Happiness is... school?

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As a student, I never thought I'd say something like this, but I am working my ass off at school and thoroughly enjoying it. Maybe it's just because I'm in an exceptionally good mood right now but I just feel good about things at school. Sure, I still have WAY too many things that I am horrible at as a teacher but I think I've taken some important first steps since I've been here. I'll do my best to try and explain how things have been at school but my thoughts are probably just going to jump all over the place so I'm sorry if this is hard to follow, but hopefully you're used to it by now.

This week a professor from TCNJ came to observe the four of us. She observed two different classes and evaluated us and gave us feedback. These evaluations will count as part of my final grade for this semester. She did an informal observation (an observation without a grade) of one of my classes on Monday and it could not have gone worse. It was my worst behaved class that she saw and I didn't have any control over the students. The lesson I had planned for the day was decent, but it wasn't exceptional. But the kids in that class have been testing me since day 1 to see what they can get away from and I just haven't been pushing back hard enough and it finally crossed the line on Monday. So I decided to make some changes and finally push back at them to send them a sign that I can't be walked over. And since I felt like I had something to prove to the professor, I invited her back to do a formal observation in that class on Wednesday. So I made a few changes to the way I ran the class on Wednesday and I gave the students new seats to separate the kids who always give me problems and they were extremely well behaved. Again, the lesson was ok but not great (this seems to be a pattern with me so far) but my main concern was classroom management and I feel like I effectively dealt with it so I was extremely happy with it and I think my professor recognized that I was more capable than I originally appeared to be. She also observed one of my better classes on Tuesday and that class went extremely well. I used a variety of different media and catered to different learning styles (powerpoint, film, class discussion, group work/discussion) and that lesson also went extremely well. I essentially got the same comments on both my evaluations and I feel as though I am right on track, if not a little ahead of where most professors have said they expect us to be at this point. They don't expect things to be exceptional since we are only students and are still learning the ropes, so they only expect us to be developing most of our skills and to be ok at some. I was pretty happy because the professor felt like I was ok with just about everything and still only developing in one or two areas. So I was extremely pleased with how my observations went this week.

But there are still plenty of things that I feel like I still need a lot of work on. My first area involves planning creative lessons. I'm having a lot of difficulty coming up with lessons to present material in a student-centered manner. I'm great at lecturing and doing teacher centered learning, but when it comes to student centered learning I have only used a few methodologies and there are still many many others that I have yet to utilize. One of my co ops gave me a list of possible activities to do with my classes the other day so I was really appreciative to have those suggestions, but I still feel like I'm struggling in this area. While it's frustrating and causing me to spend a lot of time thinking and planning my lessons, I think this is totally normal for me to be experiencing this. I am only a student teacher and like I already said, I should still be developing most of my skills, so I guess in a way it's good that I am able to recognize that this is one area that I feel like I need improvement in. I asked my co op earlier today to help me come up with ideas on how to teach a lesson about the geography of Thailand because I was really struggling to try and teach it in a student centered manner. I thought about having learning centers where the students would travel to different places in the room where they would learn about different aspects of Thailand's geography but I just couldn't find sufficient resources to do it, especially since I have to teach the lesson tomorrow. Fortunately he had a lesson on the geography of China that he showed me and I was able to adapt it to fit with the geography of Thailand. I'm still not really sure about how it's going to go but I guess I'll find out tomorrow. But it's a group learning activity so hopefully it will be good for the students. I think another reason I'm having difficulty planning creative activities is because I've always been someone who learns extremely well in a lecture/discussion situation. I think that's one reason why I've been fairly successful in college. When I'm given creative activities to do I always have a hard time trying to figure out what the learning objective for the activity is, or how the students are going to reach the objective by completing the activity. I guess maybe I just need to test things out and see if students are learning what I think they should be learning. It might sound bad to say it, but this is the time for me as a teacher to experiment and to continuously try different things. I don't have to worry about consistency in my classes, especially since I'm only going to be in Bangkok for another 2 weeks and then once I get back to the US I'm only tI eaching there for another 7 weeks. So establishing consistency in the classroom isn't really as important now as it will be when I'm teaching the same students for a whole year. Just by having me come into their classroom in the middle of March and starting to teach is enough of a disruption to them and the type of class that they have become accustomed to that I can really do anything I want and not have to worry very much about the consequences. I obviously still want (and need) the kids to learn but I feel like if I try something and it doesn't really work out, that it isn't really a big deal right now because I have a cooperating teacher to help me figure out how to fix it if things go wrong. I have a lesson that I need to write for next week which is supposed to be an overview of the Cold War and I'm going to try and use that as my experiment. I've used powerpoints to teach World War II which is all I've covered in that class so far and I want to try and begin the Cold War without the aid of a powerpoint. I think it's going to be difficult, and it may not be possible. But even if I still have to use a short powerpoint presentation, I want to supplement it with some sort of an activity that's going to be stimulating and different. Now the big question is what that is going to be. After I do my overview stuff on the Cold War the school has these big elaborate learning centers that they set up in the library where the kids get to choose what assignments they want to do and then they spent a couple days in the library completing them. They can look at political cartoons and interpret them, look at photographs, read first hand accounts of people who lived through the cold war, and many many other things. One of the teachers who was at the school last year developed it and it's a really outstanding activity. I'm actually a little disappointed that I'm going to be leaving before the students finish it but I'm excited to see them start it and see how it goes.

I just can't believe that I only have 11 days of school left. It seems like not too long ago I was stuck in a hospital bed counting down the days till I'd be leaving and now it's getting pretty close. Jason will be here in a little over a week and before I know it, I'll be done teaching and I'll be in Beijing. I feel as though I've only had half the experience I should have had here since I was pretty miserable for most of January. But I am really grateful that things were able to turn around and that I've been able to settle into things here and enjoy it. I'm definitely going to be ready to come back home in 3 weeks, but I think I might actually miss Bangkok a little bit. If you had asked me 3 weeks ago, I would have said that I wouldn't miss this place at all but I actually think I will. It's just so different from anything I've ever experienced before, and that's why I wanted to student teach abroad. This experience has really given me some perspective into life. Into how incredibly lucky I am to have grown up where I did and to have the things I have in my life. Into how miserable some others live their lives, yet they still go about it with a smile and with dignity. Into how different people are from each other, yet how we all have the same needs and desires. This trip has also helped me to realize that a good education really is a ticket into a better life. People in the US are always talking about how you need an education to be successful and to be able to live a better life than your parents. While I've always agreed with that in my head, there had been very few instances where I had seen it with my eyes. Being here in a place where many people make a living sweeping leaves off the highway or selling fruit in a stand on the street, I can finally see how important an education can be to some people. I think people in the US (and I am included in this statement) take their education for granted. When I was growing up, it wasn't a question of IF I would go to college, it was just a matter of WHERE I would go to college. There was never any question as to what I would do when I was older. It was always go to college, get a job. And I feel like it's that way for a good portion of Americans (certainly not all, but still many). Unfortunately I don't think Thais can say the same. For a lot of them it really is a question of going to work to support the family, or abandoning the family now in hopes of providing them with a better life 5 or more years from now. Unfortunately, I think many of the lower classes just don't have a choice in that matter. They grow up expecting to go to work and to make a living in whatever way they can. It can be by working at a food stand on the street, driving a taxi, or going to Patpong to work at a go go bar. It seems like for many, the most important thing is to provide for themselves and their families now, by whatever means necessary, then to struggle for a longer period of time in hopes of having things improve years down the road. I know things are similar for a lot of people in the US but it seems to be more prevalent here. Now please don't think that it's that way for everyone, because I'm sure it isn't. I'm writing this based only upon what I have seen with my eyes. I haven't gone around speaking to people to find out how an ordinary, lower class Thai lives their life. So those are my observations about education and things in general here in Bangkok. I have nothing to base them upon other than what I have seen with my own eyes but given what I've seen, I'd like to think that what I've written applies at least partially to some people.

Anyway, this ended up being way longer than I had originally intended and as I warned, I rambled. A lot. Oh well. Check back sometime Sunday or Monday and I'll have another post about my weekend in Chiang Mai. Miss you all.

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