Teaching at Samut Sakhon Wittayalai

---

Well I am now in my fourth week teaching! I can't believe just how fast the time goes! It does not feel like a whole month has gone by that I have been teaching. Teaching in Thailand is such an adventure in itself! I teach two levels, M2 and M5. M2's are 13-14 year olds and M5's are 16-17 year olds. I teach high school in Thailand. When I embarked on this journey I never in a million years would have thought I was going to be a high school teacher! As I learn by experience day by day, I can't help but to think of all the teachers in my life and how we were with them in school. I have a whole new perspective and appreciation of teachers!! This is a difficult yet easy job. Contradictory, yes I know. I'll explain. I have 22 classes of about 50 students in each class each week. I only see each student once a week for 50 minutes and I teach conversational English. Classroom management is a major aspect of my job, that's needless to say with 50 student classrooms. There are a lot of times that I have to laugh at myself for taking away a students phone or staring down a group that's chatting away while I'm trying to give instructions. I've actually grabbed a student's phone out of their hand when they told me one more minute as they were chatting away. Oohh did I enjoy hanging up on whoever they were talking to! I don't actually ever let their behavior get to me, I understand I'm just another class in their day and probably their easy class at that. I do pretend to be very stern though so that I can get them under my "teacher power". The school knows of the student's sometimes uncontrollable behavior so they give us foreign teachers a co-teacher that sits in on each class. At first, I felt really weird having a co-teacher sitting in the back. I felt like I was going to be judged on my teaching techniques and such. Now, I appreciate them so much! I have 4 different co-teachers that alternate in my classes. One brings me a little breakfast each time she has me for the first class of the day. I love her! Today I got 3 bananas! Yum! She also has those kids in control! I've never seen a child sit up so straight and stop talking as quickly as they do when she steps in the classroom. It's obvious that the foreign teachers don't get nearly as much respect as the Thai teachers but what do you expect? Every semester there is a new foreign teacher who doesn't know the ropes yet, what else should the kids do but try and take advantage of the situation? Another reason is that the kids are excited to have a native English teacher in their classroom and they know we don't use the same disciplinary techniques. Most Thai teachers still use the old school ruler technique to control the students. I've seen a few "beatings" at the school and it takes a lot to try and get used to that. I do have one class that I can't seem to get under control no matter what I try. It's just so frustrating. They drive me up the wall!!! My co-teacher in that class, their normal teacher, is so small and precious that she too has issues handling them. At the end of class last week, she comes up to me and says, "I can't stand on them!" and I repeated with a smile, "you mean, you can't stand them? Lol. I agree, they are wild!" (I'll take any advice on classroom management ideas! Feel free to leave a comment!)



My classes are divided up by level. So I have a M2/1, M2/2, M2/3...and so on. The 1,2,3… shows the level that class is at in school, 1 being the best and 12 being the worst. Obviously, I love my 1 classes because they can actually understand my directions whereas it gets really frustrating with my lower level classes because no matter how I explain my directions they end up staring at me. I can act, draw examples, give them the answers and they still don't comprehend what I want them to do. It's hard because you think that they've had English for so long in their schooling that somewhere they would learn what "put your name on the paper" means. It gets that bad with the understanding, but you know what, that's why I'm there. I feel silly sometimes standing up there trying to get them to understand me. I can spend up to 5 minutes just trying to explain an activity. Thank goodness for the co-teachers, they only step in when they know the students are just not getting it. I do feel silly when they step up and explain in Thai what I tried to explain in English and the kids get it right away. Ugh!



The kids love to play games especially if there's a chance of winning against another team. I try to tie that into my lesson plan each week as much as I can. Makes the 50 minutes go by much easier. There are some lessons though that just don't have time for the fun games and I have to teach them new material. Making my lesson plans are fun too. I get to be creative and think of new ways to approach an old topic. I have topics like, friends, hobbies, family, giving directions, telling a story, and so on. I'm sure they have had these topics as some point in their lives so I try to mix it up for them. That's also hard to do because I have no idea of telling exactly what they do know. It seems like the students never approach new vocabulary and always revert back to using the same ones. I have friends teaching 4-9 year olds and their students say the same hobbies that my 14 year olds use, "I like to play games", "I like to play computer", "I like to watch TV." I really want to try and get them out of that circle. Sometimes though, they surprise me with something like, "I like to play the violin." I was so happy when I saw that one. I also find myself working on the student's s's. They don't pronounce the s at the end of words. It will be something like this instead, "my mom like to cook" or "My dad like to drive car," So for conversational English they get their point across but so many kids do it that it bothers me and I want to fix it.



I wish the American/German standard that I carry of always being on time would transfer over to my students. There are classes that have shown up 25 minutes late! Usually though, it's about 5-10 minutes. So that instantly cuts my class down on time and add the time it takes to get them settled down. There is one class leader in each class as well. This class leader is in charge of saying, "please stand up!" at the beginning and end of class. This marks when the entire class stands up and says, "goooood morning teeeeeeacher!" It's cute to hear them say it… it's very long and drawn out. Sometimes I keep them standing and say, "Good morning class, how are you today?" to which they robotically respond with, "I'm fine teeeeacher." To get them to sit down I have to say, "Thank you, please sit down." or at least that's what I think needs to happen or else they'll stand the entire class! At the end, the leader takes my hint that class is done and again says, "please stand up!" to which the class then says, "thaaaaank you teeeeacher!" I felt really weird at the beginning but I really like it now. Makes me feel appreciated even if it's something they HAVE to do. 😊 Also, whenever I walk around campus there are always students yelling out to me, "hellloooooo teeeacher!" It's quite cute.

*** here's a video that I made for my family and friends for Thanksgiving, it's a video with my student's shouting out greetings. Enjoy!

&feature=g-upl

I love my support system at the school. The Thai teachers are all wonderful and very helpful. They've even taken it upon themselves to show us around town. Every once and a while we'll be asked, "do you know where this is?" and we won't so they take us there after work and give us a little tour. We also have two college students doing their internships at our school. They are absolutely awesome. Everyday they come in with excitement and positive attitudes, they brighten my days at work. They are very helpful as well. When ever I have a tedious mindless task that I have to do, like cut 500 sheets of paper in half, they help me with it. I'm also so happy for the two other foreign teachers at my school. They both did the same program as I did in Phuket and together we are learning how to be good teachers. We tell stories about our classes and each learn from one another. It's been such a wonderful experience thus far.



December is going to fly by as well. We have 2 three day weekends (one for the King's birthday and one for constitution day), one whole week is test week, one Tuesday is sports day where the kids will be at school but not in class, the week before sports week all classes are 10 minutes shorter so the kids can have an hour extra to practice, and then at the end of the month we have the Monday and Tuesday after New Year's off. I'm excited to see what this month has to bring. I'll be more consistent with the updating. I have a few topics like toilets in Thailand that I want to cover. 😊 There's also a ton more about teaching at my school that I'm going to add. Probably will have that up by the end of the week!

Thanks for reading!

Love you!

---

Photos

Welcome Teacher!
This made my first week! It was such a wonderful gesture and I really loved it.

My M5/1's creative story
we had such a blast coming up with this story as a class

Working Hands
My hands are comparable to a smurf's after class. Gotta love the white boards!

Erika (foreign teacher) and our Thai Teachers
Erika was getting some help on translating a menu! It was such a cute interaction between them.

Comments

[DAD]

interesting BLOG
Nice Blog carolyn, you are writing so much better. Love you, Dad