CHAPTER FIVE: NANCY AND AMY Background Information
The First Contact
As mentioned at the beginning of Chapter 4, in late June, 2006, I located a contact list from the proceedings of Hsinchu City’s First Elementary School English Co-Teaching Conference and sent an email to some teachers to look for potential participants. One of the teachers who replied my email was Julie who served as the English head teacher of School B for the 2005 school year. She explained that she would be on leave in the next school year, but she knew someone from her school who would be interested in participating in my project. Julie forwarded my message to her colleague Nancy, who wrote back and told me that she would be happy to talk to me on a later date; she said that at the moment, she was quite busy with finishing up all the end-of-semester work.
I contacted Nancy again (by email) in early August, and she wrote back and told me I could call her to discuss more details. I immediately dialed the number she gave me in the email, and I reached her. I briefly explained my research project to her, and she said that she would be happy to help me with my study. She also told me that one of the two foreign teachers for her school, Amy, would be someone completely new to Taiwan and that I should approach her myself to ask for permission for my classroom observation. I was also told that Amy would arrive in time for the company’s orientation in late August.
I met Nancy for the first time in one training session hosted by the foreign-teacher company on August 19, 2006. She told me that she came to attend the session to see if she could learn some useful ideas. Two days later, Amy arrived at the foreign-teacher company with Rene, who was a close friend of Amy
back in South Africa and had worked in the Hsinchu Program for a few years.
Amy is a short young lady with a big smile on her face. Rene introduced Amy to the staff and left. Amy walked in to the training room, and I approached her. I introduced myself to her and explained a little bit about my project. She said she would love to participate in my study. She told me that it was her second day in Taiwan, and everything looked very exciting here.
During the company orientation, I had a lot of opportunities to interact with Amy and get to know her better. Meanwhile, I did not see Nancy again until the morning of August 24, at the workshop for local team teachers (including English subject teachers and homeroom teachers) which took place in Hsinchu City’s Teacher Training Center. On that day, all the foreign teachers (including the returning and new ones) also had to attend the training which took place on a different floor in the same building. In the afternoon, the foreign teachers were asked to go upstairs to have a brief meeting with the Taiwanese teachers from their schools. This was when Nancy and Amy met for the first time. I was sitting at the opposite side of the room and saw that both of them were smiling as they talked.
After the meeting was over, Amy told me that she felt very lucky to have someone of her age to be her co-teacher and head teacher.
School B—An Old School With New Energy
Like School A, School B is also located in the North School District of Hsinchu City; in fact, these two schools are just a few blocks away from each other. School B was established during the Japanese colonial time and is one of the oldest schools in the city. The principal, Mr. Wang, who served at the school from February, 1999 to February, 2007 successfully transformed the image of School B from one of old and wearing to that of fun and rigorous. In my interview with him (2006/11/14), Mr. Wang mentioned that one special feature of his school is that they have set up
many clubs for students to engage in different extracurricular activities and develop their personal interests; he proudly told me that some instructors for these clubs were people from the community who volunteered to share their expertise with students of School B. Because of Mr. Wang’s passion for cultivating students’
different talents, there were always a lot of activities (e.g., students’ performance) going on at School B. Its tai-chi team is especially famous, as it often wins the first place in nation-wide tai-chi contests for tai-chi lovers of all ages.
The Hsinchu Program carries a special meaning for the recent development of School B. In 2000, it was one of the four schools in the city which joined the pilot project of hiring foreign teachers to teach English. At that time, a new elementary school (referred to as School D hereafter) was established in the neighborhood, and School B was facing a great amount of pressure to cut down its class size. During my interview with him, Mr. Wang recalled that one of the reasons that School B was chosen as one of the four “seed schools” was that the Education Bureau wanted to inject some new energy to this very old school, hoping that some parents would still send their children to School B.
It turned out that the foreign teacher Kathy which School B recruited was a very good teacher. In the principal’s words, “The most amazing thing about her is that she taught about 300 students, and she managed to put on shows which required each student to say one or two lines on the stage” (interview, 2006/11/14).
According to Mr. Wang, School B was grouped as the “successful case” in the evaluation conducted at the end of the pilot project. Because of Kathy’s efforts and the success of its English program, School B got a lot of media coverage and parents’ approval. As a result, the impact of having a new school in the neighborhood was minimized. School B had anticipated earlier that they would lose as many as five classes of first graders to School D. In the 2001 school year,
only one class was cut down. As Mr. Wang remarked, “Literally speaking, the experiment saved our school” (interview, 2006/11/14).
With regard to the English department, School B had three Taiwanese English teachers (Nancy, Wendy, and George) and two foreign teachers (Amy and Mike).
When the 2006 school year began, the foreign-teacher company could not find another foreign teacher (besides Amy) to work full-time at School B, so they sent a substitute teacher Johnny to work there for the first month. In late September, Nancy told me that the company still could not find a teacher to fill the vacancy.
George, who had worked with Mike last year, proposed the idea of asking Mike to come back to School B to teach. Both Nancy and Wendy did not object to this idea (which seemed to be the only option at that time), so George contacted Mike and asked him if he would like to return to School B. Mike agreed, so from October on, he was the other full-time teacher at this school.
Both Wendy and George, the other two local English teachers, held administrative positions; Wendy was the Section Chief of Registrar, and George was the Section Chief of Hygiene. They were responsible for the English classes of fourth and sixth graders. Nancy co-taught all the Grade 5 classes with Mike and three of the six Grade 3 classes with Amy. She also had solo lessons (i.e., classes that she did not have to team teach with Mike or Amy) with all the Grades 3 and 5 classes. Amy co-taught three of the Grade 3 and all the Grades 1 and 2 classes with the homeroom teachers. For the other three Grade 3 classes, she co-taught with Nancy. The Grade 3 schedule was arranged in such a way because Nancy’s schedule was too full to co-teach all the Grade 3 classes with Amy. Amy also went to School D to teach four Grade 1 classes every Thursday morning as a substitute teacher.
Nancy shared a classroom/office with Mike. Amy had her own room which
was located on the other end of a long hallway. When it was their co-teaching lesson, Nancy would go to Amy’s classroom to teach. Amy’s room was also used by a private institute as the place for their after-school-care class after the school was over every day.
Once a month, Amy needed to have a meeting with all the homeroom teachers she worked with. In the first two months of the school year, the meeting took place on the first Friday afternoon of every month. However, in November, Nancy learned that some homeroom teachers could not attend the meeting because there was a concurrent meeting with the principal. So the meeting was rescheduled on the last Friday afternoon of every month. If she attended the meeting, Nancy mainly played the role as the translator. Unlike School A, there was no regular meeting for all the English teachers at School B.
Nancy: A Novice English Teacher
Nancy grew up in Hsinchu City and was a single woman in her late 20s when the study began. She held an undergraduate degree in mathematics from a teachers college in Taiwan and a master degree in educational administration from a university in the United Kingdom. The school year of 2006 was her sixth year of working as an elementary school teacher. Previously, she had worked as a homeroom teacher in two schools in Hsinchu County for two years before transferring to School B as a science teacher. She taught science to the middle and higher graders at School B for two years before she went to the U.K. in August, 2004 to pursue a master degree. She came back to Taiwan in 2005 and started teaching at School B again as a Grade 2 homeroom teacher. Because her love for English and desire to try something different, she volunteered to work as an English teacher after it was confirmed that Julie would be on leave for the 2006 school
year.38 She also took over Julie’s position as the English head teacher of School B.
Amy: A Novice Teacher From South Africa
Amy comes from the east coast of South Africa. She is a white woman in her mid-20s. After graduating from high school, she lived and worked in the U.K. for three years before going back to South Africa for her college education. When she was in the U.K., she first worked in the hotel industry and then as a care-taker of senior citizens. Besides a teaching certificate, she held an undergraduate degree in psychology and sociology. Before coming to Taiwan in August, 2006, she just completed her one-year teaching practicum in a Grade 1 classroom in an elementary school in her hometown where she had to work closely under the supervision of her mentor teacher; during that year, she also worked briefly as a substitute teacher for a kindergarten and a Grade 3 class. She has been a ballet dancer since she was a little girl. When she was in South Africa, she also taught ballet as a part-time teacher.
Amy got to know about the Hsinchu Program from her friend Rene who had worked in the program for a few years. She told me that she came to Taiwan because she wanted to “experience and do something different” (interview, 2006/09/04).
Description and Perception of Team Teaching Experience
Nancy’s Definition of Team Teaching and Perception of Her Role
In the background interview, Nancy defined team teaching in these words (she answered this prompt in English), “We all know the target we have to teach. We all know the way that we will teach. And before the class, we should discuss what’s your part, and what’s my part.” She added, “And in class, we can put it into
38 It turned out that Julie shortened her leave to one semester and came back to work as a Grade 5 homeroom teacher in the second semester of the 2006 school year.
practice, and revise it a little bit after class” (interview, 2006/09/08). Her definition fits with Richards and Farrell’s (2005) definition of team teaching as involving “a cycle of team planning, team teaching, and team follow-up” (p. 159).
At the beginning of the school year, Nancy also endorsed the practice of teaming up local and foreign teachers:
Researcher: For our kids, what do you like about team teaching?
Nancy: They can listen to the foreign teachers’ pronunciation. From the two teachers’ interaction, they can also learn how to interact with others in their daily life. When they see that there are two happy teachers interacting with each other on the stage, they can learn that they can also cooperate with others happily. I feel this is character education. Foreigners are treated differently. From my observation, many people feel that foreigners seem to be more respectable.
But we should be equals. You need to help children develop
confidence and believe that we can be as good. So I’m very supportive of the team teaching model (interview, 2006/09/08).
Nancy saw many benefits of intercultural team teaching for her students. An obvious advantage is that students can listen to the language input provided by foreign teachers. Also, watching the two teachers teach happily on the stage provides students with a good opportunity to learn the importance of cooperation and to develop one’s self-confidence. Team teachers can also serve as a model of mutual respect for their students, as Anderson and Speck (1998) contend in their discussion of the benefits of teachers engaging in team teaching. This view echoes to Buckley (2000), who states, “Watching the teachers operate as a team encourages the students to form work and social groups. This bonding heightens the self-esteem of all” (p. 14).
Regarding the role she expected herself and Amy to play in team teaching, Nancy stated in the background interview that she expected Amy to take the lead
and she would assist her. She also commented, “I don’t have an imagination of how things will be. I’m not experienced, either. I’m like a white piece of paper.
So whatever works will be fine.”
Amy’s Definition of Team Teaching and Perception of Her Role
Amy defined team teaching at the beginning of the school year in these words:
Team teaching in my own words is not (pause) I don’t want Nancy just to discipline the children. Nancy must help me teach. She
must help me with flashcards. She must help me with the pronunciation of words. She must advise me when I do something wrong. I don’t have a lot of experience teaching in Taiwan, so I expect Nancy to help me with things, and I can help her with other things. Team teaching for me is both of us are teaching, not just one teacher. Both of us, we doing this together and experiencing it together (interview, 2006/09/04).
Amy’s definition also matches with her description of the role she expected herself and Nancy to play in team teaching. In her words, “I expect Nancy to see me as a co-teacher as well, not the lead or main teacher. She must see me as an equal partner. We are both equals, we are both teachers.” She continued, “And I don’t want her just to stand in background. In our role, we must give the same to the class” (interview, 2006/09/04). From her description, it is evident that Amy expected Nancy to play an active role in their teaching.
Although it turned out that Amy was still the main teacher in most of their co-teaching lessons, Nancy did a considerable amount of teaching compared to the other two Taiwanese teachers in this study. Nancy was the one who often led students to play games in class, especially when Amy was not familiar with the games. When students were doing pair work or practicing their handwriting in class, Nancy was responsible for monitoring half of the class. She also played the
dominant role when it came to the time for students to practice for the exams and school-wide activities. Before the midterm and final exams, Nancy would sometimes prepare a mock-up test paper and ask students to complete it in class.
She would then go over the answers with students and tallied their scores. In the first semester, Nancy picked a Christmas song for each grade to master for the
“Christmas Activity Day” on the morning of December 25. During the month of December, in her Grade 3 classes with Amy, Nancy taught the song “Jingle Bells” to the students with the help of the music and poster she had prepared earlier. She also designed some actions to go with the song, and students practiced singing the song with the actions.
Nancy’s Change in Perception of Team Teaching
As mentioned earlier, Nancy was a supporter of the team-teaching policy when the school year began. She thought that students could receive authentic language input from foreign teachers and that watching how the local teachers could successfully communicate and work with foreigners provided students with a good learning opportunity. However, being a novice English teacher means that there were many things that Nancy needed to adapt to. She also served as the head teacher of the English department, a very demanding job in many elementary schools in Hsinchu City. Soon after the school year began, she told me that she regretted joining the English department, “I’m very tired. I regret that I took this job. We have to start from the beginning. I took this job because I am interested in teaching English.” She continued, “I don’t have to take this job. I can just be a Grade 1 homeroom teacher this year. I took this job because I am interested in English, and I like to speak it. I am also good at English” (interview, 2006/09/08).
One of the sources of Nancy’s frustration came from the communication with teachers at her school. My first interview with her was conducted on the same day
after the meeting among Nancy, Amy, and the homeroom teachers was over. In the meeting, Nancy worked as a translator between Amy and the homeroom teachers, who made a lot of suggestions to Amy, sometimes in an unfriendly tone. Nancy had to leave in the middle of the meeting because she had to teach a class. My interview with her was conducted after Nancy’s class was over. Before the interview started, Nancy asked me how Amy was; I told her Amy was fine, and she said that she was worried about Amy’s reaction to all the demands made by the homeroom teachers.
She talked about her feeling in one of the interviews:
I feel that I’m in the middle. I need to meet their expectations, but I want to know why they want Amy to do certain things. I don’t want to just give Amy commands. I want to know why. I need to consider Amy’s feelings. That is why I kept asking you how Amy felt after the meeting was over. I don’t want her to feel upset.
This is why I’m very tired. As you probably observed, every first grade homeroom teacher has her own opinions. One person said one thing, and the other said another. I feel that you should just
tell me your consensus. I don’t know if I will become a rival to them.
I really don’t know (interview, 2006/09/08).
She told me in the same interview that she would prefer her Taiwanese colleagues to talk to her directly, instead of making some “under-table” comments. In her words,
“It’s not that I don’t like to listen to different voices. What I don’t like is that they don’t talk to me directly. You say things under the table, and I have to apologize and say ‘Sorry, I didn’t know, blah blah blah.’” She continued, “Some people have told me this is normal. For this job, you need to be a ‘daughter-in-law.’ I’m not used to it.”
Although Nancy was frustrated with the communication problems she had with her colleagues, at the beginning of the school year, she felt that teaching English
gave her the joy which she did not experience when she taught science. She said,
“If we forget about those communication problems, I feel that teaching is very enjoyable. From kids’ reaction, you also get a sense of achievement” (interview, 2006/09/08). She also compared working as an English teacher with her previous experience as a science teacher—“I now feel that I’m the happiest when I teach.
This is something I did not feel in the past. I feel I’m the happiest when I’m playing with kids in the classroom.” She further elaborated, “When I was a science teacher, I felt teaching was very boring because students didn’t really care about me.
But now I feel teaching is my happiest time.” For Nancy, she had rediscovered her passion for teaching after becoming an English teacher.
As she was struggling with communication problems, Nancy also realized that Amy’s performance did not quite meet her expectation. Nancy is a very organized person. During the summer vacation, she had prepared many documents, including a Grade 3 weekly teaching schedule for Amy (Appendix U), an English version of the school calendar, her own teaching plans for the semester, and a list of teaching targets for some of the grades. On August 25, the day for their first official meeting in Hsinchu City’s Teacher Training Center, Nancy brought a binder for Amy and told her that she could keep her documents in it.
Nancy had expected that with the teaching schedule all sorted out for her (Appendix U), Amy would know what to do once the semester began. She told me in the background interview (2006/09/08), “The reason why I had arranged all the pages to be taught by Amy was that I was afraid when she first stepped into our school, she would be clueless.” She continued, “What I gave her is a very detailed weekly timetable, including the pages to be covered and homework to be given. I was expecting that she would know what to do. She is very inexperienced.”
Referring back to Gingerich’s (2004) framework for EFL teacher knowledge, Amy,
a completely new teacher to the Taiwanese context, probably possessed very little, if not none, pedagogical context knowledge when the school year began. The kind of adjustment which Amy needed to make is probably beyond Nancy’s imagination.
Also, teaching is more than following a timetable to teach a certain amount of textbook content in every lesson. Although the timetable which Nancy had prepared served as an important guideline for Amy to plan her teaching, there were many new things that Amy needed to learn and adjust to in the beginning phase of her teaching in Taiwan.
Although Amy’s initial performance did not meet Nancy’s expectation, Nancy acknowledged that Amy has a good personality and seemed to adapt to the new environment quickly. She also remarked, “Originally, I expected that my role was to assist and her role was to lead. It’s impossible for me to lead my part and her part as well. I’m not that capable.” She added, “But now I feel that I need to give her suggestions. I did not expect this, but I think it should not last for too long”
(interview, 2006/09/08). Although she was somewhat disappointed with Amy’s not meeting her expectation, Nancy remained optimistic at the beginning of the school year.
Throughout the school year, Nancy constantly struggled with Mike, the returning foreign teacher who started to work at School B in October, 2006. Mike is a middle-aged man from the U.S. After Mike joined School B, tension gradually built up between Nancy and him because of personality clashes and some unfriendly comments which Mike made. In a visit to School B in late November, Nancy, who looked very tired, told Amy and me during the recess that she just had a fight with Mike in the morning. Nancy was asking Mike some questions related to English usage, and Mike did not really want to answer; he told Nancy that she was not qualified to teach English. Nancy told us that she asked those questions just to
have something to talk about with Mike. She said, “I try to be nice to him”
(fieldnote, 2006/11/28). Amy, who had told me earlier that she disliked Mike’s
“arrogant attitude,” was upset and said to Nancy, “Why should you be nice to him when he is not nice to you?” In mid-December, Amy told me that Mike complained about Nancy to the foreign-teacher company. The company staff asked Amy how she felt about her head teacher, and Amy told me, “I felt that I have to stand up to say things. I told them that I feel very lucky to have Nancy as my head teacher” (fieldnote, 2006/12/18). On the same day, Nancy also told us that she felt very painful that she had to share the same room with Mike.39
In the second half of the first semester, Nancy’s frustration was evident in her daily teaching with Amy. I noticed that she spent less and less time on the stage teaching with Amy. Sometimes, she would look very tired and somewhat unhappy.
I had a chance to formally ask her about her feelings in the interview at the end of the first semester:
Researcher: Do you think the way you cooperate with Amy in class changes?
Nancy: I participate less and less.
Researcher: What are the reasons?
Nancy: The things and the ways they teach don’t really attract me.
At the beginning of the semester, I participated more because I also talked to students in English. But I found out that students don’t really like having both teachers speak English. I don’t think it works that well. Amy can teach by herself; she can handle it. I don’t know what her focus is. I don’t feel her enthusiasm. Other
39 The relationship between Nancy and Mike did not improve in the second semester. In my visit to School B on April 30, Amy asked me if I had heard about what Mike did on the previous Friday (April 27, 2007). I told her I had no idea. Amy then told me that Mike had some quarrels with Nancy the day before. On Friday morning, Mike did not show up at school. Nancy was worried. She tried to contact Mike, but his cellular phone was switched off. Around 10 a.m., Mike sent an email to George and Wendy (but not Nancy), telling them that he did not feel like going to school. In my interview with School B’s new principal (Ms. Chen) on May 1st, she told me that she was very shocked by Mike’s “no show” last Friday and wondered how any teachers could behave in such an immature manner.
things kind of disturb me so I am not that enthusiastic (interview, 2006/12/22).
I asked Nancy what was disturbing her. She told me that there seemed to be some problems in the communication between Amy and homeroom teachers, and she compared the situation to a chicken talking to a duck. She explained, “They feel that they’ve reached consensus. Amy forgets things. When I ask the homeroom teachers again, they feel that they have said it before. I just feel very tired.”
Having to work as the go-between exhausted much of Nancy’s energy.
Nancy’s dissatisfaction with the two foreign teachers also influenced her mood and enthusiasm. She explained, “Amy will tell me she finished the work I asked her to do, but it turns out that I have to do it again. I feel very annoyed. There are so many trivial things. Mike is another big trouble.” Nancy felt that the foreign teachers were not committed to their jobs and did not put enough efforts in teaching.
She remarked, “What I cannot agree with is that foreign teachers just come here and teach and get their pay. I think they really lack a sense of responsibility.” She continued, “I just sigh all the time now. I don’t really want to communicate with them now. I just tell them what to do. I think all of these will influence my enthusiasm when I teach” (interview, 2006/12/22).
At the end of the first semester, she no longer endorsed the team-teaching policy. In fact, she questioned whether it was absolutely necessary to have foreign teachers in each elementary school in the city. She told me about a talk she had with George:
I was talking to one of the teachers and I asked him if it’s possible that we don’t hire foreign teachers and that we use this budget to train our own teachers. He told me that this is impossible. Because of this co-teaching program, the Mayor is getting very high approval rate
from the parents. Also, we are starting a trend in Taiwan now.
Many cities are trying to establish something like this, so it’s impossible to get rid of this co-teaching thing in our city. I really don’t feel that foreign teachers can teach better. I feel I have no alternative but to accept (interview, 2006/12/22).
Nancy’s words illustrated Kaplan’s (2000) point that “the act of teaching ESL/EFL is a highly politicized activity” (p. vii). As Hall and Eggington (2000) further elaborate in their introduction to the book The sociopolitics of English language teaching (2000), “the political, cultural, and social dimensions of English language teaching are embedded in each and every decision we make” (p. 1), and educational policies, along with other factors, both inform and constrain what teachers do in the classroom. In the case of the Hsinchu Program, the introduction of foreign teachers into the elementary school system is an important policy of the current administration.40 With the high approval rate from the parents (see Lin, 2006 for more details), the team-teaching model has become a well-known feature of the city.
As Gitlin (1987, as cited in Crookes, 1997) puts it, teachers often find themselves
“in a responsive mode, reacting to the particular context established by the administrators” (p. 109). The classroom teachers who work at the frontline have no choice but to accept the team-teaching mechanism and try to cope with it.
Nancy was no exception. Nancy’s words also illustrated Hornberger’s (2006) point that “collaborative pedagogical relationships are interactionally and epistemologically complex, although educational policies more often than not treat them as unproblematic and straightforward” (p. 495).
Nancy’s self-confidence was also affected negatively. As mentioned earlier, in the background interview, Nancy saw herself as “good at English” (2006/09/08).
40 The Mayor was reelected with 70% of the votes in 2005; at the time of writing this dissertation, he was serving his second term from 2005 to 2009.
However, on the questionnaire which she completed at the end of the first semester, she answered the question “What do you like about team teaching?” with these words (Nancy answered in English), “Because I am new for English teacher and head teacher, plus my English ability is not that good, team teaching is suffer for me.
So far, I do not like this.” In her answer, she did not mention things she liked about team teaching; instead, she answered this question by talking about things she did not like. In the follow-up interview, I asked her to evaluate her team teaching experience in the past semester. She told me that she felt her experience was unsuccessful. In her words, “I don’t have a sense of participation. I don’t feel that I’m participating in team teaching. I just stand there for six classes a day. I feel very tired and bored.” She continued, “I don’t do much teaching. I may help them play the CD or teach a song. For me, this is quite boring. I don’t think my experience is that successful.”
Amy and Nancy’s Perceptions of Their Communication
Amy and Nancy had extremely different perceptions on how well they communicated with each other. Amy thought they discussed everything together and did not have any communication problems—“What I like about team teaching with Nancy is that we discuss everything together. We do everything together, like the lesson plans, we discuss the games (pause)…Not one person is left out in the dark” (interview, 2007/06/11).
In the second semester, Amy and Nancy decided to get together during the lunch break on Wednesdays to go over their Grade 3 teaching plan for the coming week. In one of the interviews, Amy described these meetings as providing an opportunity for them to do “proper lesson plans” (interview, 2007/06/11). I further asked her if the meetings were helpful for their teaching, and Amy replied:
Ya, definitely. Sometimes, I would say, “Oh, I don’t know how to teach this.” She would say, “How about this?” She would come up with games and ideas. It’s not just me doing the lesson plan, telling her what to do. To me, that’s not team teaching. I know a lot of people who teach like that. They just give the teachers lesson plans, and the Chinese teachers have no input, they have no say. Then the foreign teachers get really offended if the Chinese teachers
say anything. To me, if Nancy says, “I don’t like this game.”
I say, “OK, cool. What else do you suggest?” I don’t mind it at all (interview, 2007/06/11).
While Amy thought very positively of their Wednesday meetings, Nancy gave a very different portrayal of these meetings. She said, “It just lasted for five minutes every time. She scribbled something on her notebook and left” (interview, 2007/06/15). She also thought that Amy’s meetings with the homeroom teachers became “a meaningless routine” and a boring event for all the attendees.41 At the end of the school year, Nancy reflected that at those meetings, she could have asked Amy to do a demo teaching, like what the previous foreign teacher did last year.
Nancy lamented, “I didn’t ask Amy to do that. It turned out that every time, Amy just sat there and smiled. It’s a pity” (interview, 2007/06/15).
Nancy also described her change of attitude toward communicating with the foreign teachers in her school. She told me when the cooperation first began, she wanted to discuss her ideas with them. But gradually, she felt that the foreign teachers had different mindsets and were not devoted to teaching. It seems that no common ground was reached between Nancy and her two foreign colleagues after working together for one year. In fact, she had problems with little things like the foreign teachers’ hygiene practices (she sometimes complained to me that Amy’s desk was very dirty) to issues like their attitude. She remarked, “The foreign
41 It turned out that sometimes, Nancy was busy with other duties (e.g., training students for the English play) and did not attend the meetings with homeroom teachers.
teachers here (pause) I feel their hygiene practices and manners of handling matters are different from us. I see more dimensions of them. I really don’t like the idea of working with them” (interview, 2007/06/15). On the same occasion, she also talked about the way she would probably cooperate with other foreign teachers in the future, “In the future, I think I will just bring my ideas to them. I will have everything ready and tell them to assist me. I don’t think it’s worthwhile spending time discussing with them. They have their own thinking.”
Belenky et al. (1986, as cited in McCotter, 2001) differentiate between two types of dialogue that can take place in human interaction—“didactic talk” and “real talk.” In the first type, the primary purpose is to get a point across whereas the second type involves careful listening and sharing ideas. As Belenky et al. put it, real talk implies “a mutually shared agreement that together you are creating an optimum setting so that half-baked or emergent ideas can grow” (p. 144).
According to McCotter (2001), real talk is needed in teacher communities to foster the exchange of ideas. It is a pity that Amy and Nancy grew to be incompatible teammates with no real talk taking place in their daily interaction. As Nancy put it at the end of the year, “All day long, I just talk about some trivial things with the foreign teachers, like ‘How are you today?’ or ‘Are you going to a date?’ Very shallow things. They don’t think” (interview, 2007/06/15). If more effective communication took place between Amy and Nancy, more ideas and opinions could have been exchanged to foster a more positive personal and professional relationship between the two teachers.
Nancy’s Metaphor for Team Teaching
Nancy’s change of attitude toward team teaching was also evident in the metaphor she provided. On the questionnaire (Appendix F), she answered in English, “For me, team teaching is like taking medicine. No one knows what will
come up next. However, as you have a cold, you need to take medicine.” She continued, “If it works, happy ending; if not, you will for that whenever it’s gone [sci]. Well, people can cure themselves, so everything is going to be fine.” I was quite confused by her answer, so in the follow-up interview at the end of the first semester, I asked for her clarification:
Researcher: On the questionnaire, you mentioned that team teaching is like taking medicine. Can you elaborate on that?
Nancy: Just like when you have a cold, you need to take medicine. But in fact, you don’t know whether the medicine is good for you.
Researcher: What is the medicine in this case?
Nancy: Co-teaching with foreigners. You cannot reject; you must take it.
But you don’t know whether this is good for you. How can I describe it?
Researcher: You mean if we are sick, we need to take medicine and we don’t have a choice?
Nancy: I don’t have other choices. I cannot choose which foreign teacher I want to work with. You have to work with a complete stranger, and our job is to teach. You don’t have any choice. Just like
taking medicine. You take whatever the doctor gives you. You cannot say I want to take this pill, but not that one.
Researcher: You mentioned that if the pill is the right one, you will be cured. But if it’s the bad one (interrupted by Nancy)
Nancy: (laughing) There will be many side effects. I really feel this way…(interview, 2006/12/22).
As can be seen from the above excerpt, it took a few turns for me to grasp what Nancy meant by comparing team teaching to taking medicine. In her metaphor, team teaching with foreign teachers is something that others decided for her, just like the medicine prescribed by the doctor when one is ill. In both situations, Nancy felt that there is no other alternatives. She did not get to choose who she wanted to work with in the blind-date arrangement (Eisen, 2000). She added in the same interview, “You know that your philosophy is very different from the foreign
teacher, but you have no choice but to work together.”
In the first interview of the second semester, I also asked Nancy to provide a metaphor for team teaching (interview, 2007/06/15). This time, she did not provide one, but answered, “I still feel helpless. Last semester, because I was new to this position, I felt I could learn as much as I could. I was more tolerant.” She continued, “After the first semester was over, I felt that I grew faster than them. I do not agree with many of the ways they do things.” Later in the same interview, Nancy compared foreign teachers as “sticky candy” that she was stuck with. In her words, “I feel they are like the sticky candy I cannot get rid of. You know when we go to meetings, we learn that it’s the government policy to hire foreign teachers.
When they come here, they have so many things to adjust to.” She further elaborated, “Chinese teachers have to help them translate. They spend all their energy on dealing with things other than teaching, for example, communicating with them and their problems in daily life. I feel without them, everything will still be OK.” Nancy thinks that she would not mind team teaching with another Chinese teacher because she feels Chinese teachers are easier to communicate with.
Amy’s Metaphor for Team Teaching
Amy did not give me a metaphor for team teaching on the questionnaire, so I had to ask her again in the follow-up interview. She answered, “The metaphor I would use (pause) it’s like exercise. You constantly have to work at it. You can grow stronger from it. And if you don’t do it, I think you will lose the ability.
You will lose the strength” (interview, 2006/12/26). She continued, “I don’t really have to work hard at it because Nancy makes it quite easy for me. But still, you have to work at it. We constantly get to work out and we can become stronger.”
For Amy, she felt that the more one practices team teaching, the better he/she will become, i.e., practice makes perfect.
Unlike Nancy who was very spontaneous and always tried to give extensive answers in each interview, Amy often seemed to have “let’s-get-it-done” attitude.
Although she was willing to answer all the questions (including follow-up ones), she often did so in a very brief manner. The first question in the first interview of the second semester was about the most memorable team teaching incident during the past semester. Without any hesitation, Amy answered, “No” after I read out the question. For the question about her metaphor, she answered, “I don’t think if I have a metaphor, but I say team teaching really sums it up; it describes what it is.”
She continued, “Nancy and I (pause) we should work together. I think this is exactly what it is. It’s working together. Not one person taking over, not one person doing nothing” (interview, 2007/06/11).
Amy and Nancy’s Most Memorable Incidents in Team Teaching
At the end of the first semester, both Amy and Nancy stated that there was not a particularly memorable incident in their team teaching during the past semester.
Amy answered, “I would have to say that there has not been one specific memorable incident during the past semester. Rather, I feel that my co-teacher and I work well as a team.” She continued, “I have learnt many things from watching her teach and from her methods of classroom management. She is a very energetic and positive co-teacher, and I am extremely lucky to have the experience to teach with her.” Like Amy, Nancy also stated that there was no one incident which was particularly memorable. In her words, “I don’t have the most memorable incident, but I enjoy the time when both of us teach together instead of being an assistant.”
At the end of the school year, Amy told me again that there was not any memorable incident in her daily teaching in the second semester. On the other hand, Nancy shared two important events with me which she thought greatly changed her attitude toward Amy. The first incident was related to the English
play in the second semester. School B has the tradition of hosting many large events. In the 2006 school year, the English department needed to organize an English play which would showcase students’ achievement in the past year.
Traditionally at School B, it is the foreign teachers who have to organize this event.
But because Amy resisted starting the preparation work (she thought teaching students how to act was boring), Nancy had to be in charge and took over most of the responsibility.
By the second semester, Nancy was annoyed by Amy’s bad attitude towards things she did not want to get involved with. She remarked:
On the surface, it may appear that Amy is easy to communicate with. However, she doesn’t want to make changes. Take the Grade 2 English play for example. The Grade 2 teachers kept reminding her to get started. They even set a time for her to lead the students to do some practices. She just kept putting it off. Both of us ended up having to do a lot of work.
On the performance day, she bought me a bouquet, but she still told me she would rather not do the preparation. I mean she
would keep rejecting you softly if she doesn’t want to do something.
I think the English play incident made me change my view on her (interview, 2007/06/15).
Nancy went on to tell me that she learned from this incident that she needed to be tougher on Amy. I asked her why, and she replied, “Because I don’t think foreign teachers will appreciate your efforts for cleaning up their mess. They won’t thank you for arranging the layout of test papers and for marking papers. They just think about whether they finish a task.”
Another event happened near the end of the second semester. The Grade 2 homeroom teachers were not happy with the final test which Amy put together; they returned it to Nancy and told her to ask Amy to make some changes. Nancy told
me about the problems in Amy’s test paper, “For example, the word ‘angry’ was tested three times in different parts. Also, what she tests students does not reflect what she teaches in class” (interview, 2007/06/15).
While the homeroom teachers and Nancy were unhappy with the poor quality of the test paper and Amy’s apparent lack of efforts, Amy was annoyed with having to revise the paper. Nancy further explained the situation:
When she talked to the homeroom teachers, she was very polite.
She told them things like, “Your kids do well in my class” and
“Your clothes are beautiful.” But when she talked to me, she complained a lot. She thinks it’s very stupid that she has to do the same thing again and again. I explained to her that we have a list of things that she can incorporate into each test, and she can use that as a reference. Early in that morning, she just kept complaining for no good reasons. She was a bit hysterical. She didn’t make changes again. She came to complain and waited to see how I would react. I told her that the questions were not good at all.
You cannot test the same thing again and again. If they can do it, they can do it. If they don’t know the answer, they will not know it no matter how many times you test them in a single paper (interview, 2007/06/15).
Nancy said that before this incident, she always tried to comfort Amy when the latter had some complaints. This time, she did not do so. Instead, she insisted that Amy needed to make some changes to improve the quality of the test paper. Sensing Nancy’s change of attitude, Amy took the paper back and made the second version.
According to Nancy, the school was pushing her to hand in the paper because they were already a few days late for the deadline. So when Amy gave her the revised version, Nancy did not have time to go over it before giving it to the school. In the same interview, Nancy told me she just found out that for the second version, Amy simply copied the entire sample test paper written by her company staff (as an
example to show foreign teachers how to write a test). Again, Nancy was disappointed with Amy’s lack of efforts and careless attitude.
Development in Skills and Knowledge
Nancy’s Growth
Areas Nancy wanted to improve on
As a new English teacher whose background is in the science field, Nancy felt that she had a lot to learn. In the background interview, she shared her feeling with me, “My background is not in English. I’m really lacking in theories.” She explained, “Like what I was telling you before the recording began, I feel very lost and confused. It’s like something is always wrong. You ask a lot of people.
They do tell me the answers, but I still feel something is missing” (interview, 2006/09/08). She thought that she needed to improve her knowledge on how to teach pronunciation and that she would try to collect more fun activities. In contrast to her perceived inadequacy in the professional knowledge about teaching English, she felt comfortable with classroom management because she thought she could apply her previous experience of working as a homeroom and science teacher.
In my classroom observation, I sometimes found that Nancy was struggling with English. In the first week of the school year, in one of the Grade 3 classes, Amy was teaching a few new words, and Nancy was helping Amy write those words on the blackboard. One of the words was “crayons.” Nancy tried to spell the word, but could not. She asked Amy about the spelling, and Amy spelt the word as if she was teaching the students (fieldnote, 2006/09/05). Another incident took place at the end of the first semester. The class was playing the hangman game.
Nancy asked a student to go to the stage and come up with a word for his peers to guess. It turned out that the word was “pat.” This word was not in the textbook, so it is possible that the word that this boy had in mind was “pet” (of course, it is
also possible that the boy really knew the word “pat”). No one could guess the target word. After the boy revealed the answer, Nancy turned to Amy and asked her, “What’s pat?” Amy demonstrated a little patting movement with her hand, and told Nancy, “You know, patting as in patting a dog?” (fieldnote, 2007/01/22).
Nancy’s learning from her foreign colleagues
With regard to learning from Amy, quite early on in their cooperative relationship, Nancy felt that she had learned from Amy that teaching is more effective when teachers can have some fun with students. She talked about foreign teachers in these words, “They can help me with games and interaction with students.
I feel that they are very open and relaxed with students. I think this is very important for teaching, and this is something I have learned from them” (interview, 2006/09/08). Later in the year, she also commented about foreign teachers’ body language, “The foreign teachers (pause) their body language is quite good, which can shorten the distance between you and students. I dance in my class now. I do it quite naturally and don’t feel embarrassed” (interview, 2007/06/15). Nancy also thought that having to work closely with foreign teachers provided her with opportunities to learn proper English usage. She told me, “For example, if there’s a picture, I can ask her ‘Is this a jacket or coat?’ I can know the most appropriate word for it. She can help me to come up with the most appropriate English for students”
(interview, 2006/09/08).
However, Nancy did not expect that foreign teachers had much else to offer her in terms of her professional development. She remarked, “I can learn from them their English usage, their games, and their body language. I can also practice my English with them. But I don’t know in a year, if there are other things I can learn from them.” She continued, “I feel that the foreigners’ stuff is very easy to understand. They only have so much.”
By the end of the first semester, Nancy felt that she had learned some activities from foreign teachers. She also found out that she did not have to worry about teaching pronunciation too much because she speaks English clearly and students could understand her (interview, 2006/12/22). She also said that her new focus is on making each student learn something—“You know that some students are really advanced, but some are just beginners. I want students to use what they have learned to answer my questions.” She continued, “I want them to be able to use the words and sentences they have learned. I don’t want them just to read aloud the conversation in the book.”
Throughout the school year, Nancy had many opportunities to observe how Amy taught in their co-teaching lessons. As Richards and Farrell (2005) contend, team teaching can be an effective means of teacher development because it provides ready-made classroom observation opportunities. One thing which Nancy observed from Amy was that the latter often shouted at students in class. She disliked the fact that Amy shouted at students all the time and described her partner as someone who “went by her feelings” (interview, 2006/12/22). Nancy felt that watching Amy teach is a learning opportunity for her. More importantly, she learned about what she should not do from observing her partner. In her words,
“When I see Amy teach, I think of myself. You know sometimes she shouts at students. I remind myself that I shouldn’t do that.” She continued, “If you have to shout, it means that your teaching techniques are not good enough. I can see some of my own blind spots from her. I rarely shout in my own class.” In the same interview, Nancy also said that Amy always taught by leading students to read and that if she found students could not read, she would get upset and shout at them.
Nancy disagreed with Amy’s approach—“You should try different ways. You should try to anticipate students’ learning problems and try to solve them.”
Nancy’s learning from her Chinese colleagues
Nancy felt that she could learn more from the Chinese teachers. When comparing foreign teachers with her Taiwanese colleagues, Nancy said, “Many foreign teachers just have some rough ideas about how to teach, and what they can offer me is very limited. However, I feel that Chinese teachers plan their teaching well, so I can learn more from them” (interview, 2006/09/08). Nancy also felt that watching her Chinese colleagues teach helped her modify her teaching style. In her visits to George’s classes, she noticed that George used a lot of Chinese with students. In her words, “When George teaches, he doesn’t have any body language and he doesn’t vary his tone. His lesson is just like the Chinese language arts class.
He uses lots of Chinese to teach.” After visiting George’s class, Nancy reflected on her own teaching, “I used to feel that I have to use a lot of English when I teach.
But I found that George used some friendly language with his students. It almost feels like the students are his friends.” Nancy began to use some Chinese in class.
Nancy’s experience illustrates Richards and Farrell’s (2005) point that observing another teacher teach may help to trigger reflections about one’s own teaching. In Nancy’s case, she did not just reflect on her own teaching—she took some actions to modify her teaching.
From George and Wendy, Nancy was also able to find comfort and support.
She talked about how these two colleagues helped her, serving as an illuminating example for the type of teacher learning which can occur in informal contexts:
Recently, I have a strong feeling. I feel both of them are very open- minded. They think that if I need anything, I should just ask. Even if I don’t make any request, they will ask me if I need anything.
George is a very helpful person. Wendy will think about those things that you have not thought about. I think because of them, I feel there is a team. If I have any question, I can throw it to them. Even if their
suggestions don’t really work, you feel that you have a channel to look for help and support (interview, 2006/12/22).
Nancy talked about the Christmas activities as an example. She said she asked Amy to make some word cards. To show her how to make them, Nancy gave Amy a sample card which she had made by herself. Nancy described Amy’s finishing products as of “very poor quality” (interview, 2006/12/22). She also mentioned that a homeroom teacher told her just before the performance day (on December 25) that Amy did not teach the song to her class. Another homeroom teacher complained to Nancy that Amy had taught the song just once in her class. Nancy said, “This afternoon, I asked Amy what was going on, and she told me that she has taught the song many times. I don’t really know what happened. I feel that they are not devoted at all.”
Nancy went on to explain how her Chinese colleagues, including Wendy, George, and homeroom teachers, helped her during the preparation for the Christmas activities—“I don’t want to give them any burden or extra work, but some of them will call me on weekends and tell me that we can do some activities and they can contact people for me” (interview, 2006/12/22). She continued, “This is partly why I don’t like foreign teachers. If you say everything clearly, things will get ugly.
But if you keep silent, you will feel, ‘How can this happen?’ I think there is a big gap between us.”
Nancy’s experiment with integrating KK phonetic symbols into phonics instruction As a first-year team teacher and English teacher, Nancy was willing to experiment with different ideas to help her students learn English. One idea she tried was introducing the KK phonetic symbols to the third graders in the second semester. Meanwhile, in addition to the regular textbook, Nancy also incorporated
the phonics textbook published by the Hsinchu City42 as the second major teaching material in her Grade 3 classes.
In the second semester, Nancy’s decision to emphasize phonics changed the ways she and Amy conducted the Grade 3 lessons. The first half of the class time was often spent on the instruction of the regular textbook while the second half, on phonics. Because School B only has three complete sets of the government phonics textbooks, students could not have their own copies. When they needed to use the books in class, Nancy and Amy would give each student a copy and took it back once the class was over. To remind students of the words they learned from this textbook, Nancy would write each word with its Chinese translation on the board and asked students to copy the word list to their regular textbook. She would also write the corresponding KK phonetic symbol on the top of the word list (e.g., [æ] for mat and cat).
In the first class I observed in the second semester, I was unaware of Nancy’s decision to start teaching KK phonetic symbols and incorporate the government textbook to the curriculum. After the class was over, I asked her about the changes.
She said that the regular textbook is too easy and teaching the government textbook at the same time would give her more ideas to test her students in midterm and final exams (fieldnote, 2007/02/26). She also felt that introducing the KK phonetic symbols should help students learn spelling.
In Amy’s classes in the second semester, students were often given a fill-in-blank quiz to test their knowledge of the words from the government textbook.
In the quiz, Amy would first write a list of words on the blackboard (e.g., c t, sh p) and read out each word for a few times. In Nancy’s solo lessons, she would
42 When the Hsinchu Program first started, the city government published a series of textbooks for the lower graders. Each school can decide whether to use them or not.
often test students again by using the same method. Although some homeroom teachers felt that these quizzes were too difficult for some students, both Nancy and Amy continued to administer them until the oral test began in early June. In the meeting with homeroom teachers on March 30, Amy explained to them that many of the words are from the Grade 2 textbook and students should have learned them already. However, as one homeroom teacher told me after the meeting, when these students were in Grade 2 last year, they did not have to memorize the spelling of the words. She felt that the quiz was just too demanding.
The midterm test soon came, and students’ learning of phonics was put to test.
In my visit to School B on April 23, Nancy and Amy told me that students did quite poorly on the phonics questions in the midterm test. They decided that they would recycle the materials more and slowed down their instruction. By the end of the second semester, they taught the five vowels (a, e, i, o, u), their corresponding KK phonetic symbols, and words from the government textbook which contain these vowels.
In the last two interviews of the year, I had a chance to formally ask Nancy about her decision to incorporate the government textbook and KK phonetic symbols into her teaching. She told me that she made this decision after finding out her students could not spell. She felt that if students learned how to sound out English words, they could spell better, and one way to help them sound out the words was to teach them phonics. She also thought that introducing the KK phonetic symbols could complement the teaching of phonics, and compared to the regular textbook they were already using, the government one had more materials related to phonics. Therefore, she incorporated both the KK phonetic symbols and the government textbook into her teaching.
One way she used to reinforce students’ learning was to give students regular
quizzes, a strategy which she learned from observing Wendy’s classes. I asked her about the effectiveness of these quizzes, and she replied:
Some Grade 3 teachers told me that some parents complained that the quizzes were too difficult. Some students already know how to spell. It’s difficult to say whether it’s good or not, but I feel it makes my teaching more solid. I can examine my own teaching and see where more teaching is needed. Honestly, those who cannot do it still cannot do it because they have given up. But there are always a couple of weaker students who eventually learn the easier words, like chair and ear. Later in the semester, I tested them by
scrambling sentences. I read them the correct sentences, and they had to put all the words in order. I think some students make a little bit of improvement. At least I try to use different ways to make students understand (interview, 2007/06/21).
Nancy also reflected in an earlier interview that she wondered whether her experiment with KK phonetic symbols was meaningful and if there were more
“natural” ways of teaching pronunciation without using the KK phonetic symbols (interview, 2007/06/15). She remarked, “I read some reports the other day, and it seems that there are other ways to teach pronunciation other than using KK phonetic symbols, although eventually they still need to learn them.” She continued, “I’m still thinking about the best way to teach them pronunciation. More interesting ways.”
Nancy’s experiment with introducing graded readers to third graders
Another teaching idea which Nancy tried in the second semester was introducing her third graders to the graded readers which School B purchased at the end of the first semester. I asked her to describe how she used those books in her solo lessons, and she replied:
After the midterm test was over, I brought those books to the class.
In my first try-out, I asked students to read a simple sentence from the book, like “This is a…”. I didn’t do this in every class because I need to consider the teaching schedule. This time, I brought the books to all the classes again after the oral test was over.
I first asked each student to read a book, and then I asked two students to share a book. Those who finished reading came to me and read the book. If they could do it, they could take a break and do their own things. I think this activity is quite effective. For the more difficult books, I asked five students to read them together.
Among the five students, there are some stronger students who can help the weaker ones (interview, 2007/06/15).
I further asked Nancy if she involved the foreign teachers with the reading activities.
She told me that she did not involve Amy because she did not have a clear plan on how she wanted to make use of the readers. She commented, “I want to give it a try and get familiar with these books first. I can think about what modifications I can do. This is safer.” Nancy also used the few reading sessions to show students how they can use an English dictionary to look up unfamiliar words. If students found they could not pronounce certain words after consulting the dictionary, they could come to Nancy for help.
At the end of the second semester, Nancy evaluated her experience of incorporating the readers into her teaching as successful. In the last interview, she reflected that these books served as good extra materials and asking students to read them gave her an opportunity to assess students—“I learned from those training sessions that it’s not OK just to teach the textbook materials. Maybe I didn’t utilize the textbook to its fullest potential. I think you can add in other materials.” She continued, “In our meeting on the ability indicators, it was mentioned that every child should be evaluated via multiple methods, not just by paper tests or oral tests.
You can evaluate them when they are acting or singing a song.” She liked the idea
of multiple assessment and went on to comment, “I think this makes sense. I can use reading to assess how students are learning. I just keep experimenting”
(interview, 2007/06/21). Indeed, Nancy’s willingness to try out different ideas and reflect on the experiences contributed more to her growth in her first year as an English teacher than working with foreign teachers.
Amy’s Growth
Areas Amy wanted to improve on
In Amy’s case, she stated at the beginning of the school year that she would like to learn different approaches of disciplining children. In her words, “My classroom management is not very good. I think sometimes I can be too strict. I think I need to find other ways of disciplining the children without being too strict.
Maybe a more fun way of disciplining children” (interview, 2006/09/04). With regard to the knowledge she would like to gain, she acknowledged that it is important for teachers to have different kinds of knowledge, especially knowledge about children’s background. She recalled her experience of teaching in South Africa, “In South Africa, we have lots of students who come from broken homes. I think I play a very important role in helping them to develop. I think it’s very important to learn things like that.” In her new school in Taiwan, she felt that her knowledge about students was very inadequate and she did not know how to interact with them at the beginning of the school year. She remarked, “I’m not walking into the classroom and know exactly what to do. I’m still finding my way. It’s a little bit difficult, and I don’t know all the students yet.” She continued, “I can’t always react with the right approach. I don’t always know how to act with them.
For example, there are special needs kids, but I don’t know them. I think my knowledge is lacking very much here” (interview, 2006/09/04).
