It's been a long time since my last post. I have been busy teaching and doing some coaching on the side. Everything has been a whirlwind as we near the end of another year. I am blessed to have so many game-changers in the last 3 months of 2018. I was asked to give a lecture on how journalism and debate can be integrated into MUN. Although I had less than 48 hours to hatch everything, it was familiar territory. I brought the teachers into the application of MUN and feeling how it is. Countries that people were most familiar with, were easier to do. Other countries less known to the Taiwan public became much much harder to research and find information on. This was something that required students AND teachers to be concerned about. Globalized society includes EVERYONE, not just the big or powerful countries. They also got a taste of what journalism truly is as well as how debate is necessary for negotiations of all scales. Debate's cross-examination skills were brought onto the table and they were attentive to the questions thrown at them because they realized I didn't come to just play. I came to instruct and make changes. Aside from pointing out the fact that MUN was never just a show and that it is the breeding grounds for future leaders, negotiators, and diplomats, I gave a very heavy take-home message for teachers to bring back to their classrooms, as you all can see below. In Hualien, I was asked to give a talk on English debate. While I was a bit paranoid about the train performance, I took the chance to go and even wrote a journal entry before leaving on the morning of December 18th, 2018. The train ride was fun and took me to see the mountains before reaching Hualien Train Station. The Tzu Chi Senior High School (Affiliated with Tzu Chi University) was a sprawling huge campus with its middle school also in the fold. Typical grey, "low-key" structures all across the place. Speaking to the teachers initially felt as if I was speaking to a lethargic, passive bunch. The younger teachers who taught middle school were very active but seemingly lost in the beginning. The others were jaded from years of bureaucratic work and routine teaching. I can tell it was going to be a rather challenging starting point. However, I know what I do best: bolstering bilateral communications and critical thinking. Not only did the teachers got a taste of English debate's cross-examination intensity and how it might look like, but they also took a dose of their own medicine in English examinations where they tested students with questions that seemed unreasonable from my education background's point of view. You know, the type of questions that take out the letters of a word, leaving only the beginning and ending letters for the student to "guess" the word. I hope that served as a wake-up call to young and old teachers alike. The take-home message for them was this: A few of those senior teachers looked so unfazed at the very beginning (and were late for that matter), had no choice but to keep their attention on me as I peppered them with questions, wheeled between the computer, the stage, and them. In the very end, they all felt they gained something valuable. I have high hopes for those young, budding teachers in the years to come. An unexpected moment happened near the end of my talk, and that was my recollection of how I struggled as a former medical school graduate to make my way into the education world, living in the basement while being almost broke for nearly 2 years, buying my first suit with the remaining savings I had in my account, and receiving the opportunity to coach English debate at not just one, but two respectable schools in Taipei. Emotions were filled to the brim and I shed a few tears (ok that's not true, I shed more than a few). The final goal has never changed: to improve Taiwan's critical thinking and communication skills to foster a better future while training young blood to spread across the country and the world. Thank you Hualien for having me. That concludes this post. Hopefully the next one will come in time!
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