Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Learning your A, B, C's


I should introduce Julia, my school/travel partner. She will probably be in lots of blogs and pictures. She and I were one of those who had to take our first bus, 2.5 hours away from Bangkok, by our selves. We arrived at our new hometown at 9 pm. When we first talked to our coordinator she asked us, "would you like to live together or with a Thai teacher. Yes, we would have separate bedrooms just sharing a house. We told her together then found out that night we weren't sharing a house but instead me with one Thai teacher, and Julia with another. Apparently they thought it would be safer. I'll explain later.
We got our dinner from a local market and brought it back to the house. Then met our new friends Mr. Spider, Mrs. Lizard and all the ant children in town. We sat on the floor as they joined us for our meal. Ok. this was a bit of a shock since usually I might scream and run to the nearest guy to kill the human sized bug but that seemed a little inappropriate at the moment seeing that we were surrounded by 7 other people watching us eat. And in Buddhism they don't kill bugs because they believe in reincarnation. I might be killing someones mom! The house has no furniture or curtains. Only a bed, kids desk and a cabinet for clothes. We were so tired we just went to bed.

4202_559476607589_35800621_33092813_5039951_n

The next morning we got up at 6 am and taught our first classes of the semester a few hours later. Right before we were taken to our rooms we had to stand for the flag raising. Every morning at 8 they play the kings song and raise the Thai flag. Then quickly off to classes! It literally went like this: walked in the office, got our schedules, and got shown our classroom with big smiles! “Ok, have fun!” and that’s it. Completely thrown in. I was warmly welcomed by all the students. They all stand at the same time. “GOOOOD MOR-NING TEA-CHER!!”. It couldn’t be more adorable. But if you don’t tell them to, “sit down, please”, they will stay standing the whole time.

4885_560028037519_35800621_33118560_491800_n

I started off in kindergarten with six year olds teaching them the alphabet. Mostly I started off easy to see what they knew. The only way you can tell what they know is by testing them from the beginning. That took about 5 minutes. They happened to know the alphabet, so quickly I had to think of what I could do next. Singing the A, B, C song is good. But shoot! That only took up aanother 5 minutes. 35 minutes left. Words starting with each letter of the alphabet was a perfect next step. Over the next 2 days I did the same thing with kindergarten 1 and 2, three and four year olds respectively. Wow, was that a challenge! K1 was still learning Thai and here I am trying to teach them a whole other language. K2 was much better.
After the first class of each level I realize they have an attention span of a kid without their Ritalin. Maybe 15 minutes at most! But it was OK since having ADD myself, I knew exactly how to help them :) They love to be active. Anything that isn’t simply reciting for 45 minutes will do. This week I had them coloring. I gave them a picture of a dog and had them color. For the older kids I had them label also since they can write a little.
The other class I taught was students about 7 years old. I could teach them extremely simple sentences. Things like hello, how are you? Except you realize later that that’s all they know. They will come up to you and recite, “Hello teacher. I am fine and you?”. But there I got such an amazing feeling at the end of each class when I knew I successfully taught them at least 1 thing! I just walked out of the classes smiling.
CULTURE SHOCK!!!! The teachers here hit the kids!! I had a boy reach for the crayons to play with them and the teacher came by with a ruler and hit his hand. Another kid wasn't looking at the board and a different teacher hit him upside the head...hard! I know it's totally inappropriate but that's how they do it here and it's taking all I have to not let my mouth just drop every time. I can't let the kids see my terror.  And no matter how much I try to tell the teachers, "It ok, Mai pen rai!" they don't really understand or care much. This is going to take a long time to get use to. Honestly, I hope I don't get used to it!
Tip #1 teaching-write EVERYTHING on the board whether its in their book or not. The kids need to see it this way or it will be hard for them to understand. And be sure to either act out, draw or show pictures of what your teaching. 
Tip #2 Get the kids doing an activity half way through class. You will completely lose them if you don’t. And they will love you for it. Finally something fun for them. 
Tip #3 “HELLO!!!!” learn to love this word because you will be saying it more times in a day than actual sentences! “Hello, hello teacher, hello, hello, hello!!! Enjoy! You wont get this kind of love at any school at home!

No comments:

Post a Comment