What made this nightmare all the more shocking and surprising was that for more than three of the four years I taught at the nursing university things were fine and I enjoyed my work, the students and my working relationship with colleagues and staff at the school was very good. To say that the false sex harassment accusation and underhanded attempts to snatch my job from under me came out of nowhere doesn't adequately describe the magnitude of how this hit me. Some of the same people who I had worked for and with, students who I had dedicated myself to teaching and helping, had betrayed me and cooperated in a very cowardly and ugly conspiracy to try and rid the school of the last foreign teacher standing in the way of the school's path to university status...as well as certain students' desperation to no longer have to face the difficulty of passing an English class taught by a non-Taiwanese instructor.
Of course, it was not always this way. Here is the concluding part of The First Response:On the positive side, many of these same students have also shown measurable improvement – speaking more English in class, higher test scores, etc - in their English skills no matter how low they were at the beginning.
I have an earnest and genuine passion and commitment to helping these students learn, grow and improve themselves. Is it right that the very people in high places of my institution should attack and stifle this passion and commitment and my right to be the best teacher I can through sound principles of teaching and widely acknowledged language learning methods? I wasn’t aware that institutions are eager to punish earnest, challenging, good teachers while rewarding dispassionate, fair or easy teachers with continued employment…and rewarding misbehavior and whining by lazy students by encouraging such activity.
How can any school call itself an institution of “higher learning”, and fulfill it’s mandatory academic requirements for English education, when it eliminates all (3 of) the native English instructors for a faculty of all Taiwanese teachers because they can do paperwork in Chinese? It would be like a college or university in America only employing American non-native speakers of Chinese to teach all levels of Chinese courses – no native Chinese faculty!
I have been fortunate too over the years to have many students and classes who appreciated my earnest, communicative teaching…students who understand and value the privilege and opportunity they have for higher education…and learning more accurately about the language and culture of my country. For those who care about the quality of their education, their positive comments and feedback have validated what I’m doing and made teaching in Taiwan very worthwhile.
In conclusion, throughout both of these unfair dilemmas I am facing, there have been some serious violations of my rights as a teacher and as a public employee:
1. In the three years I’ve been teaching at the National Taipei College of Nursing, I have never had any formal evaluation of my teaching by anyone at the college nor any written warning of problems or deficiencies in my teaching.
2. My current contract is due to expire on July 31, 2007, and to date I have not received any written notification that I will not be extended a new contract. By law, the college is required to either present me a new contract or notify me of non-renewal at least 60 days before the current contract expires.
3. I heard about the student accusation from a college employee who should not have known about this issue. The employee also heard it from another employee and told me that the student’s accusation has been spreading around the college among students, faculty and staff…all of this a violation of my privacy rights concerning such an allegation.
4. To date, I have not received any written notice of the student’s accusation against me.
- On June 15, a college employee informed me that she was told the nursing college would hold a hearing about the student’s accusation…but to date I also have not received any written notice requesting my appearance for any hearing.
Although these crises are seemingly unconnected events, it’s a very strange coincidence the timing and the same people involved, and suspicious how the school has aligned these against me. In essence, what this all comes down to is that both some students and some administrators are trying to find a way to circumvent the norms of education and the law to make it easy for the students to get around the MOE’s English requirements so they will stop complaining and can graduate on time. Many students hope they can sit idly in class or fool around for 18 weeks and then magically pass the class. Students are supposed to be responsible and accountable for their part in learning and progressing…to earn whatever grade they get. If they don’t take responsibility for earning what they get now, when will they? What kind of nurses, employees, people will they be in the future?
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