Teaching last week

Last week I started teaching the teachers English and also began to teach "Open Learning" to 16 kids from Grades 1-3. I'm very excited even though it was exhausting coming up with more lessons and ideas for two completely different groups.

My lessons for the kindergarten kids last week was on the "bedroom." We've been working on vocabulary for the kitchen and colors and numbers and such but I thought we'd amp up the vocab with the full house topic and do it room by room. My best lesson was on Thursday when I brought my own bedding up from my room along with clothes and a hairbrush and toothbrush and towel and a picture and a book and things you would find in your bedroom. They loved it when I acted out going to sleep in my bed, waking up, yawning, stretching, making my bed and were in stitches when I "showered" and put on shorts and a long sleeve shirt over my pants and blouse. I also pretended to take a bucket shower which had the teachers dying! Anyways, we worked really hard on the English words for pillow and blanket which are really hard for them to remember at the moment. This week we'll work on "family-member" topics like mother, father, sister, brother which might be interesting know that many of our kids have very different family structures. We've also been practicing not only answering "How are you?" with "I am happy/wonderful/sad/angry/fine/very good!!!" but also to add "...thank you and how are you Kru Joyann (or whoever)?"

The lesson for the teachers is one hour four times a week with most of the teachers getting 1 or 2 hours in a week. We are working on conversational English. A number of them speak and understand English pretty well but are timid with using it and with the variety of different accents and people coming through it's really hard for them to understand the answers they get - it's not so much that they don't know English - it's more that they need more confidence. Thursday I had 6 teachers and we worked on "About Me/Who Am I?" What questions would you ask to get to know someone? We had some fun with it and even made up answers! They have me laughing so hard! Friday I only had 3 teachers and one had been in class on Thursday so we did a review of "About Me" and added in telephone conversation and what they can say to people who call the school. Because the school also has a small hotel we have to be able to talk about it in English to someone calling. I'll be making up a list of questions based on what we talked about in our Friday class as well as a few vocab words. Each class I brought candy and Friday the teachers brought cookies. And one teacher in particular has now started greeting me with "Hello Teacher!" I love these gals and will miss them so much!

Open learning is a little more challenging for me because I don't know the students in Grades 1-3 as well as it pertains to teaching them because I've never had a chance to teach them before. The class is also at the end of the day and they REALLY do not want to participate so it has to be fun. Monday we did a fun word puzzle with words for parts of the body. Wednesday we did animal Bingo which was a hit with all but two of them (I think because the words were actually too hard for those two). Thursday I showed them how to play "Red Rover" which involves a lot of running. Then I had them playing the game I play with kindergarten - "Duck, Duck, Chicken" (my version of "Duck, Duck, Goose" to better fit the birds that actually live here... although I've been told that there ARE geese in Thailand...hmm).

I also taught Grades 5 and 6 at the local primary school on our Wednesday time. Before New Years the boy and girl "Scouts" went camping so I made the lesson around them telling me about their camping trip. We worked out sentences and got to practice past tense with things like... "I slept in a tent..." and "I walked 7 km" etc. Then they wrote three sentences they liked on one side of their paper and I had them draw their experience on the back. At the end I gave them candy cuz I'm a softie! We also talked about what they did on New Year's... "Where did you celebrate?" Funny, I was the only one stuck in bed with a fever! They all had fun - YAY!

Anyways, this week is about to start and I'm looking forward to it. I only have two more weeks here at Yaowawit and Bang Kow (the local primary school) and I'm a little sad. I love my new friends here and the children are amazing. It's going to be hard not being able to take a quick flight over to visit when I'm back in the U.S. Some of the staff don't have e-mail because they are very poor as well so it will be really hard to stay in touch even without the language barrier! My friend Buzzy doesn't speak English and I'll miss walking up to her and getting and giving a daily hug. She's very sweet. And the cooks speak some English but writing a letter just won't be the same as joking with them and laughing at ourselves in person! The Thais here are amazing and beautiful people. Maybe it's the culture, maybe it's because we're in a small village, maybe it's because we're at a very special school - who knows - but it's different from the friendships I've made at home and I will be sad to leave these incredible people.

Even the village people I've "bumped" into are different than people at home. I was walking the 2km from the bus today and a woman in a truck pulled over and asked to give me a ride to the school. She refused to take money from me and told me she'd seen me at the weekend market a number of times. The generosity of these people never ceases to melt my heart. They are kind in a million little ways and I love them!

Happy week to you!