Teach-ah Ca-te-reen!

First Day of Teaching

 Thai schools generally have a morning assembly to start the day. Oh, and if we didn't stand out already, all the other teachers had essentially matching outfits.

It finally arrived – I had my first day of teaching today!

On Monday, Anna and I went to the school for the first time. We were shown the English Teachers’ office, and given a tour of the school. There are 2 main buildings I believe (I haven’t seen everything yet), and I think they are divided into 7 total smaller buildings. The school has 2,200 students, from kindergarten/nursery school to grade 9. I will be teaching Prathom (Primary) 3 and 4, which is 8-10 years old. We also met our fellow English teachers – Thai and foreign. Within the foreign teachers, there are 2 Americans (Laura and Erin), 1 Canadian (Thomas – who is also from Ottawa. Crazy.) and 1 Brit (Wayne). 

The English Teachers' Room

 My new desk

Since Monday, we have been hanging around the school, preparing for our first days. And yes, I did get a chance to celebrate Halloween! Last night, Erin, Thomas, Laura, Anna and I all dressed up and went into Bangkok for a while. It seems that most Thais (at least in our neighbourhood) don’t celebrate Halloween. We received a LOT of weird looks, laughter, shouts, and so on. In Bangkok, several people took pictures of our costumes. We went to Silom soy 4, where some bars were decorated. There weren’t too many people in the Halloween spirit there, so we went to the famous Kao San Road (where the backpackers hang out). It was CRAZY – there were so many people! And definitely more people were dressed up! It was fun to wander around and look at the costumes and what the bars were doing.

Most costume items were found in a cupboard in the teachers' room

Anyway, so today I had my first classes. I had my two P4 classes in the morning and the two P3 classes in the afternoon. I decided that for today’s classes, I would have the students create name tags for their desks, so I can learn their names. We were told in orientation that Thai kids love to draw and colour, so I figured that would be a good activity to start with. In the class, I introduced myself, talked a bit about myself, asked the students if they had any questions (they were too scared to ask), and then explained the activity with the demo name tag I made for myself. All Thais have “nicknames”, which are usually short and often in English. Thai names tend to be quite long, so most Thais go by there nicknames on a day-to-day basis. Some examples of my students’ nicknames are Boss, Ink, Pare (very popular), Auto, Pooky, Palm, Rin (pronounced “Lin”), M, and ...Poo. I wish I could remember more, but alas, after meeting 120 kids in one day, my brain is a little fried. Sadly, I don’t have any kids named “Beer”, which is apparently pretty popular!

I would like to take this time to thank my parents for giving me a name that is universally hard to pronounce in ANY language other than English. Seriously. People who are not Anglophones really struggle with my name: French, German, Chinese, Japanese, Thai... I don’t really know what it is that makes it so hard to pronounce, but I think it’s all the consonants and how they interact. I spent a few minutes getting students to say my name. Most students call me something like “Ca-te-reen”. Someday I’ll have to show them my last name and/or whole name. 

“Teaching” itself went well. I mostly monitored the students while they were drawing. I must say, I have never seen so many rulers used to write in block letters, or to make sure one’s writing is level. We were told Thai students were very meticulous when it comes to drawing and colouring, so it wasn’t that surprising. Many of the students are very good little artists too! They definitely put my “drawings” to shame. Most of the kids looked like they were terrified of me, especially when I went to talk to one individually. I’m not sure if they understand or not, or are just scared/shy? But I’ll figure it out I’m sure. Many seemed pretty keen to show their work when they had finished, saying “Teech-ah! Teech-ah!”. I also saw a few anime-ish renditions of myself, which was amusing. 

With the help of  one of my fellow teachers (Laura), I was able to have lunch in the cafeteria. I had pork noodle soup, and it was very tasty. There seems to be an elaborate lunch system, and I had no idea what was going on. After lunch, I had the P3 kids. The first class was a bit noisier, but they had also just come back from lunch. But things still went smoothly enough. The class after was much quieter. I've already spotted some students that I think are going to be a... challenge when it comes to classroom management. I guess it's part of the job... I still think it's hilarious that I switched out of music eduction. And now I'm a teacher, at least for the next 5 months. Winning.

I’m teaching “intensive” level English classes, so I have a Thai teacher in the room with me. For one of my classes today, my co-teacher had to leave so I was by myself. But it went well. Tomorrow I’m going to do a more involved activity and hopefully get the students to start talking I'm trying to find that balance between my teachers respecting my authority (haha) and not being too afraid to talk.

PS: Every class starts with the following dialogue:

Students (standing): Good morning/afternoon Teacher!
Teacher: Good Morning! How are you?
Students" Fine, thank you. And you?
Teacher: Fine, thank you. You may sit down.

Except my students say it really loudly and slowly so it sounds like "GOOOOOOOOD MOOOOOOORNING TEEEEEEEEACH-AAAH" . There is a dialogue when I leave the class but I haven't been able to figure out what they are saying. It sounds like "HFUAOJDEAIHFEHAU. GOOSE-BYE!"