I realize my post about yesterday, my first day, sounded kind of negative. But I felt kind of discouraged yesterday. And this this blog is as much a chance for me to document my own feelings looking back, as it is a chance to share this experience with family and friends.
Today was much better than yesterday. I still have a ton to figure out, and I am most definitely not accustomed to teaching – it completely wipes me out mentally. I’m still scared of the cafeteria, and I don’t know how to keep certain students from talking or getting up and walking around during class. But I also teach pretty much the same thing to every class for the entire week, so I have 21 chances to perfect my performance.
Note: I guess I haven’t explained this yet. I teach every student at this school. 21 classes, and I teach each class once per week. My focus is speaking and communication. They have regular English class with their Thai teachers for grammar/reading/writing/etc.
Anyway, today, I really got something down. For an hour, it keeps their attention, it’s a pretty good introduction for them to me, and it’s building my confidence too. I’ll still try to improve it over the next 3 days, and I try variations as I think of them, but what I have for this first week is pretty solid. I’ll write specifically about my 1-hour lesson at the end of this week.
For right now, I’ve been teaching 5 of the past 6 hours, and my brain needs a rest. I just wanted to put it up here that today I feel much much much better than yesterday.