Personalities and Experience - Debilitating Factors

4.5 Debilitating Factors

4.5.4 Personalities and Experience

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besides team teaching. As a novice teacher, she worried about how to conduct a class and implement her teaching ideas. Though she learned some TESOL theory in the orientation, she still felt uncertain about teaching on her own. Lisa stated,

Because any anxiety that I have about teaching is more about running the class, … I have lots of ideas, of what we can do. The hardest part is thinking of how to do them with the barrier of the language. (Lisa, 10/08/2013)

Lisa described that it was challenging to teach alone in the beginning, but she felt she became accustomed to it over the course of the semester. She also suggested that the MOE or the school should inform the NESTs of what to teach in the program.

Because teaching in Taiwan was a brand new experience to the NESTs, they had no idea of what they should teach or what students had already learned. It is important to let them know what curriculum or guidelines to follow. “Coming here, with no knowledge of what the students know. It’s just hard to figure out what I should be teaching.” (Lisa, 01/13/2014)

4.5.4 Personalities and Experience

This was Mei and Lisa’s first year to participate in the team teaching program in Kinmen. Both of them did not have experience prior to this semester. Though Mei was a qualified English teacher and had more teaching experiences in Taiwan, she did not have any team teaching experience with NESTs before. As for Lisa, she just graduated from college and did not have any teaching experience before she came to Kinmen. Mei and Lisa had to develop their pattern of team teaching over the course of the program.

Both Lisa and Mei attributed their cooperation to each other’s personality.

They suggested that team teaching is like two people working together. For Lisa, personalities affected how two people teach together. “Like everyone has their

personality, and in any interaction you have to figure out another person's personality,

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so that's why I think it's getting better. [Be]cause we’ve started to figure out our personalities so then once we know the personalities we can teach better.” (Lisa, 10/08/2013)

For Mei, team teaching is like two people acting on the stage. It takes two people to cooperate. Mei said that she felt fortunate to have Lisa this year because Lisa was very easy-going and open-minded. Mei described that “I find out that whatever I say, she will say OK.” (Mei, 10/02/2013) When Lisa and Mei were asked questions concerning conflicts in the team teaching process, both of them said there is nothing that can be defined as conflicts, just some minimal misunderstanding in communication.

4.6 What Mei and Lisa learned from the team teaching

This section presents what the NEST and the NNEST learned from the team teaching process in this year.

4.6.1 Lisa

Lisa said what she had learned in the team teaching program included the benefits and the challenges she met. She mentioned that the team teaching program was beneficial for the three parties involved, the NNEST, the NEST, and the students.

Lisa learned how to conduct classes in team teaching. When Mei and Lisa team taught together, Mei helped to manage the class while Lisa assisted with the pronunciation and games. Lisa also elaborated that she came up with more ideas after team teaching. “I think co-teaching can be beneficial for the local and foreign teachers as individuals, as it incites self-reflection and evaluation of teaching methods outside of the co-teaching context. I often come up with ideas for my own classes after a

successful co-teaching experience.” (Lisa, 01/13/2014) The NEST can learn from the NNEST, the local teacher, about how to conduct the class and offer assistance. The NNEST can also learn different ideas for teaching. The cooperation between the

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NEST and the NNEST also exposed students to different ways of learning.

Lisa also mentioned that she felt very welcomed and integrated into the

community in Kinmen because it’s a small island and people are nice to others. She had more opportunities to interact with the students outside of the class. “Going around at night after school or on the weekends, you see a lot of your students and their families, and it's always excited to interact with them outside of the class.” (Lisa, 01/13/2014) Compared with the big cities, Kinmen is smaller in population. Lisa thought that the NESTs can make a greater impact on this island and expose students to foreigners. But due to the nature of the Fulbright program, the NESTs only stayed in Kinmen for one year. Because of the good experience in Kinmen, some of her friends wanted to go to Taiwan for another year for further study or other purposes.

4.6.2 Mei

As for Mei, she pointed out that she made some progress in several ways. “I learned a lot in the team teaching process, not only my language proficiency; I learned how to negotiate the lesson plan with the NEST in a short time before class. I also learned some teaching skills and how to react to different situations in class. Like when students didn’t react as what we had expected, we would make adjustments soon, with our good rapport.” (Mei, 01/15/2014)

In the beginning of the semester, Mei felt shy to communicate with Lisa due to the negative impact of her college teacher. Over the course of the team teaching program, Mei felt more confident in speaking English to Lisa when they discussed the lesson plan. Mei also indicated that she used more English in class compared with the start of their joint lessons. “When we co-taught at the first time, when Lisa spoke English, I used to speak Mandarin Chinese. Then I tried to speak more English in class, whether in co-teaching or in my own class.” (Mei, 01/15/2014)

Mei also mentioned that Kinmen has abundant resources to attract NESTs to stay,

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such as the beautiful scenery, cultural heritage, friendly people and interaction.

Moreover, every elementary school has a NEST and the NESTs can support each other.

4.7 Unforgettable experience

Mei and Lisa shared their unforgettable experience in their team teaching process.

For Mei, the most unforgettable experience is teaching festivals with Lisa. “Students learn about these festivals every year, they feel more familiar and more interested to learn.” (Mei, 01/15/2014) Mei recalled that when they taught festivals in team teaching, students could learn more about the culture. For example, they taught Christmas when the researcher conducted the fifth observation. Lisa started the class by asking students what Christmas words they know. With this question, students reviewed what they had already learned and learned some new words from others.

Then Lisa and Mei played a Christmas carol and taught them how to write a Christmas card. The following is an excerpt of Mei and Lisa’s Christmas teaching.

Lisa: What Christmas words do you know?

Student 1: Snowman.

Student 2: Snow.

Lisa: Snowman (write down the words she heard). What else? Christmas tree.

Student 3: Christmas tree.

(Mei and Lisa talked a little.)

Lisa: Ok, (points to the words on the blackboard) Snowman, snow, Christmas tree.

Mei: Ok, wait, repeat (points to the words). Snowman. One more time. Snowman.

Students: Snowman.

Mei: Snowman.

Students: Snowman.

Lisa: (points to the word “snow”) What’s this?

Students: Snow.

Lisa: (Waves her arms) Snow! What color is snow?

Students: Bai se. (白色) (Class 601, 12/20/2013)

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Teaching the festivals with Mei was also the most memorable incident for Lisa.

She recalled that when they taught Halloween in the fourth grade, they went outside and played the relay race with the dialogue. Lisa described, “Two people have to leave their one side at the same time and gone to me and they have to say the sentence that I was holding, and they couldn't run back until they can say it properly. And that it was like a race.” (Lisa, 01/13/2014)

Lisa also said teaching students outside of the textbook with a pop song or rap is the most interesting part to her. She thought that reading or reciting the texts is beneficial for students to familiarize with the sentence patterns; Lisa said that,

[In team teaching] we really stick to the textbook, and so we try to make the textbook fun by breaking out it into weird songs and chants and dances, and then we make the students do it and everyone has fun and laughs, so those experiences really stick out and both fourth grade and six grade. Like um because we brought a lot of grooviness to the textbook, and made the students wanna come up and perform the dialogues, also in the groovy manner, and so that's fun, for all parties involved, and unforgettable. (Lisa, 01/13/2014)

In the end of the semester, Lisa even taught students to sing a pop song and videotaped them to send to Mei as a gift.

4.8 suggestions

Both Lisa and Mei offered their suggestions for the team teaching program in Kinmen. For Mei, she had three suggestions as follows. First, the NESTs who are recruited should have teacher’s certificates or related experience. Since the NESTs come to Taiwan either to team teach with local teachers or teach on their own, they should have some training or related experience beforehand. Secondly, given that the NESTs will team teach with NNESTs, in order to communicate with the local teachers better and get accustomed to the life in Taiwan, the NESTs should be able to

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speak some basic Mandarin Chinese. Mei mentioned that, “I don’t know what other NNESTs’ English proficiency levels… like me, I think if the NESTs can speak some Mandarin Chinese; we can avoid misunderstanding in communication.” (Mei, 01/15/2014) As Mei mentioned earlier in previous interviews, she thought her English was not good enough to communicate with native speakers. If the NESTs were able to speak Mandarin Chinese, it would not only benefit their interaction but also help the NESTs get accustomed to the life in Taiwan. Lisa also said that being able to speak Mandarin Chinese helped her manage the class and communicate with others.

these kids are pretty … , they have a lot of energy, so and they don't have a lot of English ability yet because they're so young, so if you have to explain something, or discipline them, or teach things even, we might want to know a little bit of Chinese, or feel comfortable, communicating to them, in some form. (Lisa, 01/13/2014)

Mei also suggested that the MOE should announce the team teaching partners as soon as possible. In this way, the NESTs can know who they are going to team teach with and have more interaction in the orientation. “Maybe we can know who our co-teacher is and join the workshop together. So we can have more interaction during the three-day workshop, instead of separating into two groups of NESTs and

NNESTs.” (Mei, 01/15/2014) Lisa felt the same, “but we could know who our LETs⁵ are beforehand and go through some of the training with them ideally, and then not have to guess, or be surprised when we finally find out stuff like that.” (Lisa, 08/30/2013)

In Lisa’s point of view, she indicated that the application process should be clearer about the team teaching situation in Kinmen. Before starting her teaching in

5 LETs stands for Local English Teachers.

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the school under research, she thought all of her classes were team teaching with NNESTs. “It’s very surprising, because the application said that I teach with an LET the entire time.” (Lisa, 01/13/2014) The confusion of the situation led to Lisa’s anxiety about teaching alone in the classroom. If the program can clarify this situation to the participants, it will help them get mentally prepared.

She also suggested that the MOE or school should let the NESTs know what curriculum they are supposed to follow. “I could have a curriculum or something I was supposed to follow, but the LET helped me to devise a curriculum, so that's good.

But I would probably feel a little lost if I didn't have the LET helping me, to decide what to teach.” (Lisa, 01/13/2014)

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CHAPTER FIVE

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

This chapter discusses the significant themes in depth and concludes the whole study. Section 5.1 concludes the major findings of the team teaching program in Kinmen. Section 5.1.1 discusses how the NEST and the NNEST cooperated in the team teaching program, and section 5.1.2 discusses the problems the NEST and the NNEST had and their solutions. Section 5.1.3 discusses how they got

accustomed to the team teaching program, and section 5.1.4 discusses the facilitating and the debilitating factors in the program. Section 5.1.5 provides what the NEST and the NNEST learned in the team teaching program. Section 5.2 covers the implications and section 5.3 covers the limitation of the study. Section 5.4 provides the recommendation for future studies and finally, section 5.5 concludes the whole study.

5.1 Major findings of the team teaching program in Kinmen

The major findings of the team teaching program in Kinmen, such as the NEST and the NNEST’s collaboration in the team teaching program, the problems they met and how they adjusted to the program will be discussed as follows.

5.1.1 The NEST and the NNEST’s collaboration in the team teaching program The NEST and the NNEST’s collaboration in the present study share some similarities and differences with the previous studies. In the lesson planning process, since both of the NEST and the NNEST were inexperienced in team teaching, they spent a lot of time planning every activity in the beginning. They designed their activities based on their textbooks. However, they became occupied by the heavy teaching load and spent less and less time on lesson planning. Without a thorough lesson planning, they still managed to conduct the classes smoothly because they developed a great rapport. Sometimes the NEST and the NNEST talked and made

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adjustments in the transitions of activities in class, so they can confirm the following activities and the students won’t feel ignored because they are busy doing activities.

The fact that the NEST and the NNEST did not have enough time on lesson planning echoes the results from Huang’s (2011) study in Kaohsiung and Hsiao’s (2011) study in Taichung. The NEST and the NNEST did not have enough time for lesson planning. Besides team teaching English with NESTs, most NNESTs need to teach other classes or have administrative jobs. The NESTs were also occupied by other classes. Both of them have limited time to discuss the lesson plan and design activities for each class.

Next, the NEST employed a variety of activities in the team teaching, such as guessing game or role play. For example, the NEST acted out the dialogues with the NNEST and students can role play with their partners. Ting’s (2000) and Liu’s (2004) studies also point out that NESTs conduct different activities to help students learn English. Students feel more interested in learning English when the NESTs use games, multimedia, and other resources in class.

In the present study, the perceptions of their own role in the team teaching process changed over the course of the year. This finding is at odds with previous literature which indicated that the NESTs tended to lead the teaching and the NNESTs play the supporting roles in Hsinchu (Lin, 2002; Wang, 2007). The NNESTs’ role in the classroom is to help the NESTs’ teaching. However, in the present study, Lisa viewed herself as an English assistant in the beginning. But as Lisa gained more teaching experience, she collaborated with Mei as partners. Mei chose the part of the textbook they should focus on and Lisa came up with ideas to facilitate the teaching. Both of them took turns in the teaching process and helped each other.

Most of the classes were conducted in English by the NEST and the NNEST.

Though the NEST can speak Mandarin Chinese fluently, she adhered to speaking

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English to students and the NNEST translated if it was necessary.

5.1.2 The problems and the solutions of their team teaching process The problems the NEST and the NNEST met in the present study are in consistency with the previous studies. Firstly, the language barrier between the NEST and the NNEST is the major issue of the findings. The language barrier between the NEST and the NNEST influenced how the NEST and the NNEST collaborated in the team teaching process. (Lin, 2002; Tsai, 2004; Pan, 2004; Chen, 2007) The NNEST’s lack of English proficiency held her back from the

communicating with the NEST in the beginning. However, the NEST in the present study can speak Mandarin Chinese and she can understand the anxiety of speaking a foreign language. She tried her best to understand the NNEST and the students and alleviate the pressure when they interacted with each other.

Secondly, the NEST and the NNEST did not have enough time to discuss the lesson plan thoroughly because, as mentioned earlier, they were both occupied by the heavy teaching load. Most NNESTs did not just teach English, they need to teach other subjects, correct students’ homework and have administrative jobs. (Hsiao, 2011;

Huang, 2011; Jiang, 2006) However, the rapport between the NEST and the NNEST in the present study helped them teach the class successfully.

Third, the NEST felt worried about classroom management in the beginning because of her lack of experience and language barriers with the students. With the NNEST’s help, the co-teaching class went well and students liked the co-teaching classes.

5.1.3 NEST and NNEST’s adjustments to team teaching program

Various factors that influenced how the NEST and the NNEST adjusted

themselves to the team teaching program in Kinmen are similar to previous studies, such as the in-service training, other resources and support, NNEST’s help, interaction

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with other colleagues and students, and the language ability. (Lin, 2002; Tsai, 2005;

Herbert, 2009) Since the NEST and the NNEST did not have any experience in team teaching, the in-service training helped them have more understanding about team teaching.

Other resources include the coordinator of Fulbright foundation’s help and the support group of the NESTs. The NESTs themselves stay in the same apartment and formed a community to help each other. This was not found in the previous

literature. The NEST fit into the community of Kinmen more easily because Kinmen is a very small island (153 square kilometers). Unlike other big cities, the NEST had more opportunities to interact with the students, other colleagues and local

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