Placement no.3: Teaching

My sister, Nikita, after viewing all the fun posts I blog about weekends and evenings here with other volunteers asked me "Do you ever work Georgia?".
Yes. Yes I do!

Yesterday's timetable went something like this-

10-11 Grade 1 Questions   Joy  Gabby  Axel
10-11 Grade 4 Questions  Georgia  Jane  Aisling
11-12 Grade 2 Questions   Jane  Georgia  Gabby
11-12 Grade 5 Questions   Aisling  Axel  Joy

LUNCH

1-2 Grade 3 Question  Gabby Aisling Joy
1-2 Georgia Axel Jane Free
2-3 Grade 6 Question   Jane  Aisling
2-3 Grade 1-3 Song and Game  Gabby Joy
2-3 Grade 4-6 Song and Game  Axel Georgia

5-6 Karen Hilltribe Class  Georgia Jane

I love so much that 'Song and Game' makes up part of the curriculum. As well as meditation and exercise. It's makes for more well rounded students :) This means all the those I learnt in girl guide campfires became vital knowledge. A musical theatre variation of 'When the saints go marching in' became a favourite of the hilltribe girls last night and Aisling and I just taught 'Ollie Ollie Ollie/Oi Oi Oi' to Kindergarten class. Considering the entire chant consists of only two words this was surprisingly difficult. But they loved it :D

I'm trying to work out how to put this photo into better resolution, it's Aisling and I with this morning's kindergarten class :)      (I'm in yellow)

 

Another highlight of this placement has to be playing football with the children. The heat can be intense and yesterday the field was swarming with dragonflies- it was like a horror movie- the field was thick with dragonflies. It was my team vs Axel's team. We're not sure which team won, given the fact we don't know which child was one which team and because there were too many dragonflies to see what was going on. Fun though. Because even in Thai humid heat wearing flip flop I'm good at football. If only because I have a 3ft advantage over my 8 year old teammates...

PS: I may update this post over the weekend with more photos ect. but I want to publish it while we have internet connection (it comes and goes very quickly)

TEFL: Teaching English (as a) Foreign Language

My favourite moment of teaching was probably when I was teaching ‘Time’ and, in lieu of a board eraser I used my hand. I then wiped my hand across my cheek (on accident) leaving army stripes on my face. The kids found this hilarious. One boy took out his pen and drew stripes across his cheek too (Ha! I’m a trend setter!).

My teacher partner, Steph, commented “You look like GI Joe” while I got the class to chant (chanting is the preferred method of teaching in Thai schools. I don’t know how much I believe in it, but it’s not for me to challenge their methods. After a month here, hearing Buddhist chants in markets, temples and around I realise just how ingrained chanting is in the culture, it makes sense it’s the centre of education, though I think the students memorise things they can’t understand) “One forty five is quarter to two, Two forty five is quarter to three, Three forty five is quarter to four…” and they perfectly echoed the intonation in my British accent. I try to over-enunciate everything I say so they hear distinct vowel sounds. Basically, I speak with Received Pronunciation, think stereotypical ‘posh’ British- Hermione Granger or Mary Poppins.

So that’s my best TEFL moment. Looking like GI Joe, sounding like Mary Poppins, trying not to laugh as a chorus of Eton-sounding Thai children chanted number patterns.

 

Tree Three Free

I’ve spent the last two days tutoring this girl for an English competition; she’s reciting the story of ‘The Three Little Pigs’. I think the volunteer who taught her numbers must have been Irish because she kept saying the ‘tree little pigs’ which was equally endearing and frustrating, it’s cute, but it’s wrong.

We chanted ‘Three, Three Three’
We counted ‘One, Two, THREE’
We walked outside, I pointed to a tree and demonstrated “This is Tree, you say Three”
All to no avail.

Then miracle struck, in the form of Youtube. I got up John Mayer’s ‘Free Falling’ because in the chorus there’s an on going repetition of ‘I’m FREE FALLING’ and the ‘free’ is the same sound used for ‘three’ so I played that on loud and she started singing ‘FREE FALLING, NOW I’M- FREE FALLING NO-OW’ with John Mayer and I (paha!).
And suddenly, after two days of wanting to head desk, she could pronounce ‘Three’.

I took a shameless selfie just after that moment. Here’s us, after singing John Mayer (for totally academic purposes) :P

 

First School Placement

Note: I’ve been on a homestay for a couple of days now, and everyone could get wifi except me! So sorry it’s taken so long. Blogging will probably be pretty erratic, even at the foundation it’s hard to get signal unless no one else is connected (never) so  I’ll have to wait until 1am or something…

On Wednesday morning a van pulled into the foundation to transport my group to Chiang Rai for our first placement. The man on the left of this photo with tasselled socks is the head teacher for the next few days he’s our go to guy, whenever any of us asks a question like “What time do we start teaching” he laughs and says “Don’t be serious!”, I think that’s his favourite phrase, in Thailand there’s never any schedule, you just have to ‘go with it’ and be prepared to tear up the lesson plans. He, like all his students is wearing a scout uniform as that’s what they wear on Wednesdays.
 We’re the first international student teachers the school has had and they were as excited we were there as we were to be there, which was really fun. The head teacher (his English name is Jimi) took a photo of us all in the van before we got to the school to send to the staffroom because everyone was really excited.

The staff room was gorgeous!

He gave us a tour of his school and all the students wai’d to us (a wai is when you put your palms together and bow your head, it is used as both a greeting and a sign of respect).  We are expected to wai back to teachers who have the same status as us but not to the children. All my wais to teachers were conducted with my water bottle between my palms. I’m not sure if this is allowed but I was thirsty and didn’t want to go anywhere without my water!

 

The Thai sense of humour is cute. They like to laugh. So I spend lessons pulling faces, dancing round and trying to get them to shout answers back. At first they shyly laughed but by the end they were all dancing, even the shy kids (special credits to the kids that did ‘Gangnam Style’ with me). That was funny. We can’t speak Thai and they speak little English so minutes were spent repeating “you have paper?” and waving paper in the air to no avail, but when I said ‘Gangnam Style’ every child knew to start horse hopping.

Classes!

 

Our third class of the day were impossibly shy, going round and asking their names was painful, I couldn’t hear most of them. So we made paper hats and everyone wrote their names on the hats.

While on the tour the head teacher pointed out one boy in the class and told the group he was a host family one pair would stay with. The little boy (he’s 8) then pointed at me and said something in Thai, roughly translating as “I want her!” all the teachers and students laughed, the joke was lost on us but later translated. So that’s how Chandra and I joined the Chutimadee family.