Joo English School Update

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Joo has begun her classes. We are still short of the training for her to “tech properly” but the last week, we have spent creating lesson plans and simple classroom teaching tactics that she can use for her “teaching”.

She is such an amazingly adept student herself. I am floored at her creativity! Sometimes a little too much as she likes to jam pack as much information into each “lesson” as she can. With the amount of material we have brainstormed so far, she has at least a month of lessons we can develop.

To start, the first week will be a review of the alphabet in English and the phonetics for each letter sound. While most of the women who are attending have at least this much exposure to English, the discrepancy in how much each actually knows is vast.

Joo agrees that the best approach is to get all the women up to a familiar level with the alphabet first and then start with vocabulary after that. Our ultimate goal is not to have a class of learners who can read and write English, this is too much of an expectation at this stage, but to have a familiarity with the oral English Language.

Initially, we want to develop the sounds of the alphabet, then progress to writing it. Beyond the alphabet we won’t be doing much more writing until we start working with vocadbulary.

The age range of the women also creates a difference in what they already know.

There are basically three groups: Those that did not attend school at all, or attended only the primary grades -and- who had little or no English exposure in school . Those who completed the basic school grades (up to grade 9 equivalent in the west) and completed at least two years of English language study during that time. . The last group has minimal English skills already. They are able to say “hello”, “how are you?” and have more than two years exposure to English language at school. Most of these women have also attended the minimum school years to M 3. (gr 9). Two in this group have completed high school.

Our “classes” are to be broken into three groups. E(English)1-3. There will be three hour classes each week for each E class. Depending on how this goes, Joo already wants to increase it to more class time. I think she really loves the role of teacher!

The E1, 2 classes will share class time for the first couple of weeks at least. This allows them to all get up to the same level with the alphabet. The E-3 class isn’t attending class until next week, but they are meeting once a week for materials to “study” their alphabet as a refresher course. So far they are doing great! These materials consist of rote writing expercises and verbal reciting of the alphabet primarily. We are also working with primary vocabulary to reinforce the letter sounds.

For the most part, my role is to assist with her ideas and turn then into lesson plans for her to follow. My TEFL training is sure getting a workout! It’s still in the initial start up and I know there will be tons of issues and bugs to work out in the future, but so far, the enthusiasm of the groups are overwhelming!

Once things get underway (in a month or so), I plan to start working with the hotels in the area. The large hotels have the most hiring potential, so I will target those first. I have contact already with the owners of the Suwan Palm Hotel and the GM of the Sarojin via other projects I am working on with Ban Tharn Namchai. Casual conversation about the idea of this project have already been received well by both, but the school needs to be established and functioning for a while before any arrangements are made. The women understand there is likely a year of Joo English School before they will have even the minimum requirement for working in the resorts and hotels in the area. It may be longer if I am able to raise funds for Joo’s English teacher training.

The idea though, is to establish a relationship with the hotels and resort, an awareness of this little school and its purpose. In the meantime I will continue to stay in contact with the hotels and make sure our lesson plans reflect the specifics of what the hotels require.

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