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Published: November 29th 2009
Thank god it’s the weekend!!! To all of my old teachers out there, I am so sorry if I ever caused you stress or anxiety or caused you to work overtime. I now know how you felt, and you have my deepest apology. I have had to crack down hard on my students these last two weeks.
The high school I work at starts with 7th grade and continues up through 12th grade. Both of my 8th grade classes were naughty this week. One of them was just chatty in the sense that I constantly needed to remind them to simmer down. However, the other class has been giving every teacher heart-fits. I work within a program called the Multi Language Program (MLP) at Suratpittaya which provides Math and Science classes in English, as well as English, Chinese and Thai language classes. Parents pay a lot for their children to participate in this program and it is frustrating for us teachers when the students just don’t care.
All of us in the MLP program have been having difficulty with this particular class. Mel, the Science teacher from Scotland, Jeeheon, the Math teacher from Boston, and I have decided to present a united front. We’ve started taking away their lunch minutes if they get bored. Mel loves to sit with them at lunch and just stare at them with that look of disappointment. At the beginning of every class I start them off with “0” minutes for lunch and I add 5 minutes every time they misbehave. They’ve been getting a bit better and it’s a great tool for simmering the class down. When they start to get really out of hand, all I have to do is go up to the board as if I’m going to give them more minutes, and they “shush” each other and yell at the ones who are causing the trouble. However, it only works for a few minutes before they’re bouncing off the walls again. We’ve also given them an assigned seating arrangement, which they are NOT happy about. They’re just going go have to learn that they have to earn the privilege to choose their own seats.
This last week I did a mythology unit with them. I thought for certain that this would interest some students. I used legends and myths to test their reading comprehension and ability to read for information. I of course got really excited about this, considering I majored in it at UW. Some of my students got into it and enjoyed the stories about King Arthur, Hercules, Odysseus and Beowulf, but most of them could have cared less. I realized that even in the U.S. I must have been a minority as a high school student; one of the very few that actually liked the Odyssey and thought it was the “coolest” story I’d come across. I’ll have to keep that in mind for my next set of lesson plans. Note to self: try to plan lessons that will interest and relate to Thai high schoolers, not yourself…
My 8 year olds were great for me this week. We’re doing phonics right now and they’ve mastered the short vowel sounds and some of the long vowel sounds. They love playing a game that my former Spanish teacher used to let us play called, “matamoscas” or “flyswatters”. It’s where you put pictures or words on the board and have two students come up and try to hit the word or picture that the teacher calls out with flyswatters. Whichever one hits it the fastest gets the point. My students go bananas for it. I have one student in particular named Graphite, pronounced Gar-phite…don’t ask, who gets really really into it. It’s wonderful to have that energy and excitement in the room.
However, I am unfortunately still terrified of my 5 year olds. We have our good days and our bad days, but it is definitely a class that I dread teaching. You would think that 5 year olds would be easy to teach; just give them something to color and they’re pacified. Oh no!!!! Not these 5 year olds. They have 4 second attention spans and insist on throwing things at each other. Last week I caught three of my students throwing coins at the other students and every time I let them color, two boys think it’s fun to throw colored pencils a the students who are actually trying to finish their worksheets. I’ve had to get a Thai assistant to sit in my classroom and help me discipline them all.
I’ve figured out that the main problem is that half of the class is more advanced and finishes everything early, while the other half of the class struggles to keep up. Fortunately we will be splitting the class up this next week so that we can keep the levels appropriate for the students. I think that will calm things down a bit. Fingers crossed!
In other news, this was the first Thanksgiving that I’ve spent away from my family…EVER! Although I thought it would feel strange, it really just felt like any other day. I went to work, had Pad Z You for dinner, then went to the coffee shop to call family and friends to wish them happy holidays. Nothing too special. I think the weather can make or break a holiday feeling. Because there really aren’t any major seasons here in Thailand, other than kind of rainy or really hot, it’s hard to get into a holiday spirit; especially when the country you’re living in doesn’t celebrate it.
I think Christmas will be harder to miss. I never thought I would miss snow…but I do! That crispness of walking on newly fallen flakes. That silence of walking during a soft snow shower. That feeling of getting up early in the morning and seeing everything glittering and white before the day begins and the snow gets crunched under cars and feet. It will be even harder to miss the smells of vanilla and cinnamon and spruce that is everywhere in Wisconsin around Christmas time. I will particularly miss working at Ancora Coffee (my old coffee shop) and seeing everyone wandering in from the cold in the early hours of the morning, craving warmth, pastries and coffee.
Ah, such is life. I can’t really complain now can I. I get to hang out in one of the most spectacular countries in the world. I now know Surat like the back of my hand. I get around pretty easily on my little motor bike and finally feel like I’m living somewhere, rather than just visiting. I feel more like a local instead of a tourist. I will be getting a Thai bank account and everything and I finally get paid for the first time on Tuesday!!!! It’s a strange feeling, officially uprooting from the U.S. Not that I hate the U.S., it’s just new, having an actual life in a different country. It quite suits me though. Now if I can just get my students under control, then life would be perfect.
Fact of the Day: They put salt on all their fruit here. I know in some parts of the U.S. people put salt on fruit to bring the sweetness out, but here in Thailand, they do it to the max. You can find fruit smoothies everywhere, but they are almost always more salty than sweet…something to get used to.
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Aunt Connie
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Greetings from the hospital
I enjoyed your blog, Uncle Lou read it to me. I am still in the hospital unable to speak or move around much. Tomorrow I have a procedure to hopefully allow me to start the full recovery and get home. Hope you are well, love Aunt Connie and Uncle Lou, too.