had never considered prior, teaching. I worked as a teacher's assistant for one academic year at a special needs school where I taught autistic children in what proved to be, and what I expect to likely remain as, the most mentally challenging work I’ve ever done. The position taught me countless skills that would prove to be of value for my then-unknown future position as an ESL teacher in Taiwan. After counting my experience of solo-bicycling part of the United States one summer, I added one plus one together—my like for teaching and my budding love for travel—and packed my bags for Taiwan to do both.

Being inexperienced in leading a classroom, then being thrown to the task of performing well doing precisely that, has been a tremendous learning experience in my life. Doubt in my performance as well as a steep learning curve for someone as uninitiated as me proved to be the necessary goad to success. I felt, and still feel, a duty to teach my students effectively, and so my doubt evaporated quickly as the greater feeling of performing well for the sake of my students, who deserve a good education, took precedence. An experienced and wise teacher in my program taught me something I will never forget—those fortunate enough to have received a good education have a duty to use it and give back.

I believe teaching is best experienced as personallearning. With this mindset the teacher becomes the student also. Anyone who cannot be bothered to learn should not be trusted to teach. With this value of lifelong learning, I have come to enjoy my time teaching in Taiwan the greater, and interacting daily with young children, who have as much to teach adults as the other way around, grants an ample supply of learning for the willing teacher-student.

I could write pages on everything I have learned from my time teaching young people, but the greatest thing I have acquired is the everyday reminder of how to live in simple happiness. This is the greatest lesson the child can teach the adult, and which I learn and relearn every day at school. Being goofy and making students laugh and in turn being touched by their infectious happiness, which never tires, keeps me grounded every day.

The best part of my day is actually outside the classroom, where I teach fourth and fifth graders, and in the hallways, where I walk to and fro between my shared office space and classes. It is here I spend time with the first graders, whose joy is truly limitless. Facing off against a horde of twenty first graders in paper-scissors-stone (and getting quite loud in the process), quick games of thumb-war in which I dramatically allow myself to be beaten by a child-turned-Viking, and other small moments from small people add up to a happy day.

My time teaching in Taiwan has been a fruitful one, and one in which I am hard-pressed to imagine a better experience I could have chosen elsewhere during this time. From having lucked out with an office full of great people to talk and work with, to living in a country of beauty and freedom and friendliness, to having been granted the life-changing experience of teaching little people—all of it has amounted to an unforgettable experience, and I would recommend others to imagine themselves giving themselves this experience also.

Task Based Learning
This short article will introduce the method of task based learning, which resides under the larger conceptual umbrella of CLT, or communicative language teaching, as one approach to language learning that educators may use in the classroom.

Task based learning (TBL) is one approach to language learning that focuses on practical, real world interactions in the second language that students will likely find themselves in need of knowing during the course of using their second language. The foundation of TBL rests on the theory that by making language learning applicable to real world encounters, students will more easily see the value of the language and therefore will be more motivated to understand it.

TBL stands in distinction to other second-language instruction methods because instead of focusing on what specific language must be studied for the lesson, such as specific words or sentence patterns, TBL instead focuses on one concrete, overarching task that students must work towards completing. This allows more fluidity in the language required and asks learners to draw from their previous learning to complete the task, such as would be required in life. The task could be one of any number of real world, practical situations the students are likely to find themselves in, such as engaging with a waiter at a restaurant, contacting a service line for a faulty product, or performing well in a general interview they are likely to find themselves in during or after college. So instead of using a teaching method that keeps the relevancy of the language in the confines of the classroom, where students are likely to find it unengaging, tiresome, and perhaps even useless, TBL aims to expand the borders of the classroom to the world itself, thereby allowing students to see the sense of learning a language in the first place.

The lesson design of TBL is comprised of three three stages: pre-task, during-task, and post-task. Pre-task is the introduction of the task to come. The students are given instructions on what is expected, perhaps a quick language brush up to aid them in the during-task, and a model to emulate it. During-task is simply the enactment of the instructions given during the pre-task phase. In this phase the teacher may take a central role by making himself a necessary part of the task for the students to interact with, or he may limit himself to an observation role among all the students to offer help, encouragement, and advice when needed. The post-task phase allows students to present their experience with the task and seek healthy criticism from the class.

Note that tasks may take up many weeks and include out-of-class homework in which the students must engage in real-world English situations related the the task. Oftentimes, a teacher is limited only by his creativity in how he can help his students interact beyond the classroom walls in real English scenarios. Phone and internet technology open many barriers that limit such real-world situations, especially for teachers and students living in the country of their first language. Consider creating assignments that actually have students calling live representatives of a service line for any number of products or services. Web-conferencing with the addition of popular (and free!) language-sharing sites could allow for interesting role-plays and other ideas. Obviously the more rural the area the greater the challenge in this regard. Yet a dedicated teacher may still employ TBL to good effect.

With this light introduction to the task based learning methodology, interested readers may further research this widely discussed topic to add depth to and improve their teaching style.

Dressing up as Santa for a first-grade Christmas visit	School-wide participation in an earthquake drill
One of my fourth grade classes at field day	Teaching a dance to six classes of first graders