Today, as I mentioned in the previous post, I am not teaching, because my co-teacher is not here. He is instead at a teacher training in the Amphur Muang Sukhothai (the capital city of our jangwat). Side note: originally, I wasn't going to go. Then, yesterday, I was invited to go and told that I could attend all three days of the teacher training. So today at 7a.m., I was picked up by my co-teacher, and we drove the 25 km to the hotel in Sukhothai where the training was being held. We arrived at about 7:55, and were greeted as we walked to the conference hall by one of the trainers, whom I now, in hindsight, think may have been the same woman whose rental house Josh and I looked at just the other day. She greeted me in English, then spoke rapidly in Thai to my co-teacher, the gist of which I understood to be: Farangs aren't welcome here. She seemed quite flustered that I was there, and I gathered from her Thai explanation that they hadn't wanted Farangs to come to the training because the Thai teachers would then feel embarrassed about speaking in English and practicing their teaching techniques. To me, in English, she explained that none of the Farang teachers from her school had come, and that Farangs already know how to teach, so I would be bored for the three days of training. I assured her that I understood what she had said in Thai, and then I think she realized that I understood what she had said to my co-teacher, and so he and I turned around and he drove me back. And then I came to school, and he went back to Sukhothai for the all-Thai English-teacher training. Sigh.
The kids are pretty disappointed I'm not teaching - four of them came to find me and seem a little confused as to why I'm not. I had to break a rule that I've been trying to keep up - not using Thai to talk to the kids - in order to explain it to them. Of course, the rule has been bent at least five or six times before this morning - sometimes, like yesterday when I found myself teaching PE to a bunch of really hyperactive 8 to 12 year old girls, in skirts, no less, it just seems easier to tell them to put on their shoes or walk in a line in the language they understand! (Duh.) But we'll see how that impacts my authority, or my masquerade that I don't understand Thai, in the classroom next week.
At any rate, this is the second week in the classrooms and there have been some positive developments. I was able to convince one teacher that the books she uses are too difficult for the students, and that she and I will be better teachers if we plan more and use the books less. I am working on convincing the second teacher of the same concept, but that will take a little bit more preparation. He teaches six out of six periods per day, whether it be other English classes, PE, or art, and obviously that has left us little time to plan what we're going to do. So, right now I'm blogging while taking a break from searching our extensive Peace Corps volunteer wiki and various other resources for ideas on how to start the semester, essentially, over again in the next couple of weeks.
Specifically, I'm alternating between researching word lists and classroom management techniques. I do not know how to manage 30 8-year-olds. For those of you teachers and parents out there, laugh it up. (And currently listening to another teacher teach the class that I would have been teaching had my co-teacher been here. Of course, it's all in Thai....) This weekend, I hope that the two of us will be able to make some decent progress on a course plan and some lesson plans. I will also need to figure out how and where to procure materials to make teaching materials (posterboards, glue, books, tape, markers, etc.). I know that lots of the teachers here use their own funds to stock their classrooms - I'm hoping I don't have to do that, and that the materials I end up making are durable enough to be used for a few years to come, so that my teachers can stop doing that, too.
And now, back to those word lists and humane reward-punishment systems... (Uh-oh - I just heard my name, "Kruu Erin" coming from the class I'm not teaching downstairs. What is the substitute teacher saying about me?)This is me learning to jai-yen-yen.
No comments:
Post a Comment