Friday, June 14, 2013

Adventures in Thailand Part 3: Cat Herding for Dummies

I know there are many who have been anxiously waiting for this post. Sure I've been talking about how excited I am that I get to teach Kindergarten, but I know all my teacher friends and others who work with children regularly are just waiting for me to eat my words.

After getting cleaned up from the moto incident, I arrived at school (in a taxi) ready to go. My schedule had me with K1 and K2 (together in the same class) from 8:30am to 11:00am. Having not been given the kindergarten schedule or curriculum, I really didn't know what to expect. Luckily the Thai teacher who is supposed to be my co-teacher was there and almost immediately whisked them away to music class. Hm. Okay, well I guess I don't teach until 9:20, nice.

After music class, 2 of my 6 students (yes, my k1/k2 class only has 6 kids... my life is awesome!) came running into the classroom and immediately started stripping off their clothes. The other kids just started playing. My co-teacher was nowhere to be found, and I was quite confused. I tried asking the kids what they were doing, but well, there's that whole, they don't really speak English and don't speak Thai thing. Finally, one of the kids, we'll call him MoonPie, reached into his cubbie and pulled out a swimsuit, which was great since at the point he was stark naked.

I had seen swimming listed on my 1st graders schedule, so I figured all was good. My co-teacher arrived and took the now bathing suit clad students to the pool. At this point I still didn't have a clear explanation as to why some kids were going to swimming and others weren't, and it didn't make sense to do school work that a third of the class was going to miss, so we played with clay and legos. (Turns out the 2 that went to swimming are the K2 students and the others are K1. Might have been good info to give to their teacher... maybe.)

The swimmers returned and again stripped down to nothing and started putting on, not their uniforms, but... yep... those are pajamas. Again, my Thai co-teacher appears from who knows where and starts rambling something that I can only assume means (did I mention that my co-teacher speaks no English) that she doesn't understand why all the kids aren't in their pajamas yet, they're going to be late to lunch. If only someone had been told that that was what was supposed to happen. The munchkins are shuttled off to lunch, and I eat lunch myself. They get to take naps, hence the pajamas, while I go meet my 1st graders for their first English class.

My first grade class has a total of two students. Yep two... and they are about as opposite as they can be. We spent the hour going through the various pictures and posters on the wall (body parts, numbers, animals, etc) and singing some basic songs (we've got the ABCs and Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes down pretty well) so I could get a feel for their level of English. I don't have an actual curriculum, so I'm unsure of exactly what I'm supposed to be accomplishing.

Fast forward to today, I've officially completed a full week of teaching and am starting to actually feel like I know what's going on. On Mondays and Tuesdays I'm only with my first graders and teach English, math and science. (For those of you who knew what the job was going to be before I left, if you're scratching your head thinking, "I thought she was going to have all Kindergarten, and she definitely didn't mention math or science." You're not crazy. I had no idea until I arrived at the school last week that I would be teaching 1st grade and teaching more than just English. Welcome to Thailand!) Wednesday through Friday I have the K1/K2 class from 8:30am - 11am and then a couple classes with the first graders in the afternoon.

I still don't have an actual schedule for K1/K2. There is a schedule posted on the door, but it's all in Thai. There are 3 class periods between 8:30am and 11am, and to this point I've just been trying to figure out if I'm supposed to be teaching them or if they are supposed to be at a different class. It's quite confusing. However, today I got a new Thai teacher, and I LOVE her. She actually stays in the class the whole time, helps control the class a bit (I assume by their behavior that she is threatening to call their parents or beat them or something, I don't know, but they behave so well! It's delightful!) and actually teaches them (CO-teacher... interesting!).

I think someone finally figured out that maybe it made more sense to put an experienced teacher with the foreigner (farang) rather than the person who I'm pretty sure is part time and/or temporary. Sadly, I think the reason I got the new awesome Thai teacher was because of yesterday's "incident."

To make a long story short, one student scratched another enough to leave marks. I tried to talk to both sets of parents when they came to pick up the kids, but language was definitely an issue. The director later came up and asked what happened and told me that in the future I should have a the Thai teacher help with the situation. I pretty forcefully said that the Thai teacher wasn't there to help with the situation. In the end, the student who did the scratching was moved to another class (I don't think this was the first incident for her) and I got a new awesome Thai teacher that makes me feel like I will actually be able to teach... as opposed to just, as the title says, herding cats.

We also just had Teacher Appreciation Day where every primary student in the school presented a teacher with flowers. So much cuteness that words can't do it justice. So, check it out...




So for all of you waiting for me to say how stupid I was to want to teach Kindergarten, it's definitely had its interesting moments and I'm sure there will be more. It's had its ups and downs in the short week I've been here, but at the end of day, I get paid to play with those adorable faces all day! And how many of you spend the last hour of your work day playing with giant legos?

Labels: kindergarten, Pathum Thani, teaching, Thailand