Today was quite a big day for us Thailand WorldTeachers. We began our first day of teaching. Last night we went to bed with our lessons planned and all set to go to leave by 8:30. We had all sorts of emotions among us, nervous about class size, exact age of our students, how much English students would know, if our lessons were going to meet the students’ abilities or be to hard or easy. We were excited though because we knew once we got our first day teaching underway we would have all our questions answered about our students.
The elementary teachers are split into three groups. Two groups are at Pla Pak Noi, my placement. When we drove up to the school at 8:45 no teachers or students were around to greet us for our 9:00 teaching session. We called our director Jes and she called Porn Chai who is the director of Elementary schools in this area. He got days confused and told the schools we would start teaching on the 21st and not the 20th. Oops, Mai bpen rai! So we left the school dropped the third Elementary group off at a different school and went back to Pla Pak Noi where the troops were rounded up and we eventually had one teacher show up and 17 students. While we waited for all of them to slowly trickle in the kids that got there first had to sweep the floor. It was a little shocking to see but on the flip side it makes students take ownership for making sure they respect and take care of the things that are important to them.
One group of 3 teachers was to teach the younger Elementary group and my group of 3 teachers was going to be with 4th-6th grade. The 6 of us ended up combining our lesson plans so we had 6 teachers teaching 17 students. It sounds like it could have been quite intimidating for the students and too many teachers at once but surprisingly it went better than I ever anticipated!
We began by introducing ourselves, then Kerry led the class in introducing the class rules, then they wrote their names on a piece of paper. Next Peter reviewed the ABC’s with the class and taught them Chicca Chicca Boom Boom which went really well and he was absolutely hilarious with the students always throwing out silly comments and talking way too fast for them to understand. But they still enjoyed him! After Peter went I had a go at teaching. I taught the students about weather. They were pros!!! I guess I wasn’t expecting them to know as much as they did. We reviewed sunny, windy, cloudy, and rainy. Since they were so good I even taught them cold and hot. We then sang “Oh Mr. Sun, Sun Mr. Golden Sun, please shine down on me.” Etc… with all the different types of weather. It was a little ridiculous because I kept messing up the words on accident and my partners and I would do slightly different hand gestures but our kiddos still learned the song and were quite good at it on their own with very little help. To close we played Duck Duck Goose only we said down down up to help them practice saying their directions. They loved the game and laughed a lot especially if they had to be the ducker! One little boy, he is a twin, laughed so hard when it was his turn that he had to stop and collect himself. . . he was so very cute. Then we sang a good-bye song and they came around to each teacher before exiting to wai (put hands in prayer form and bow head)us in respect. It was unexpected but a very nice and cute gesture.
A little about the students. Our practicum is 6 days long and since it is still the students mid-semester break they chose to come in on their own free time because they want to learn more English. We had students from about 5 to 12 years old. When we went around to helps students write their names down some told us their Thai names others told us their English names. I wrote Joe as one kids name and it made me giggle because he didn’t really seem like a Joe partly because he isn’t my dad. Another kid was Bill. Both Joe and Bill seem like older men kind of names so to have these little boys named quite manly names made me giggle.
Final reflection of the day. . . I LOVE THAILAND!!!! and if you have been following my blog you already know that. After today though. . . I LOVE THAILAND and teaching in Thailand!!!
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