Well my first three months of teaching have been safe to say pretty tiring. I have had countless naps.
I think most will agree that the best way to train a teacher is to throw them into the deep end. By that I mean teaching English as a foriegn language abroad. Of course a bit of teacher training would help too but nothing can compare to the hands on experience that is TEFL.
Teaching such a low grade has been difficult as they cannot speak any English and they don’t understand me. This is especially irritating when a collegue who teaches just one grade above has great conversations with their students and thier classes are well behaved. Still, I am determined to get my students to this level of English.
My first week was a week of games and getting to know the abilities of my P1 class (6 year olds). This was a good icebreaker, although this week, I now know, should have been a week for laying down the law.
Teaching in my Thai school means that I share my class with a Homeroom teacher, Science, Music and Scouts teachers and a Thai assistant/ translator. The Thai assistant is always with the children and is the one to discipline them. Unfortunately, this means painful punishments of slapping them on the hands with rulers which I am still not okay with. Thai students see foriegn teachers as fun and someone they can have a bit of a laugh with and they automatically love you. This is great but it means they don’t respect you and certainly don’t fear you as much as the Thai teachers. So slowly I am implementing rules and also playing games and acting silly so they will both love me and respect me… Hopefully.
I teach a range of subjects from Health to Computers so that the students are completely imersed in English language. However, my Thai assistant has to translate most of what I say which always gets me thinking ‘why am I actually here?’. The reason is because my school is ‘world class standard’ so they say and they like to show off with lots of foriegn teachers. Despite the fakeness of the school and the countless photo opportunities I will smile and nod (because that’s what you do in Thailand) and focus on improving my teaching.
With stresses of classroom management, teaching sensitive subject matters (Health) and parents watching your every move. Literally, there is an online forum where the parents talk about you and pictures are uploaded of you teaching every other second. Nothing can bring me down because the cuteness of my kids will always without fail lift my spirits.
Just look how cute they are.
With a possible PGCE in my future, watch this space, Sarah Roberts will be the best teacher you’ve ever seen.
sarahrobbo 