The first week of teaching was crazy. At first I was thinking that it was clearly not what I am meant to do. Now I still think it may not be what I am meant to do, but then again maybe...
I have the equivalent of 7th and 10th graders. Some classes are smarter than others so the year should be interesting. And the Monday and Friday classes will unfortunately suffer due to the crazy holiday schedule here. For example, there were no classes after 2 today, which we didn't find out until about 1pm. Although that could partly be because we were in Lampang again today, getting our work permits.
I mostly did greetings and class rules with my classes this week, although I did discover that they love both hangman and the first letter/last letter game (in which you think of a word, then the next person has to come up with a word that begins with the last letter of that word and so on...). I hope to be able to continue to think of games for them to play, although it's safe to say I can repeat games (for different subjects) about every 6 weeks. Easy peasy. Now to figure out how much they know already, because I can't teach them from the book I was given. Apparently they have this book from the Thai English classes they also take (mostly grammar classes), so if I teach from them they'll tell me they already did it. And if I get ahead of where they are with the Thai teacher, when she tries to teach it they'll do the same to her, which I am sure will not be pleasant for me. So it's more of a guideline for what they might be learning, because nobody really has even told me where they are for sure in this book to begin with.
The other bothersome thing is the condition of our classrooms. The thai teachers have really nice tiled floors, new desks for the kids and a new desk for them, a computer, nice bright walls and lights, a microphone, speakers, a projector, A/C... My classrooms have filthy concrete floors, no projector, shitty lights, fans that might work but no A/C, old old old desks... at least I have a whiteboard and not chalk. Small favors.
So there was a Wai Kru day on Thursday, also known as Teacher Appreciation Day. There were no classes on Wednesday and all of the kids sat around (with zero adult supervision!) making these crazy elaborate floral arrangements. Pictures will be posted on Facebook soonly. They presented them in a big ceremony to the teachers Thursday morning. The teachers would go to the stage and the students walked on their knees, flowers in hand, to bow down and present them to the chosen teacher. It was really interesting to watch.
Saturday we all caught a songtao (song=2, tao=rows, it's basically a pickup truck with bench seats on either side and an open back. We went to Chiang Mai (for 20 baht, less than a dollar and it's 60km or so away!) and met up with James, one of the other English teachers at our school. He took us to an Irish pub where we had cheeseburgers and coffee. Real coffee, not this iced starbucks stuff that is absolutely everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to have some form of coffee but sometimes you just want a nice hot cup of joe and that is harder to find around here. After that James took me and Ben to his friend Jan, where we have now rented a motorbike. Read: suped up scooter. Yay freedom!
We drove from Chiang Mai to Lampang after that, about 130km. Will post more on that tomorrow, as it's almost midnight here and I am exhausted and have to get up and go to work. Grumble grumble.
I have the equivalent of 7th and 10th graders. Some classes are smarter than others so the year should be interesting. And the Monday and Friday classes will unfortunately suffer due to the crazy holiday schedule here. For example, there were no classes after 2 today, which we didn't find out until about 1pm. Although that could partly be because we were in Lampang again today, getting our work permits.
I mostly did greetings and class rules with my classes this week, although I did discover that they love both hangman and the first letter/last letter game (in which you think of a word, then the next person has to come up with a word that begins with the last letter of that word and so on...). I hope to be able to continue to think of games for them to play, although it's safe to say I can repeat games (for different subjects) about every 6 weeks. Easy peasy. Now to figure out how much they know already, because I can't teach them from the book I was given. Apparently they have this book from the Thai English classes they also take (mostly grammar classes), so if I teach from them they'll tell me they already did it. And if I get ahead of where they are with the Thai teacher, when she tries to teach it they'll do the same to her, which I am sure will not be pleasant for me. So it's more of a guideline for what they might be learning, because nobody really has even told me where they are for sure in this book to begin with.
The other bothersome thing is the condition of our classrooms. The thai teachers have really nice tiled floors, new desks for the kids and a new desk for them, a computer, nice bright walls and lights, a microphone, speakers, a projector, A/C... My classrooms have filthy concrete floors, no projector, shitty lights, fans that might work but no A/C, old old old desks... at least I have a whiteboard and not chalk. Small favors.
So there was a Wai Kru day on Thursday, also known as Teacher Appreciation Day. There were no classes on Wednesday and all of the kids sat around (with zero adult supervision!) making these crazy elaborate floral arrangements. Pictures will be posted on Facebook soonly. They presented them in a big ceremony to the teachers Thursday morning. The teachers would go to the stage and the students walked on their knees, flowers in hand, to bow down and present them to the chosen teacher. It was really interesting to watch.
Saturday we all caught a songtao (song=2, tao=rows, it's basically a pickup truck with bench seats on either side and an open back. We went to Chiang Mai (for 20 baht, less than a dollar and it's 60km or so away!) and met up with James, one of the other English teachers at our school. He took us to an Irish pub where we had cheeseburgers and coffee. Real coffee, not this iced starbucks stuff that is absolutely everywhere. Don't get me wrong, I am grateful to have some form of coffee but sometimes you just want a nice hot cup of joe and that is harder to find around here. After that James took me and Ben to his friend Jan, where we have now rented a motorbike. Read: suped up scooter. Yay freedom!
We drove from Chiang Mai to Lampang after that, about 130km. Will post more on that tomorrow, as it's almost midnight here and I am exhausted and have to get up and go to work. Grumble grumble.
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