Teacha Teacha

Our final two weeks of training consisted of student teaching in the morning, and then two hours of Thai class in the afternoon followed by two hours of lesson planning (yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy there is nothing more fun than lesson planning). When I first got the email from Jam telling me that I was placed in a Baptist Church where I would be teaching 20-60 year old housewives, I was not happy. Maybe I have been living with Chelsea for too long, but real tears were involved. Thankfully a couple days later Jam emailed me saying I actually had a group of ten 7-10 year olds and even more tears were involved, but this time happy tears.

After taking ten hours to plan a two hour English class (apparently I procrastinate more as a teacher than as a student) I was finally ready for my first day of school! I walk into my classroom and patiently waited for all my little students to arrive.

By the time class was supposed to start, I had a single student staring at me, void of any emotion (probably the way I look at Jam when she tries to teach us Thai). I guess I should start teaching now...? We ended up going through my entire two hour lesson plan in less than 45 minutes. Needless to say my first day was a little rough.

Over the next two weeks teaching became much more fun, but I definitely would not say it was easy. Each day more and more students would show up, which was both a blessing and a curse. One or two of my students could speak full sentences almost fluently, while others stared at me the entire class not saying a single word.

Even if you ask the students if they understand, they will all say yes no matter what. I found that to be the most frustrating part of teaching, because in Thai culture yes=yes and yes=no. Saving face is a huge part of Thai culture, and it makes teaching extremely difficult. Even when I knew some students didn't understand something, they would never admit to it because that would cause them to lose face. Some students didn't even like to participate in games because they were afraid they wouldn't know an answer, so I always had the same students playing the games, and those were always the students who knew the material already. You also can't force them to do something they don't want to do, because that would cause them to lose face as well. Overall while I loved teaching, some of the cultural differences are definitely going to be frustrating, but I am excited to see what lies ahead!!

*Highlight of teaching* my students didn't know that a "c" can be pronounced as either a hard or soft "c". Imagine ten little Thai children trying to pronounce "faucet"...

"Teacha teacha what so funny???"

So. Great.