Thursday, May 24, 2012

2 weeks away: Refreshed.

If only that were the end of it. Two weeks away, refreshed. Four days back, exhausted!

Eventually, I'll get around to writing about the reason(s) I spent two weeks away (not on a purposeful vacation, although that was one pretty sweet outcome of having two of my teeth yanked out under local anesthesia with a washcloth draped over my face, but like I said, more about that later.)

At any rate, I'm back. And I'm finally working in both of my schools, although what that means is still somewhat under negotiation and up for interpretation.

My good friend Emily, who taught sixth grade (I believe) in the States, just wrote a great blog about her frustrations with teaching in the Thai system, and especially in the TCCO program that Peace Corps and the Royal Thai Government have created. She says, "My job is to help train my co-teacher in how to write effective lesson plans that include student-centered learning activities, help her create materials and integrate the local culture into the lessons, and to help her build a network of teacher support. My job is not to teach English. My job is focused on the teacher, rather than the students and this is the aspect that breaks my heart the most right now. I understand it’s for sustainability purposes (in hopes that we’re training the teachers to teach English more effectively, even after we leave in two years), but it is still hard to sit back and watch the students miss out on English for a week because my co-teacher is at a conference in Bangkok and I am not allowed in the classroom without her.... The other hard part about my job is that I’m not here to change how my co-teacher does her job, change the way the education system works, or stop teachers from hitting the kids. I’m simply here to add to what they’ve already got, to help, support, and encourage my co-teacher whenever I can and to love the kids the best I can."

That pretty much sums up the frustrations a lot of TCCOers express. For me, the frustrations of the co-teaching situation are somewhat different, but not entirely. Primarily the differences stem from the fact that my pre-PC experience is very different from Emily's, and that of many volunteers who were teachers before they arrived here. In short, I never really wanted to teach English to kids. (I never really wanted to teach kids anything.) I was always more excited about teaching teachers, and so while I share Emily's frustration with the fact that the students sometimes lack instruction because their teachers have other priorities and there are no viable substitution options, I don't feel (or at least I haven't yet) inclined to jump into the classroom and start doing the damn thing myself. Granted, I haven't yet faced the prospect of being at school when my teacher is not--the first time that happens will probably be next week, when my teacher is at a training that I may not be able (or allowed) to attend.

No, my frustration and confusion about how to do my job stems from the fact that I'm realizing that the teaching/learning techniques - rote memorization, choral repetition, and copying down "the right answer" - are ingrained not only in the students, but also the teachers. The problem is the system, if you will, as Emily also alluded to. In just four days of teaching, I have seen both of my co-teachers be completely unable not to tell students the answer to a question I asked them. Completely unable not to lead the students in a chorus of repetition even when they agreed to having the students work in pairs or alone. Completely unable to give the students time to think and then respond to a question. This isn't to say that they aren't actually able to do those things, just that to them, they're such foreign ideas that even if I expressly ask them to do something (or not to), what I ask doesn't make any sense to them. Likewise, the students are almost completely unable to write an answer unless they are copying it, and that's because they're scared. They don't ever want to say anything wrong, do anything wrong, or be corrected in front of their peers. Today, after having given students a worksheet as part of a game, I asked them to write one sentence (one!) at the bottom of the worksheet, a sentence about any of the 16 pictures that we'd previous been talking about during class. (Seriously folks, the sentences were of the following format: There are some tomatoes. There is some milk. There aren't any lemons. There isn't any yogurt.) They couldn't do it. Okay, not fair, about 6 out of the 25 could, and did. The others just waited, pretty patiently, until my co-teacher wrote a few examples on the board, and then they copied those down.

The same thing happened in another class. I asked students to write three sentences (of the form, It/she/he looks sad/happy/ill/beautiful/sleepy) describing any three of the 15 the pictures we had already talked about, using the same sentences. Even after my instructions were translated into Thai they still were terribly confused about the fact that they could CHOOSE to write about anything they wanted. Baby steps.

Disclaimer: So far, I have not "planned" a class with either of my co-teachers (meaning, if you can't read between the lines, that neither of the above lessons is anything like where I would have started, thank you very much!) Instead, I have been jumping in to help during what I tried to create as an "observation" week before we really get down to business. Both teachers have been, predictably, pretty willing to give me the reins during class, and fortunately, neither of them are wilting violets when it comes to playing their part. We are definitely co-teaching, although I'm not sure yet what the benefit to the students is, since we're co-teaching and playing tug-of-war at the same time.

At any rate, I'm enjoying the kids more than I thought I would, and I'm baffled at how to get my teachers to see that giving the students the answers and ignoring their mistakes and letting them horse around for 45 minutes isn't really teaching them any English. Then again, what do I know about teaching English?

Green. And yes, I promise, more on that blog that I said I didn't have the pictures for, weeks ago, and more on Bangkok. Later.




2 comments:

  1. Erin, what happened with the teeth? How do the kids concentrate in the heat? How is your Thai? Are you happy?

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  2. Karen, The teeth are fine. I was being a bit dramatic (I'll make the next blog post about that, though!) The kids are obviously way more used to the heat than I am - they do okay and still go run around like crazy outside when given the chance. But concentrate? The younger ones are fidgity as all get out, and the older ones will draw or talk without shame if they get bored. I guess kids are kids everywhere, right? My Thai is about on par with a 4 year old :) and yes, I am happy most of the time!

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