Schedule
Every
morning in a Thai school starts with an activity. There is an opening ceremony
between 8:00 - 8:30 and all students arriving earlier than help in cleaning the
school (sweeping and cleaning the floor, toilets, sport field in front). By 8am
they gather in the center to attend the ceremony during which they sing the
Thai anthem, say a prayer and listen to the news from school’s principal.
Afterwards the lessons start. In my schedule is 19 hours of teaching with 3
teachers (Nok, Lin and Pim). Usually every teacher has 18-20 hours of lessons,
so my hours are within the teacher’s average. The remaining time between
8:00-16:00 teachers spend on preparing the class, correcting test/homework or
helping with some administration work at the school.
Lessons
The
first day at school was very exciting and a bit stressful, because I have never
been on the other side before - as a teacher and presenter. I LOVED IT!!! J I prepared a nice
presentation to show the students a few interesting facts about Poland. I
showed them where it is located, what are the most interesting tourist
attractions, how each season looks like and what is our typical food. At the
end I talked a bit about my family showing some of their pictures. It was a perfect
ice breaker for most of the groups - students were very interested and liked
our landscape, opened their eyes widely for the stories about winter in Poland
and got hungry looking at the picture of zurek (who can resist it?) ;) This
presentation was also a first check of the English level of the group – some
students were following most of it and asking simple questions, but others were
not able to understand much and I had to ask the teachers to translate. That’s
how I realized that most of the children have very basis English level and
aren’t used to talk English at all. They are able to introduce themselves and
follow the teacher during the class - which means to repeat the text instead of
reading loud, to copy the grammar logic in a difference sentence. In general the
lessons are taught in Thai language since this is also the way the English
teachers were taught they believe that this is the correct way. But in my
opinion without understanding the meaning of the sentences used for grammar
exercises students can just blindly copy the model rather than understanding
the sense behind it. In the reading and vocabulary part of the lesson teacher would
read the text in English, explain the meaning of all of it in Thai, explain
questions to the text in Thai and the whole group would try to find the word or
sentence in English answering the question. Not the best way to improve reading
skills and vocabulary…
That
was a description of common practice in this country based on what I heard and
noticed until now. Of course there are some exceptions and not all teachers are
like that. Some of my colleagues put a lot of efforts in making students
understand and enjoy English, even if it requires a lot of patience and their
time to prepare interesting lesson material. Nok is a great example - I admire
her for what she does and enjoy working with her very much. We prepare the
material for lessons together and try to make it interesting, useful and rich
in information. I can easily say that her effort pays off looking at the level
of her students. They are quite confident in reading and are able to understand
the grammar rules fast. Nok speaks to them mostly in English, so they are
familiar with the language and not afraid when I approach to talk. They are very
open and friendly, it’s a pleasure to work with all of them. J Our focus is to improve
their communication skills and pronunciation, as I can contribute to that
during my stay. Hopefully I’ll also motivate them to study more by showing at
least one of the cultures that are so different from theirs and reachable with
good education and good language skills. J
Going
back to more challenging situations… I joined some of my lessons without
preparing upfront. The teacher didn’t require it and there was no time to
discuss it before. My task then was to read to children text from the book and
ask them to read after me. I quickly realized that this was pointless, as they instead
of reading just repeated after me without trying to understand. When I proposed
to involve the students more in the lesson and asked them to read one sentence
loud for me I learned that only one person in a class was able to read English…
For all the rest I had to help them using the practice that they knew well –
reading & repeating after the teacher. I was left speechless. They were 17
years old, so had at least a few years of English study before that and still
they could not read… What shocked me even more is that the teacher was
perfectly aware of that, but didn’t want to waste the time to improve it, as
she would be late with her program. She told me – yes, if you want you can
teach them how to read – as if it was a 10 minutes task! I heard afterwards
that this class is not the best and have difficulties in more subjects … and so
they decided that I won’t have more lessons with them, since there might be
students that would benefit more from a foreign teacher.
Conditions at school
There
are 3 main buildings where classes take place, but in my opinion only one of
them offers proper conditions to focus on studying. Two of the buildings are
without windows and doors which means that noises or people passing outside easily
distract the students. Each class has one room assigned to them and respective
teachers come there according to their schedule. Classrooms have very old
equipment – broken tables and chairs, traditional board… Some of the rooms have
projector and modern boards, so we were to show my presentation about Poland.
The
canteen doesn’t look more modern, but it’s clean and has tables and chairs for
everyone. It offers a choice of a few dishes, noodles and some desserts. Next to
the board where you order food you can find a table with several types of
spices – chili, fish sauce, oysters’ sauce, sweet and sour sauce – it’s amazing
that no person will pass by without adding some extra flavor to their meal! I
call chili a Thai drug, people say that since they tried it they cannot live
without it anymore J
Parents’ meeting day
Last
day of my first week of teaching was a day of parents’ meeting. There were no
lessons during that day even if all children were at school. After the morning
ceremony they were left free to take care of themselves for the whole day,
something very different what I remember from my school, where we were never
left without adult’s supervision... In the meantime parents were gathering in
the main hall where some students performed songs for them. I noticed a few of
my favourite kids on the stage and I was very happy to see their show. They won
a singing competition in the Surin province and one of the girls will now
attend the next level - a competition within Isaan region. The atmosphere was
very relaxed during this day, I talked a bit to some students and teachers and
we left early to travel for the weekend.
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