TAS Mandarin Department Partners with NTNU for Teacher Internship Program

By Lindsey Kundel, Director of Communications and Marketing

Caroline Hsu, Lower School Mandarin Coordinator at Taipei American School, has been a Mandarin teacher and Mandarin coordinator for over twenty years. Caroline and the Lower School Mandarin Team embrace opportunities to explore ways to increase language learning in the Mandarin classrooms and look forward to sharing how they implement balanced literacy components and partial workshop models in their teaching with colleagues in the region. 

One important part of the TAS Mandarin team's approach to sharing best practices in teaching is through a unique internship program that the school has been involved in since 2016. Hsu was instrumental in bringing this symbiotic relationship with the Department of Teaching Chinese as a second language at National Taiwan Normal University. 

While 2016 was an important year for the program, according to Hsu, the idea for this partnership came way before that.

In their daily teaching in our Mandarin classrooms, Hsu said that the Mandarin team often felt that if their Mandarin teachers had a helping hand, they would be better able to split the class into different groups based on ability level, interests, and other flexible groupings. The introduction of this internship enables very flexible groupings to better support different student needs.

"We wanted to be able to improve our support of students to better meet their needs," said Hsu. "This was especially important for students who were new to TAS or to the Mandarin language."

This was the core reason for implementing the internship, but there were also additional considerations that influenced the new program, including the desire to collaborate with future teachers who could benefit from learning from our own TAS teachers as they begin their careers.

Hsu said that this internship idea predates the Lower School's integration of teaching assistants into each homeroom classroom, something which is now a cornerstone of the lower school's educational approach.

Another important year for the TAS Mandarin program was 2007 - the year that the College Board began to offer AP Mandarin Chinese as an exam, something which ultimately increased the demand for an even higher-caliber Mandarin program here at TAS in the lower school. 

Hsu says that the global trend of Mandarin learning definitely helped the Lower School lift the importance of learning Mandarin the the 2000s by scheduling regular Mandarin classes during the day for the first time.

"We doubled the amount of Mandarin instructional time, and we added additional Mandarin teachers to our program," said Hsu.

This year wasn't just influential for TAS though. Hsu explained that due to increased international demand, the universities in Taiwan also began to offer additional classes and programs to support the preparation of teachers who intended to teach Mandarin as a foreign language.

As these programs expanded - both in size and caliber - Hsu began to think to herself, why don't I approach them to see if we could be beneficial to one another?

Hsu was particularly interested in partnering with NTNU because, historically, that university used to be the "teachers college" of Taiwan, a legacy they still carry with them into their program offerings. It is now a leading university that trains professionals to serve in many different academic fields, including teaching. 

"They have a very high-quality program that trains their students to become Mandarin teachers," said Hsu, "And what we needed was a way to find high caliber teaching assistants to come into our classroom to support our students' learning."

The NTNU program requires all students to participate in some form of real-life working experience as part of their graduation requirements. TAS is one of the internship options for these graduate students, and Hsu says that it has historically also been one of the most popular options as well.

The number of interns at TAS varies by semester depending on how many students sign up both for the course and for TAS as the intern host, but Hsu says that the number is usually between 4-18 interns. "The first year we had interns, in 2016, we had 4," said Hsu. "This semester, however, we had 18."

Interns come to campus for two full days of work per week as part of the class's requirements, and most interns choose to take the 7-week internship option (although an abridged version of the internship program exists during NTNU's winter break as well).

"Depending on how many interns we have," said Hsu, "we can look at our own needs by grade level or language track to see where an extra trained teacher would be most helpful to students."

Hsu says she is proud that TAS not only started this internship but has continued to offer it because it is a true "collaboration" with one of the best Mandarin-teacher preparation programs available today, something which is designed to teach high-quality teachers.

"Whoever is coming into our classrooms through this internship is the future of Mandarin teaching in international schools," said Hsu. "They have the background and knowledge, but what they need is to see and learn from our own TAS teachers. And so it's beneficial for the interns. But for us, as an educational organization, it's also beneficial because our students get extra language support exactly when they need it and supported by the newest pedagogical methods available."

The NTNU teaching assistants also help TAS teachers with the Lower School's after-school Chinese Culture Club, and they plan the sessions with our Mandarin teachers to offer extra cultural appreciation opportunities to lower school students.

Hsu says that the most recent group of interns last semester was particularly inspiring to her to watch as they continued to hone their teaching skills. She credits much of this to the fact that the program has been around for a number of years now, and so the faculty at NTNU give their students much-needed background information on each of their internship locations. Hsu says that this group of interns "blended seamlessly" into life at TAS.

Hsu has taken the partnership one additional step within the last few years as well, as she guest lectures at NTNU to help prepare the interns for the types of pedagogical techniques that are important to the lower school including ideas like raising hands, the relationship between TAs and students, and Responsive Classroom.

Hsu looks forward to many years of future collaboration between TAS and NTNU. If parents or other community members want to find out more about this unique program, please feel free to contact Ms. Hsu directly at hsuc@tas.edu.tw .