Paris Chang ‘24 was awarded an English Teaching Assistantship (ETA) through Fulbright in Taiwan. At Oxy, Paris was an English major, and an Education minor. Paris’ Fulbright experience began in fall of 2025.
We asked Paris to share details and takeaways from her Fulbright experience teaching English in Taiwan, and here’s what she said:
I've spent my grant year teaching in Chiayi City, which is in the south central region of the island. It's a small city surrounded by the bigger Chiayi county, so grantees here get to proximally experience the city life and island's nature. A few fun facts: our city is known to have the best turkey rice in all of Taiwan, and we were featured on a Netflix documentary "Street Food: Asia" for a dish called "fish head stew." Most people will pass through our city because it's the only railroad to Taiwan's Alishan Mountains – a popular tourist spot for hiking and tea farms.
I've been teaching third and fourth grade English, third grade bilingual Physical Education, and an extra English support class on Fridays. I've also led a pen pal project with a school in South Korea, I help out with our school's Drone Club on some weekends, and I prepared workshops to support students in my school's Japan Exchange program.
Looking back, when I first thought about the transition moving to Taiwan, my mind hadn’t fully wrapped around the difficulties of classroom teaching. Formally, an ETA should co-plan with their co-teachers and prepare to teach only twenty minutes of class time. However, my co-teachers were all either first-time teachers or contract teachers teaching their first year at this particular school, so none were familiar with my role in the classroom. While a typical grantee has about two to three co-teachers, I worked with five. Each relationship was different – some trusted me to lead the whole forty minutes of class time on my own while offering little to no guidance on lesson planning, and others preferred I keep a quiet, supporting role in the background.
Though the majority of the grant year was adjusting to these working relationships and finding a rhythm with lesson-planning and teaching, I have honestly enjoyed experiencing the highs and lows that led me to better understand how students best engage and enjoy their learning. (If I’m leaving with any takeaways for teaching elementary English as a second language, it’s to gamify everything!!)
I will note though that because my co-teachers and I were figuring out the school system together, we grew pretty close. We grabbed meals outside of school, and I even trained for and ran a half-marathon with one of them! I’ve seen across social media that falling into running in your twenties is a sign of a “20s’ crisis,” but for me, I think it was a means of grounding myself and appreciating the way life is before me. Alongside running, I got to get a scuba diving license with a friend on one of Taiwan’s islands (Green Island). And because Taiwan is the most mountainous island, many weekends were spent hiking or driving my scooter around. With my cohort, we would designate themed nights, like Mahjong Wednesdays or movie nights specially for Taiwanese films. We also took Chinese classes together!
Naturally, I got close to my students too. Taiwan’s academic culture is marked by “bushibans” or after-school tutoring programs. They are a slight symbol of socioeconomic status depending on the type of program you attend. I found out that the church across my school provides free after school tutoring and care for students from particularly disadvantaged backgrounds, so during the second semester, I started volunteering to offer English classes. This has since become a community partnership that next year’s grantees will get to enjoy.
Looking ahead, I will be spending one more year in Taiwan! But this time around, I will be pursuing Chinese language studies at National Taiwan University in Taipei through the Huayu Enrichment Scholarship. Thank you Jennifer for the support and guidance you give Oxy students to opportunities like these!