College, Fulbright, Jobs, Disabilities

I can't believe I've only posted once this year. I probably won't post for a while after this one, but we will see.

College
Vanderbilt--my time there was nothing short of a miracle. I can't say I enjoyed every single moment and was smiling all the time, but I loved it enough to still be happy that I chose to go there. Now I still have a few more credits to finish up before I can officially graduate over the summer, because...

Fulbright
Who knew (actually, God knew and He has made it clearer every day that this is where he wants me right now). To be honest, I am THE LEAST qualified of everyone at my school to receive this grant, and heck, I don't even like telling people in real life that I went/go to Vanderbilt because they will look at me and say, "How did you get in?" Me: "Two options: A ) Somebody on crack B) God."

I look forward to being in Taiwan and I've made plans this time to make sure I have a stable church family. Cause I definitely regretted not having one in Germany with CBYX.  All I really want out of this experience is to become a better teacher and to help Taiwan see the realities of living in the United States while still having a good impression of it. I also want them to see Taiwan as a great country and not one that is inferior to the United States. And last but not least, I am eager to see how all this stuff with their new female Prez and China pans out.

I plan on blogging more about the application process and while I am abroad, but I will post my Statement of Purpose for now. If you don't want to read this, skip! If you are looking for CBYX application essays, click here.

STATEMENT OF GRANT PURPOSE

Michelle She, Taiwan, ETA

As someone who lived in government subsidized housing for 16 years and used food stamps throughout my early schooling career, I have always felt drawn to underprivileged and low SES children. We tend to be mistaken for being dimmer or ill-intentioned compared to our middle or high SES counterparts, but this is far from true. I think what teachers see in school is just a tiny snapshot of a child’s life, and it is necessary to pay attention to one’s background knowledge and acknowledge the things that are being done well. Becoming an ETA in Taiwan will give me the opportunity to work with these children and allow me to use my past experiences to benefit others who are in a similar situation.

Coming from a Chinese and Taiwanese background, I have also experienced firsthand the stress and competition our education-obsessed culture has imposed on us. In countries such as China and Taiwan, school quality and test performance can determine your entire future, so children whose parents have little time at home to foster a positive disposition towards learning are at a clear disadvantage. ETAs have the opportunity to help level the playing field. My knowledge of Taiwanese and Mandarin will help me gain more insight into the approximations that children make while communicating in English and allow me to come up with fun pneumonic devices for remembering vocabulary and grammar structures. Having been immersed in environments that value multiple languages, I also take special care to let students know that English is not a superior communication tool, and that their native language, which is part of their identity, is just as useful and valid.

 My training as an inclusive early childhood educator will also serve me well as I learn to appreciate and incorporate direct instruction with more “western” pedagogy, such as immersion, arts integration, and discovery learning. Throughout the past few years, I have had the chance to teach many different populations. I try to be student-centered and keep in mind that teaching is not about the newest shiny method or my favorite style, but about whatever the student needs to succeed and cooperating with my lead teachers. For the elderly Chinese, it was direct instruction of phrases they could use at home with their children and discussions about Sino-American cultural differences. For Jin, a 3^rd grader from Japan, it was writing about Minecraft so that even time used for computer games could be used to build literacy. The 5 year olds loved Playdoh, so letter-forming contests were created to help them use their grapheme knowledge and practice their fine motor skills. The gifted children in Hong Kong built their own Rube Goldberg machines, used their creative juices to come up with their own inventions, and honed their oral skills through presentations.

In Taiwan, I hope to gain more training and teaching experience by working with my classroom teacher. Outside of school, I want to learn traditional Chinese and learn more about Taiwan’s history. I also hope to work with special needs children, whose needs are commonly unmet in rural areas. These experiences will be beneficial to me as I strive to become the best teacher and assistant I can be, both as an ETA and upon return to the United States. 

Jobs
I have had some wonderful chances to work with some incredible people over the school year and the summer. I love it and the experiences that I've had in tutoring, information mining, designing, and coding will always be close to my heart. For the first time, I learned what it felt like to suffocate in a swamp of emails that were actually not junk mail. And I really got to see what it felt like to be on a team. After all this time, I really think that teamwork is something we need to teach more explicitly in the classroom.

Disabilities 
Yesterday, I was a little frustrated with the textbook I had to read for my class on disabilities. Mainly because the first three chapters had people sulking about how terrible their lives were, how they could overcome anything (just an example of how I don't get this: can you really tell someone who is using a wheelchair that she can be a trapeze artist?), and how, you know what, drooling is so cool and deserves a rap entitled "Droolilicious." Because someone found it oh-so-sexy. One woman basically equated herself to a stripper. I couldn't help but think, as someone who is disabled (if you are reading this and are in the disabled or crips club, I hope you are not offended with about my language, I don't really care about using 'person-first language' for myself), is this truly the way to gain respect and to educate non-disabled people about our conditions?

But today, the book got slightly better. I especially liked this one paragraph written by a lady with traumatic brain injury (TBI):

Often a key to acceptance is not to dwell on loss or a good-old-days biased view of ourselves as having been perfect pre-injury. I know many people who are pleased that the injury caused inevitable life changes that led them to become better people, more enlightened, and more in touch with their gifts and strengths. It is not very common, though, to assign positive attributes to the injury symptoms and impairments themselves because those are seen as negative, as deficits we are supposed to be correcting in rehabilitation.   

 I think this is so true, and I always like to think in a "gains" or "growth" mindset.  People think I am crazy when I say I hope my foot doesn't get better all the way because I think, knowing myself, that I would be even more greedy and selfish. I tend to forget growth mindset, however, when surrounded by people who are so despondent about how their lives literally just went from ideal one day to terrible the next.

 I always wonder if they really saw their life as so perfect pre-injury, because to be honest, as someone who is born with an "injury-disability", that is never something I fully understand. My uncle used to be an award-winning badminton player, and now he has Parkinson's. He always tells me how much it sucks, and it seems like being rich is the only way for him to feel good about himself. I don't want to pity him, because pity is useless. While I really don't think it is healthy for him at all, I also don't get mad at him for being a "party pooper" or Debbie Downer because at least he is being real with himself-- that, you know what, injuries can hurt in more ways than just physical. Thinking positive 24/7 makes us have a false view of life because life ain't always rosy.

But instead, I think he can think about  what good things the disability/ injury has brought into his life. I'm sure injury allows people to have a new, unique perspective and learn how to value life, people, and time, more. It can make him more compassionate, more willing to try something other than badminton, and start to tune into other hobbies that are just as worth his time.

He always tells me he knows it's bad for him. From a disability lens, I wonder if "The only person you can change is you" even holds true. Because guess what? We want to stop our bad thinking. We want to live a better life. We wished it was just a bad nightmare. But the reality holds true all the time: it's not the case. And we still can't control how we think.

And this is where God comes in.  The only one who we can ask to help us think better is God, because he has the power to make us truly better, all 360 degrees of us. Not just for show. We can all do "for show"-- for a while. God makes it permanent. But, even as people with disabilities, a lot of the time, we still find it hard to be humble and to say:

God, I give up control of my life because it isn't going well. I need to you help me change that or change the way I view things. I trust that you have better plans for me than I have for myself. I don't necessarily always understand why this happened to me, so I feel stressed. Please give me peace.

No. Even with disabilities, we hide the pain and think: MY DISABILITY ROCKS!! And then we wonder how much more it will take to be that success story.
Or, we think: What a failure. I am the biggest loser ever.

If, like me, a disability affects every part of your daily life and you can tell how you are restricted AND are reminded of this all the time, then, who the heck I kidding...life doesn't rock like the positive extreme. Life also doesn't suck to the point of negative extreme.

Think gains. Think about why (if you are disabled) you were given the opportunity to experience what you experienced. Then, you might realize, your life has been very blessed.