Practice TEACHING!
Day 1: Ahhhhh so I am in the middle of my practice teaches at schools and orphanages! It has been wonderful so far. The days are exhausting and I’m even more busy now (we get up at 7:30 am then I am planning for my next lesson sometimes til 7pm then am beat and ready for bed not much later..) but it is also a lot of fun. My first day I went to a place called Sunshine Orphanage.
We are placed in groups of 6 teachers for one class (it was only about 10 students) and we each go up and do a lesson for about 40 minutes. Our kids were 10-12 I think? It is hard to tell they are very small here. Anyways, as soon as the 1st person went I was sooo excited to go because it just looked like so much fun. The hard part is waiting all day to go or just watching everyone else. I loved it. I was not nervous at all and knew it would just be fun being up there with the kids. My theme was PETS so I had animals and was sure to make all the animal sounds and actions I could which they always like. They were wild kids and restless after doing this stuff all day (I was 4th to go) but they enjoyed my lesson a lot and we had fun. We played duck duck goose to start to get them to run around and they understood that and liked playing. They I did my lesson and we ended with me taping the animals all over the room and they had to run to them and do all the animal noises which was fun. I ended with still about 5 minutes left and we have to fill the whole time so I had to do an impromptu song of “How much is that doggy in the window” and then tried to teach it to them This was potentially embarrassing and the kids only half understood the song but I had fun still. The kids were amazing with how much English they knew. They repeated everything I said very well and MUCH of the time said the words before I even told them. I really was so surprised at what bright kids they were. They are so helpful here too. When I was trying to tape all the pictures on the wall I would go to get the next one and a boy would have already picked one for me and put the tape on it. They would help me with moving the tables and chairs to and said thank you in thai and gave me the WAI (bow with closed hands) after I had them come up and volunteer. Some of them could write really well too! Overall it was a ton of FUN if you haven’t already got that gist and I can’t say much else… Day 2:My second day was teaching at Football Youth which is the orphanage for boy football players. Once again..these kids blew me out of the water. Their English was amazing. We did a more advanced lesson for them with dialogues and things that involved them listening to things and answering questions as well as writing sentences etc. They were only maybe 12? They were more behaved that the previous orphanage kids who were just wild but equally fun. I played SAMURAI GAME with them (thank you my great friends who taught me this at Ned and Kai’s wedding!) and they loooved it. There was no air-conditioning at this place and we were on the top level ( plus did I ever mention Thailand is incredibly hot and humid?) so I was up there sweating in places I didn’t even know you could sweat in.The kids spoke such good English it was really rewarding to see. There were some that were better than others and they would write down everything I said and then help all the other boys and help give them the answers (this isn’t considered cheating here, its simply saving face!)They also are just really amazing at football (soccer) and get to travel the world to play and the place was filled with jerseys that were signed by famous teams..and the kids get sponsored by big time football celebrities so honestly while being an orphan is not something anyone wants, they have a good life there and are such smart boys. The last girl who taught in my group got them to sing the “Heeeeeeeey hey baby..would you be my girl” song and dance to it which was pretty funny and I have on video. I will post if I ever get a speedy internet connection!
Day 3: I did my third day at Sunshine again pretty much doing the same lesson as they assigned me ANIMAL NOSIES and I had already made all the noises I could muster in my last lesson. I tried to do the Samurai game with these younger kids but they didn’t understand ahah. First they all just wanted to hold hands in the circle and wouldn’t let me in. So finally when I got them to drop their hands and started acting like a Samurai/Ninja they all just copied and wanted to be Ninjas all at the same time (instead of one at a time in the game..also remember these kids don’t speak English completely so I have to try to talk to them through gestures and very simple terms..its often takes a bit to get them to realize what I want them to do). SOOO I kind of just let them be ninjas. They had fun. My lesson went great! I once again made lots of noises and they understood probably my lesson the best because the words/sounds were easy and familiar for them to repeat (versus other teachers lesson topics had long and hard words). I made a connect the dots (which where the sound words) beside animal faces worksheet that they loved and spent a long time coloring. My observer today told me I should be a teacher for little kids because Iit comes naturally to me. It was nice to hear but also kind of bums me out since I won’t be with little ones but teaching high school. At the same time though this will certainly be a new experience for me with older kids and in the end I think it will be fine.The kids are so cute here if they do a worksheet they run up to you and say “Tee-cha Tee-cha!” and hand you the paper just because they don’t feel OK until you tell them that you got everything right. Our instructors told us if you mark homework wrong they almost always take it home and re-correct it and bring it back to you just because they need to know they got it right and will not be happy until you put a giant check mark on their paper. Today I feel a little more exhausted. While again..ITS BEEN FUN.. it is very tiring. Sitting through 6 40 minute long lessons of pretty much the same thing and repetition over and over all day wears you out. When we get home we have to start our lesson plan and coloring/drawing tooons (I had 18 today) of picture cards for the next lesson so it is not hard but very time consuming and mentally exhausting. 2 more days though! While I like it I don’t think it will be as much work when I have a permanent teaching job. The first few weeks at our school should be pretty tiring just getting used to everything but then we are told with time, once you get the gist of things and your students become comfortable with you that things will smooth out. BUSYY week so far though and busy weeks to come!
Day 4: My fourth teaching day has come to an end and only have one more left! Today was much different than our previous teachings but also very enjoyable. I went to a primary school which just basically means it’s a REAL school and I actually got a taste of what it will be like teaching in a school. We taught 12 year olds and had about 30 to a class which was a big difference from the 8-12 kids in a class at the orphanages. These kids also had the traditional classroom set up with desks and a packed room and it was much harder to control them seeing as the class was so much bigger. I also had never done the lesson type that I did here before so that made it slightly more nerve-wracking. It was still great though just a new experience. The kids were adorable. In the hallways they all waved and run up and said “HEELLLOO TEEECHA”: and would give the wai to us (bow). Or some ran up and said teecha teecha where you come from! They were so cute. One girl in my teaching group left to go to the bathroom and accidentally walked into the wrong classroom which was a thai class and the students all got excited and IMMEDIATELY in unison said “Goodmorning teeecha!!!”. They are so respectful to teachers its nice. The school was amazing I would have loved to go to school in a place like that. There were TONS of really nice playgrounds all over and even a giant swimming pool and cartoon murals on almost all the walls. All the cartoons had the English names of words too and even the stairs counted up in English so that was a good indicator that they will know some of the language. My class got a little rowdy during my lesson but I got through it. The boys in the class since they are older get crushes on the girl teachers (And vice versa for the boy teachers and the girl students). When I went to the back row to try to ask some dialogue questions to the row of boys sitting back there they all just laughed and me and could barely answer the questions because they kept laughing. I was kind of confused but moved on and afterwards my observer from my training program told me they weren’t laughing because something was wrong with me but laughing because they liked me which hadn’t occurred to me. Every time a girl taught they would laugh and push each other to answer the questions and at the end I gave them all high fives and they all made fun of each other for touching the teachers hand. Haha it was really cute though! It’s funny how you can catch on to things even without speaking the language and know what they are saying by how they are acting. It was definitely more work to teach this age group/class style but thinking back I am so happy to have met them all and taught there. We are in a juvenile detention center tomorrow teaching older kids which is apparently supposed to be a struggle but its my last day so I really can't even be bothered with getting stressed about it. It is more difficult there because participation as low because "saving face" is even more serious to them being in juvie.
WELL..
Teaching is fun.
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