Page 234 - 國立竹科實中創校40週年紀念特刊

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Bilingual Department Nostalgia on the

Occasion of the 40th Anniversary of NEHS
師 退 休 教
Jack Morris (Retired in 2010)

A kind invitation from the dean of IBSH recently brought me back to what I still call the
"Bilingual Department," where I taught English from 1992 to 2010. e only other time that I
had been back to campus in the intervening years was about seven or eight years ago when I met
up my Taipei Fuhsing students who were competing at MUN, hosted by NEHS.

That was at night, and MUN was in the In those days, the Science Park was
original NEHS gym. Things around there, officially called the "Science-Based Industrial
in the dark, looked pretty much the way Park," or SBIP, for short. I remember being

I remembered them, so I didn't feel like a asked to update a school brochure used by
stranger, then. teacher recruiters. That long, impossible-
What a shock to return in daylight, to-pronounce name, it seemed to me, would
walking in from Quiet Heart Lake! A grand be a turn-off to foreign teacher candidates. I
canopy over the basketball courts, reminiscent imagined myself in the position of someone

of Chernobyl! A vanished swimming pool! being asked to move to SBIP. If I did not
A missing kids' playground next to the BD know better, I would picture Detroit or
classrooms (Yay!)! Several new buildings Newark! So, on my own authority, I changed

where tombs used to be! And, the old death- the name to "Science Park" in that brochure
road connector between the police station and called the area "Taiwan's Silicon Valley,"
and Guang Fu Lu was now part of campus possibly the first time anyone had used those
and transformed into almost a shady country terms in print. My small contribution to the
path! There was a Back to the Future quality Bilingual Department Story?

about the whole experience. I felt like Marty In those days it was difficult to convince
McFly! foreign teachers to consider teaching here.
If we really had a DeLorean that was big When we were recruiting in the US, Taiwan

enough, I could take you all back to the past, always sat with TAS and Thailand at the
to the Bilingual Department (not IBSH, yet) hiring fairs. Poor little Hsinchu was, as of
of NEHS in the year 1992, not too long after yet, unknown to the outside world, except to
the "Big Bang" of the school's birth. computer geeks. How to compete with those

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