Before I moved to Taiwan, I was a high school agricultural sciences teacher in northern Colorado. Being a teacher is the best job in the entire world! One of the main reasons I decided to come to Taiwan was to see how they teach here so I can learn new ways to improve. I have learned there are a lot of differences between what I was used to in American schools and how things are here.
For starters, the schools are organized differently. Elementary school is called 國小 "guó xiǎo" and is for grades first through sixth. Middle school is called junior high school or 國中 "guózhōng" and is for grades seventh through ninth. High school is called senior high school or 高中 "gāozhōng" and is for grades tenth through twelfth. As a junior high school teacher, I have seventh, eighth, and ninth graders at my school, but I only teach the seventh and eighth grade students.
Another big difference in the school system is related to moving between classrooms. In the United States, middle schoolers typically move to different classrooms each period. In Taiwan, the students stay in the same classroom for almost all of their classes and the teachers move around to different rooms! This stays the same for senior high school, too.
