Week One At School - The Amazing Thai Sense of Organization and a bit on Education

Week one is over, finally. This was a long boring week. I have never so anxiously wanted to work before! We arrived at school, and our coordinator/head of the English department told us we would hold off teaching for x amount of time, because they had to get our schedules ready. I was ok with that for the first day. He took us around the school etc. The internet is spotty, but when it works, time flies (it was completely out the last 2 days, yikes).
By the second day, the schedules were ready, but we were still told to simply sit in the teacher lounge for the whole day, because he needed to confirm these schedules with our fellow Thai English teacher colleagues the next day at the faculty meeting. Another day of sitting anxiously trying to get the internet to work. The following day, I was a ball of energy after hearing that Obama had won, and all I wanted to do was do something! We had to sit through the faculty meeting in Thai, which I was ok with for about the first 45 minutes, but when it just kept going on and seemed like it would never end, I really thought I was going to lose face. Important side note: one must NEVER lose face in Thailand or else.... I thought I could handle that, just plaster a fake smile constantly, that should do the trick... But if anyone knows me, I can be pretty transparent sometimes, and at 4:30PM on Wednesday after finding out that Obama had won and after spending the entire day sitting in the teacher lounge, I nearly lost it! He finally introduced us to our Thai colleagues and after that happened, I just closed my bag and said, ok thank you, see you tomorrow. Our coordinator awkwardly looked at us: You gooo....? Anyway, it seems that anytime I think I've made a huge faux pas here, it's actually fine. Thais are pretty relaxed and we are just as looney to them as the may sometimes seem to us (no, I honestly don't think that they are looney, just have a very way of doing things, but I certainly think that sometimes they think we are), so I think they just blame weird things on cultural difference.
The next day, we were told to observe the classes and at this point I didn't want to start teaching on Thursday because it would throw off the my week plans. Of course, some of the teachers absolutely did not understand what it meant to observe... So we wound up sort of teaching anyway...!
I sat in on the fabulous "Engrish" teacher who came to meet me in Bangkok . She was teaching a class on Religion... Umm, what? These children can't even introduce themselves and they are teaching them a class on religion in an English class? She wrote belief BELIEFF on the board and for Buddhism she wrote "people born again after die." I really feel like I cannot go wrong here! No matter what I do , it will be god sent compared to what the teachers are doing.
It is ingrained in the students' heads to be submissive to their teachers. They are not allowed to ask questions, because this would make the teachers look bad. So many students have no idea what is going on. Teachers just stand up in front of a class of 45, with a microphone usually, have the book open and just read from it in Thai. One of the teachers was teaching about the passive voice. Why are we teaching about the passive voice when one of the teachers in the department cannot even spell belief correctly?! I used to use the passive voice in my essays a lot, and my English teachers always corrected it telling me it was a very French sentence construction.
We often find ourselves having major misunderstandings with certain teachers, but we roll with it - we have to ! And it's usually just funny. It's all about have a sense of humor. I mean, our colleagues truly are so kind. They are really excited for us to be here, and I try to speak to them as much as I can, but it typically ends in awkward smiling silence :)
I'm really excited now to teach. I can't wait to get in there and try and have some fun with these children. Some of them are really adorable. One boy came to talk to me yesterday and he actually speaks better English than the teachers AND he is learning French. I find this absolutely remarkable after seeing how antiquated and terrible the education system is here!
Another thing, I find that Thais always want to make you happy. Perhaps this is manipulative of us, but when I phrase a question in a certain way, many times I can get what you want out of it. Yesterday, we had a phenomenal luncheon with the department at a hotel where they very sweetly welcomed us. The hotel was only a 5-minute walk from our house. Even though we knew quite well that we were supposed to go back to school afterwards, we managed to politely ask if we were required to go back to school when our house was so close. Act dumb I guess, ha.
This is definitely a whole new world, and I didn't expect to be so excited about teaching, but I feel that there is so much work to be done, I feel that no matter what I do, it will help! Print this post