Monday
Ehhhhhhh.
New week, new lesson. I was given a rough syllabus to follow, not by this school but by the people who connected me with this job (the TEFL certification class I took). I’m not a big fan of this syllabus, because it has me teaching numbers in a variety of ways for 17 weeks.
Week 1: 0-10 and phone numbers.
Week 2-3: 11-40 and dates.
Week 4: Months and their numbers.
Week 5: Price.
Week 6: Years.
You get the picture. The idea is that these are basic, limited domains where we can focus on pronunciation and fluency. But I think it’s kind of silly to use the one native speaker to teach numbers.
Anyway, for this week, the topic was 0-10 and phone numbers, and I decided to stick with that, and just try to put a good angle on it. I printed some nice, full-sheet photos of famous people (e.g. Justin Bieber, Captain America, Obama) and planned to use them for phone numbers. “What is Justin Bieber’s phone number?” They love him.
It worked OK. They liked the pictures, but the lesson wasn’t long enough to fill the whole hour, and I was struggling. Dragging it out doesn’t work (boring) and it’s hard to come up with activities involving numbers that actually force them to use the numbers in English and not Thai.
By the end of the day, my lesson structure had improved some, but not much, and I just kind of blah about… everything…
Tuesday
Tuesday sucked. Well, the teaching part did. Tuesday morning’s class was my worst one so far, and I left it feeling completely discouraged and upset and regretting all of this. The kids were talking, they were bored, nothing I did got them under control and participating. Not asking them to listen, not raising my voice, not silently staring at them until they get the point, not being entertaining, not showing how unhappy I was (this was not an act at this point). I left this class feeling like I cannot possibly do this again.
Luckily for me that day, I didn’t have to. No one told me anything was happening out of the ordinary this week, but my second class wasn’t in the classroom, they were downstairs in the courtyard area. I asked around a bit, and was able to gather that there was some event on Wednesday that the students had to prepare for. So no class for the rest of the day.
There’s probably an argument for getting right back on the horse and redeeming myself from that first class, but I was so relieved. I spent the rest of the day hanging out around the courtyard area with students and teachers, and it actually got fun. Some students really wanted to talk to me, we talked in a mix of English and Thai, and I got to know a few of the other teachers way better. By the end of class time, I was feeling happier again.
But then. Ugh. We had a meeting after school. I’m supposed to leave each day at 4:15, and that day I was counting down the minutes. Then they told me, there’s a meeting at 3:50, hopefully it’ll be done by 5pm. The meeting didn’t actually start until 4:15 and went until almost 6pm. It was all in Thai, I understood almost nothing. I hadn’t eaten enough that day, so all the happy-progress I’d made was undone as I sat there, getting more and more annoyed that I was there.
At the end, a couple teachers told me they’d catch me up on the important information from the 1.5 hour meeting. The important information?
Wear a skirt tomorrow morning, but bring pants to change into.
I was in an awful mood by the time I actually got to leave.
Wednesday
Wednesday there was an event for the late king, but that’s about all I knew. Actually, some other teachers told me they were just as confused as me, which made me feel a little better. Tuesday and Wednesday both seemed just a little chaotic and disorganized, but at least that wasn’t just me.
In the morning, we all went to the auditorium. First a few people read things, I’m not really sure what it was that they were reading though. There was a large photo and display for the king on the stage, with tables and chairs set up in front of it, facing away from the audience. After the reading, groups of 5 at a time would go up on stage, bow before the king’s image, then sit down in the chairs, then get up from the chairs, then bow again. For about 20 minutes we did that, bow-sit-stand-bow, and this was very confusing to me. Why sit and then stand? I’ll never know. But it was very important that they approach the chair from the right to sit down, and stand up to the left of the chair. Multiple groups had to have a do-over for not sitting down and standing up on the correct side. I just don’t know.
Then we watched a live broadcast of speeches given in Bangkok for the king. The event was called 999,999 People, but I still need to look up the significance of that. We all stood in the auditorium during the speeches for about an hour. (I shouldn’t have worn heels.)
That took up most of the morning, then after lunch we all went in the courtyard to make a human mural of the king’s symbol. This part was kind of cool, and the picture turned out great!
For the rest of the day, students had been grouped and teachers assigned for various tasks: cleaning classrooms, re-painting parking lines, decorating, even going to a couple nearby temples to help clean there. I didn’t have a group (I didn’t know any of this was happening until it was happening) so I ended up with the sewing group.
Had you asked me Wednesday morning how I feel about sewing, I would have given a sort of non-commital answer. I don’t do it much, but it’s fine, whatever.
Nope. Hate it. Super did not enjoy the sewing. The group I was with was fun to talk to, but kind of judgmental about my sewing. One teacher told me I’m a bad wife because I cannot fix my husbands clothes very well. Poor Topi.
All in all, my mental state was still a little fragile after Tuesday and I’m glad this day was out of the ordinary, to give me a little more time to process before teaching again. I felt pretty good at the end of the day, especially once the sewing was over.
Thursday
Thursday was awesome. I’d been thinking a lot about what to do in the classroom to not have a repeat of Tuesday, and I came up with an idea. The Best Idea Ever. It solved all my classroom problems, and my 3 classes went great. This weekend I will write a whole post about The Best Idea Ever, because that’s how awesome it is.
I only had 3 classes Thursday because the last 2 periods of the day are for clubs. I am part of English Club, along with two Thai teachers who I think are just a little too appreciative of my presence. They planned nothing at all for these 2 hours, and thought I could just come up with games and stuff for the 28 members of English Club to play. Not so much. I will help, but I don’t run the club.
They did ask me to bring my ukulele and play/sing something for the students, which I was happy to do. HUGE HIT. I played the first song, and they all sat around me recording me on their phones. They swayed with the music and tried to sing along, and went nuts at the end. They wanted to hear something they knew, so I played “I’m Yours” and they all sang, and it was awesome. Then I played a third, very slow song, and the game was for them to see how much of the lyrics they could catch by listening. We repeated that song a couple times, then wrote the lyrics on the board. I asked if they wanted to hear it again, with the lyrics – “YES!!” This time when I played it, they all sang along, and it was so sweet. It was an old Johnny Cash song, “I Still Miss Someone”. It melted me to play and sing along with all these kids, so sweet and heartwarming.
Friday
Which brings us to Friday. It’s lunchtime now, so I’ve had 2 classes so far, with 2 more in the afternoon.
The morning went OK – the first class better than the second who were just too cool to be amused by much that we did. But if last Friday is any indication, my afternoon classes should be really fun!
Then, hallelujah, it’s the weekend! Week 2 ✅