Firstly, I apologise for the lateness of this blog. I did promise it the other day, but I have found myself a nice little job (finally) and have been working like a little Irish trojan. I have finally gotten around to writing a mini survival guide for your classes if you are heading off to teach in Thailand in the future. Lets get started.
Firstly, lets get a sense of the classroom situation. If you are working, like I was, in a normal government funded school, you will be looking at a pretty basic classroom. The room will be choc-a-bloc with desks to the point that there is nowhere to move them to if you want to do any activities, and you will probably not have air conditioning. Don't worry, its not as bad as it sounds. Yes there will be days where you will feel like you are cooking from the outside in, but welcome to Thailand. Usually when it got particularly bad I would just not move about as much, give them a worksheet, and hand one of them 5 baht and say 'go get Teacher Amy water'. They always like to be helpful. You will probably have about 40 to 55 children in a class, and if its a pretty big school you could be teaching a large number of children in a week. I was teaching about 900 students a week as I taught 22 different classes. I only had each class once a week, but most people would teach classes numerous times a week. I know 900 students seem like a colossal amount but it was kind of handy as I only had to do two main lesson plans for the two years I taught, and I adjusted them accordingly depending on the proficiency of the class. With regards to resources, you will have access to printers and paper, and you could probably put in for art supplies or special resources for classes if your school has a bit of money. Mostly, you make do with worksheets to support stuff you put on the board or get them to simply say. You may or may not have a curriculum. I had absolutely no curriculum at all, and it was difficult and involved a lot of googling for worksheets and classroom ideas. Hopefully you will have a curriculum.
For discipline tips, I have only one main one. Don't ever shout. Shouting is alien to them. Thai people, as I have said in other blogs before, don't deal at all with confrontation and shouting at your students will not have any productive effect. Silence is your best friend. Whenever my kids acted up, especially the younger ones (12/13), I would stand at the top of the class, put the top on the board marker and stand with my arms crossed staring them down. When they finally nudged each other quiet, I would ask 'finished?' with a 'I am not taking any rubbish' look. If you stare them out of it they get so freaked they just stay quiet. No shouting needed. I also did punish them, but it was hard as they didn't understand the words 'punishment', 'detention', or 'you are in trouble'. I, again, stared them down, then I made them stand up in front of the whole class and I would fire questions at them with the 'I am not taking any rubbish' look. They soon learned the consequences of annoying me, and I found my classes were very manageable. Honestly, I found the older ones to be pretty easy. They more had the 'I couldn't be bothered' attitude, but with a bit of persistence and a few fun classes that attitude soon disappeared.
The trick with all the classes, whatever age you teach, is to make them fun. You have to understand that many of the kids going to highschools in Thailand don't have to be there. Lots of the children come from very poor backgrounds and they could be of use at home or working, but instead they chose to come to your class. To make it worth their while you should make the classes as fun as possible. I used to use games such as chinese whispers (but just call it whispers. The 'Chinese' bit is too hard to explain), hangman (but don't actually hang him. I used to draw him in a box), bingo, x/o, and categories. To explain categories, its simply splitting your board in two, and write the alphabet in vertical lines down the two boards. Then come up with a theme, maybe 'food' or 'countries' and in two teams they had to think of as many items in that theme beginning with all the letters of the alphabet in 3 minutes. They love competition and getting them to all crowd around the board helping each other out and spelling all the words out was great. Also whenever I taught a new song I would stick the lyrics around the room, and in pairs they would have to put the lyrics in order. One would run, read, and come back and whisper it to their partner, and the other would write it down. I would then go on to add to the lyrics on the board and teach the song. They like Lady Gaga, One Direction, and Justin Bieber. Not great English, I know, but the trick is to get them to understand and speak, and making it relevant and interesting is half the battle.
Finally, and I know they say don't use any Thai in your class in the TEFL training, but I say otherwise. I am not saying have massive conversations, that's near impossible when it comes to westerners and Thai, but I learned a few phrases and they helped me a huge amount. I was asking the students 'do you understand' in English, and they were all saying 'Yes', and then I would realise half way through that they didnt understand a single thing. I learned how to ask 'do you understand' in Thai and I got honest answers, and it made things a lot easier. To ask it, its easy. 'Cow jai mai?' That's it. And yes is 'Chai', and no is 'Mai'. The kids always got a kick out of my little attempt at Thai. I also learned to word for homework, which is 'ganban', which solved the whole problem of the students not understanding that I wanted something done for homework, and quiet is 'neeam' with the emphasis on the neee bit. Oh, also, to shush kids, don't actually shush. They dont see saying 'shhhhh' as be quiet. They will simply just copy you and laugh. You have to tut tut tut at them, like you do when someone does something disgraceful in the west. Not actually saying the word 'tut', but the sound of a tut ....You get what I mean.
So, there is your classroom survival kit. I hope some of it comes in handy, and I hope these three blogs have made things a little clearer about working and living in Thailand. If you have any more questions, or want me to do any more blogs on specific things, please pop me an email (see info over there :-) ------> )
Slán.
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