I have heard the words spoken to me a few times already these last few days –kruu and ajahn, both of which mean teacher in Thai. Teacher, who me? Seeing as how I graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Finance, I never foresaw this incredible opportunity to teach children in Thailand. Each day is a new day as I stand in front of dozens of Thai students showing them my enthusiasm to help them learn the language I grew up speaking. So, I’m a teacher. This is new to me, but appreciated, anticipated, and prepared for (to the best of my ability).
My first week of teaching has been eventful, a learning experience, and a great beginning to my job as a Teacher here in Thailand.
We are teaching at a local secondary school, Mahaprattaram Girl’s school, in Bangkok for five days before moving to our provinces throughout Thailand. Since the school is all-girls, and most of the ETAs will be teaching coed classrooms, the staff at TUSEF, asked the school to combine with two local boys schools. The students are grades M1 through M3 which is roughly 7th-9th grade, about 12-15 year olds. The ten ETAs, including myself, have been paired up teach five different classrooms. I am paired with Brad, a smart, optimistic, and laid-back guy from West Virginia, who will be the only other Fulbrighter to teach in the same province as me (Chiang Rai). We take turns teaching for 50 minutes each on a lesson of our choice. We (the ten Fulbright ETAs) have been creating our own lesson plans to teach the students. The amount of freedom we have been given is utterly incredible.
Wednesday, the first day of teaching: I found myself in front of 35 Thai students. I spent nearly all of lesson describing myself. I had each student fill out a card with their Thai names, phonetic names, and nicknames. I then drew names and called on the students to ask me questions about my family and my background. After that we played hot potato so I could learn a bit about them (it was exciting for me to incorporate music into the classroom), where I asked them the same questions they posed to me (the questions were listed on the whiteboard). After that, I gave the students numbers in order to split them into groups. Growing up I never attended an all-girls school, so I found myself amused by how adorably awkward it was for these teenagers to mix genders having always studied in the absence of one another. After a few minutes of minimal communication, rather, nervous staring at one another, the groups actually began to work on the assignment. I had given each group a cut-out picture of one of my family members, complete with a brief description of that person’s name and hobbies, as well as giant postcards that I had created. Each group then wrote a postcard to my family members –they turned out really great. At the end of the lesson, I played a competitive game with the students, called “Splat”, requiring the students to race to the board, beat their opponent, and splat (slap) the whiteboard near the correct answer –they were really enthusiastic because points were involved.
Thursday, the second day of teaching: I taught a lesson on greetings. At the beginning of my lecture, I had the class divide themselves into pairs, and had them complete a worksheet I had prepared. The worksheet was simply the lyrics to Hello, Goodbye by The Beatles with a few blanks for the students to listen to the song and fill in. After playing the song twice, each pair was able to successfully complete the worksheet. As music filled the classroom, the students became more and more enthusiastic. So, I decided to be adventurous. I split the classroom into two halves, the “hello” side, and the “goodbye” side. I played the song a third time and had each side wave and chant their simple greeting (at the top of their lungs) each time they heard it in the song –the enthusiasm and smiles of the students helped prove the fact that exp
erimenting with different lesson plan ideas is always welcome. The roaring hellos and goodbyes of my students caused a few of the directors at the school to peek into the back of the classroom, giving me an affirmative smile. After that I presented a short lesson on greetings. I had the students help me brainstorm the possible things you could say to greet someone: hello, hi, good morning, etc. The last suggestion I added to the board turned out to be the class favorite –Yo! What’s up?. They laughed and smiled, but mostly they repeated the phrase louder and more confidently than I had heard anything repeated thus far. For me I learned a great lesson about what it means to teach my language as a second language –make it fun, the enthusiasm will follow! Then I organized an activity which I called “Just Passing By”, which Brad (my partner in crime for this week’s teaching experience) accurately referred to as a “layup drill”, where students formed two lines coming toward the goal (the front of class actually). One line was for greetings. The other line was for partings such as PEACE!, a suggestion written on the board, and instructed to be said with an enthusiastic low tone that the guys really enjoyed. They came one by one to the front of class to speak their greeting or parting to another classmate. After they chose and said a certain greeting, for instance, then they moved to the end of the partings line and awaited their chance to recite an option from the partings list on the board (and vice versa).
Friday, the third day of teaching: I began the lesson with a lyrics worksheet again, this time the song was “I Feel Good” by James Brown. The lyrics in the song led into my lesson on emotions, feelings, and opposites believe it or not. Really, the part on opposites was just a great way to assess how much vocabulary the students already possess. The lesson on emoti
ons was fairly concentrated, because I just wanted to get them to start thinking about expressing themselves in English. I had the students then divide themselves up into groups of six. The activity was to create skits, which were free to include drawings, and words. The only rule was that they were not allowed to say the particular emotion that was assigned to their group. The goal was to get the class to guess which emotion they were feeling. At first, Brad and I performed a skit for their entertainment, I mean demonstration. The skit was pretty silly, resulted in a few laughs, and ended with me sitting in a corner looking distraught at lunchtime after Brad had stolen my lunchbox. The students guessed it correctly –I was feeling hungry. I had prepared ahead of time all six emotion cards that I handed out to the students. I wanted to give the students some structure/direction, so I gave them some situations which they were free to use or work off of. Here are a few examples of what the cards said: 1) We feel tired…because we stayed up at a concert all night and had to get up early this morning, 2) We feel silly…because we told jokes in class and laughed with our friends, 3) We feel angry… because we stepped in dog poop (I’m a nut I know, but the group of guys in the back of class really had fun with it). My favorite skit was actually the silly skit –who knew how universal slapstick humor really is? One of the boys held up a piece of colored paper as if he were a waiter, told the class, “this is a pie”, and then proceeded to slap it onto the face of his friend, who of course returned the favor with the sort of ridiculous aggression only little boys are comfortable with. It was indeed funny. I’m pretty sure at this point that the student knows I got a kick out of it. As I’m sitting in my dorm room now writing this, I realized that after Monday’s lesson, I got hit with my second imaginary pie in two days. I’m looking forward to seeing if this student will come up at the end of class tomorrow and throw a pie in my face again –luckily he doesn’t actually make contact with my face, but simply shows me the piece of paper first and then swings it toward my face as I pretend to be caught off guard. He then proceeds to wai, say sawatdee krup (goodbye in Thai), and leave with a clever smile on his face. I’m still laughing now thinking about how much it makes my day.
Tomorrow is the last day of teaching in Bangkok. Monday, Brad and I get on a plane headed for Chiang Rai, say goodbye to the rest of the group, and then say goodbye to each other. This weekend, the group is making plans to hangout on the beach in Ko Samet again, for a final hoorah before we fly north.
This is where we slept for two nights. Simply Thailand.
This is where we slept for two nights. Simply Thailand.
