So I woke up the first morning a bit distraught and somehow managed to take a freezing shower which I'm finding to be quite a relief in this heat. We got textbooks for some of our classes but still had no real idea what the heck we were supposed to for our classes.
I'm teaching 19 periods a week in the following subjects (kinda stressful):
3rd grade: health (once a week)
4th grade: health (once a week)
5th grade: math and science (4 times a week each)
6th grade: math and science (4 times a week each)
7th grade: english convo (once a week)
9th grade: english convo (once a week)
club: still have no idea what this is, but I think its some sort of English club? yea things here just get told to us and then we have no idea what they
mean. then they get brought up again and we're still clueless--so when I find out about club I'll let you know.
So we got to school via the wan and were whisked to our offices. josie and I are in an office with Irma (a filipina english teacher-oxymoron?) who is pretty nice. We're on the 4th floor
of building 2 where the EP kids are. After setting down our stuff we went to morning assembly which is something from the movies. All the kids sing the national anthem in little rows as the school band plays and students raise the flag in the middle of the courtyard. Then they say some pledge (which we have no inkling as to the meaning) and then there are morning announcements in Thai as well as group exercises (which are really easy, but close to torturous in the morning sun). We all had to introduce ourselves in front of the assembly which was awkward, but apparently they all know me now!
Thankfully Wed. I have my first period free so I could gather my thoughts and ideas for what I was gonna do for my very first teaching lesson. I had 5 classes my 1st day and was completely wiped out after them. I bascially just played intro games and showed them pictures from home. I asked questions about their lives (some could answer some couldn't) and had them make name tags using these name cards I brought from home. Thai kids LOVE stickers so when I broke out stickers for them they went nuts. The charts I bought have a little grid on them for putting stickers when they are good (so now everyday they do something good they say "Teacher Teacher! Sticka! Sticka!")
All my kids call me Teacher or Teacher Na-tan (like how they pronounced it in Spain which is pretty great) or Teacher Nasan or Ajarn (Ajaahn) Nathan or Kruu Nathan, but they mostly just say Teacher Teacher. Thais themselves have crazy/long names so they substitute those with crazy nicknames. Here are some of my favorite student names: Bamboo, Palm, Beam, Peace, Minnie, Earth, Prim, Mook, Win, Champ, Pink, Rally, Oil, Milo...and the list goes on. My 6th grade class has 4 kids: Ploy (the only girl), Tar, Bright and Bam. You think I'm joking, but you can't just make this stuff up.
Most of my kids are pretty good, but as a whole Thai classrooms are soooooooooo different than American ones and the level of English varies immensely from student to student. Students literally just get up and walk around, play on their phones, talk to their neighbors, walk in and out of their classroom or someone else's classroom, go to the bathroom, sleep and basically DON'T DO ANYTHING. They definitely behave more when a Thai teacher is in the room, but still it shocks me how rowdy they are. I for sure came here thinking that classes would not be like this--it sometimes makes me feel like I'm talking to myself or that I'm not getting through to them, but it varies from day to day.
My 5th graders may or may not be the spawns of satan. There are only 7 of them, but there may as well be 700. Some of them have the worst attitudes and some of them clearly don't know english, so it's kinda hard to deal with them. I tried playing games the first couple days, but they don't pay attention, so I learned quickly that worksheets is the way to go. My other kids are fine, but its just a struggle when some can't speak english to engage them and get them to respond, but it's a work in progress so it'll just get easier with time I'm thinking.
We all eat lunch down in the cafeteria in little student sized chairs which is pretty funny. The food is really great though (which is awesome bc its free for us!) Lots of rice, soups, noodles
Friday night we came back from school and unwound on the second floor porch of our dorms with some of the Thai teachers. Michelle and Ryan (2 other american teachers) went to Laos to sort some stuff out with his visa, so the 5 others of us: me, josie, ryan c., emily and katie hung out with some Changs, Leos and Singhas.
The other teachers (Pai, Golf, Yok and Noh) took us under their wings and we shared stories and tried teaching eachother words in our languages--pretty funny. One thing lead to another and the next thing we new we were flying down the Soi (lane/road in Thai) in the back of Golf's pick up truck. They took us to a local pub called "Songs for Ear" haha. It was awesome--there was a live Thai band (who actually played Linkin Park for us), great food and we started a dance party with some of the locals.
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