A Day In the Life

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

5:15 am - the first alarm goes off.  I hit snooze.  9 minutes later it goes off again.  I turn it completely off.

5:30 am - the second alarm goes off.  I hit snooze again, but stay on my phone and catch up on messages I received while sleeping, check my email and scroll through Facebook.  I hit snooze two more times on my phone before finally turning it off.

6:00 am - decide it's finally time to get up and start getting ready.  Every morning when I'm blow drying my hair is the time that I miss April, my hair stylist in Austin, the most.  It's rainy season in Thailand now and the humidity is not my friend!  My hair is growing thicker rather than longer.

6:45 am - leave my apartment and head to school.  It's about a half mile walk.  It's a fairly peaceful and easy walk to school.  I'm discussing a situation that happened on Monday in class with one of the other foreign teachers.  As we are talking, I decide I need to change my last lesson plan for the day.

7:00 am - arrive at school.  I start doing some research on how to change my last lesson plan.  Every other week I have what is called guidance.  I was told - it's a class that is not graded and you can do whatever you want.  After the conversation I had with the other teacher this morning, I am realizing that Thai students aren't given the opportunity for critical thinking.  They are told what to do, what to write, and what is expected of them.  Yesterday, I asked them to work in pairs and turn in just one piece of paper for their pair.  Their minds were blown.  They didn't understand and were all in a fluster worrying about how they could both get a grade for just one piece of paper being turned in.   My mind was also blown.  I decided that the guidance class will be an opportunity for them to learn to think for themselves.

7:15 - breakfast.  The canteen at school is actually really good!  There are vendors all along the perimeter  of the two story structure.  And everything is 20 baht. It's good and cheap. Because I am a creature of habit, I tend to eat the same place for breakfast.  It's a rice like porridge with seasoned pork, onion, tofu, and a soft boiled egg.  I was a little leery to try it at first, but now I really like it!

7:30 - back in the office, getting some pages printed for an afternoon class and chatting with the other foreign teachers in the office.  There are 11 foreign teachers in total that teach at my school.  6 of us teach in EP program (these students are paying to be in classes taught in English - so their math, science, English, etc classes are taught by foreign teachers.  We see these students multi times a week, the classes sizes are on average 25, and we have a/c rooms!  The other 6 teachers are in another office and they teach ECD. They have larger class sizes, see the kids just once a week and are teaching them English words, listening and speaking skills.

8:00 - Get ready to head out to the morning assembly.  I am noticing that kids are still running around and it doesn't look like anyone is in the area where the assembly takes place.  When we ask what's going, one of the Thai teacher told us that they aren't doing assembly on Tuesdays anymore.  Thais don't read enough and so they are using the 20 mins for the students to sit in their rooms and read.  I use this extra time to go over the lesson plan on simple present tense that I'm teaching first.

8:20 - First class of the day is M2 (8th graders).  I start off the class with passing out the homework from yesterday.  Yesterday in class, we played a game and they thought we should have candy as the reward.  I don't plan on rewarding them with candy often, but they were actually really good, fully participated in the game, and all had fun so I brought in some chocolate for each of them.  They were all very appreciative of it.  We started going over simple present rules.  They were all getting it and giving me good examples.  It's exciting to me when they are getting what I'm teaching them and are participating and enjoying the lesson.  I was surprised how quickly it was 9:30 and time to head to my next class of the day.

9:30 - For the next 50 mins I'm teaching M3 (9th graders).  I had enough of the candy left over and since I didn't have time to go back to my desk, I figured I would go ahead and give this class candy too.  We played a similar game as M2 the day before and they also had fun and all participated.  Right away I walk in and they are all begging for the candy.  Someone says is that for the winners of the game yesterday.  I tell them that I can't remember who all won and instantly all 28 hands go up.  I tell them that in my eyes all of them are winners so they all get a piece of candy.  I had one bag to the girls in the front row and instantly they are taking two pieces.  So unlike the other class.

It's amazing how they all know when the camera is out!

The lesson for this class is on first conditional.  I'm getting a lot of blank stares and one or two are the only ones giving me examples.  This is going to be a long 50 mins for me if we go on at this pace.  And I can tell most of them are not paying attention.  Time to switch it up and make this into a game.  I have to make sure 5 or 6 specific students are at the beginning of the line or they will not participate.  This class is over, but I am not convinced they understand.  That means I'll be going over this again tomorrow with them.  And finding a way to keep their attention with it.

10:20 - back in the office.  The class I have for last period today is M3 and made me realize even more how I need to work on their critical thinking skills.  Thanks to Pinterest I find a few different activities I can use for that class.

11:15 - lunch.  Back to the canteen before the rush of students get there at noon!  We had a new Math teacher start on Monday, and her and I are the only two in the office, so we go eat together.  And I head to my lunch man...the man with rice and seasoned pork and a hard boiled egg.  I add a few sliced cucumbers to it and am set!

Smart dog - hanging out under the lunch table

Noon - back to the office.  I'm in charge of a skit for a competition in August. The kids from M2 came in to work on it.  It's their own version of Cinderella.  Maybe a few of the next Broadway stars in the making.

1:00 - I have M1 for English.  We are working on greetings.  I decide to mix it up a little bit and have them teach me some Thai phrases they think I need to know.  One of the boys, who is usually pretty quiet in class, was really enjoying being "in charge." He kept making me repeat the words until he was sure I was saying it correct.  I cannot roll my R's and a few words needed to have the R rolled.  That caused a lot of laughter!

1:40 - Back to the office to prepare for a BINGO game I'm playing in first period tomorrow.  Also realize I need to walk to the store tonight to get a few items for the game.

2:40 - Back to M1.  This period is English club.  It's meant to be a time for me to work with the ones doing the skit in August.  But those kids are M2 and I also have 25 other kids to watch.  The kids doing the skit needed to work on the computer, so I sent them to the office and decided to play the game I had planned for tomorrow with them.

I got to the room a few minutes early, and these girls were working on a dance routine to a Thai rap song.  One of these girls was the one that asked me how to spell Wiz Kalifha...

3:30 - Guidance with M3.  This is the class that I decided to start teaching them critical thinking.  We also played I went to the market and I bought...where one person starts with the letter A and everyone has to repeat that and add a new item with the next letter of the alphabet.  It went over surprisingly better than I thought.

4:30 - walk home.  Across the street from the school is a large open field.  After school it's set up with a ton of food vendors.  It reminds me a bit of Food Truck Thursdays in Austin.  It's chaotic!

4:45 - I get home and lay down for a second.  I'm debating if I want to walk to the store or not.  I go back and forth for a while.

5:30 - walk to the store.  It's about a half mile walk.  I know I will get over 10,000 steps in today!  The store had a KFC in it.  That's what's for dinner tonight!!  I only see one student on my trip.

6:30 - I get home and take a shower and I really want to just go to bed, but I remember that I need to finish my test for my M1 students tomorrow.

8:30 - I finish the test and crash.  I will have to go back over the test tomorrow to make sure it makes sense!!  I might have fallen asleep a few times while typing it.

10:15 - Wake back up because there might be a monsoon happening outside my apartment.  I really hope it lets up soon.  And that it's not raining like this in the morning.  It will not be fun to walk to school in this!!