Teaching English in Taiwan - Keeping Kids Off The Streets

I have been teaching English here in Taiwan for a few months now, I am still a newbie for sure, but I did learn a lot in that time. Teaching in a Buxiban (cram school) here is quite different from teaching in a Elementary or Highschool, or University of Course. Taiwan is full of cities, parents are very, very busy making money. Some huge percentage of Taiwanese own their own business, a lot to manage, and so these kids don't have anywhere to go after school.

It's really impressive that as Taiwan is developing, the country hasn't really been free for so long, they have used schools, like mine, as a way to teach the children as well as being a sort of a daycare to keep the kids off the streets. Of course there are plenty of parents who can't afford it, but it's still doing its part. In the US we have many big gang problems, kids out after school with parents working two jobs. They have nowhere to go so they just make their own rules on the street, this starts them on the path to being social outcasts who don't really match up with the rest of the world.

In my neighborhood back home I saw plenty of other kids, and even some friends, go off on this path. As a kid I never really understood the phrase, "Keeping kids off the streets." To me it was like, "What's wrong with the street? How can just being outside make you bad?" Obviously that's not the point. Kids need rules, parents who know what they are up to, who their friends are. You don't need to rule everything in their life, like their clothes, or their hobbies, but just know who they are getting their moral ideas and things from.

So when I start to feel that my teaching is boiling down to playing games and teaching minor English vocabulary, I am satisfied to know I am a kind of a role model, or at least a good influence for these kids, to keep them out of trouble for the future.