On my first day at the school, I was told to simply go, meet the teachers, and observe. Well, that's not what happened. Instead, I arrived and within the first ten minutes, I was pulled in to a classroom and told to teach. Now I had no idea how old these kids were or how much English they knew, so I simply did my best and tried to explain the two workbook pages that I had been given. Then when I got done teaching, I was told that this would be my class.
Here's a picture of one of my students, Snow.
Anyways, my class has 36 kindergarteners who are in their first year of school. Over here, they do two years of kindergarten, and then they move on to first grade. My kindergarteners, however, are brand new to the whole school thing, and it definitely makes teaching challenging. Thankfully, I do have a head teacher, June, a co-teacher, Pinky, and a nanny, Uwee, who help me out all day. The four of us work together to teach and try to control our class.
On a typical day at school, I arrive at 7:30 in the morning and we greet the parents as they drop off their students. Then at 8:00 I lead the students as they walk in two lines to the flag ceremony. Now this doesn't seem like that big of a task, but I assure you it is. Since these kids have never been in school, they don't know how to line up. And since I don't speak much Thai, I have to grab each student and pull them in to line. The boys line up in one line and the girls in the other, and they are supposed to hold hands as they walk. Now to get them to hold hands is also a difficult task, which usually gets completed by me grabbing the girl's hand and the hand of the boy across from her and putting their two hands together. This takes about 20 minutes to wrangle all the kids into line and then walk to our destination.
When our lines finally arrive at flag ceremony, we do our best to get the kids to stand still, but it's pretty close to impossible. While the kids are all over the place, they raise the flag and then sing the national anthem. When all of that is done, we do these dances. Honestly I thought it was so strange at first, but now I realize that we dance around for almost an hour to get out their energy. Then the students play on the playground for a while, and then before we go back in to start learning, they drink a carton of milk.
When it's time to go back to the classroom, all of the students and teachers must take off their shoes and leave them at the entryway to the building. Shoes are only worn when you're going from building to building, not inside. We then line the students back up and walk them upstairs to the classroom.
Finally, we're back in the classroom and ready to learn. The students sit down on the floor in lines and once they are as quiet as I can get them to be, I start teaching for about an hour. Each week there is a different theme, that both myself and the head teacher, teach about. Last week the students learned about body parts. We went over flashcards to teach the body part, then we learned the song 'Head Shoulders Knees and Toes', played games like Simon Says, and completed worksheets. All of my teaching must include a song and a game, since most kindergarteners learn best that way.
As I'm teaching, the co-teacher helps explain anything that the students aren't understanding. Pinky's English is very good, so she can understand what I'm saying and then re-explain what I taught in Thai.
Once the lesson is complete, they go to their special subject for the day. Each day they have one of the following: music, computer, Chinese, or swimming. We go with them to these classes and pretty much babysit and try to keep all the students on task. At 11:00 they leave that class and head to lunch. Here we have to direct the kids to where they sit, and help carry their trays because every other kids seems to spill.
Honestly, I had no idea I was going to teach kindergarteners, and it is such a challenge because they don't know how to do things that seem like common sense. My little bit of student teaching high school students, definitely did not prepare me for this. Nevertheless, the kids are growing on me and I'm really starting to like them, especially after lunch when they're tired and not full of so much energy.
My favorite part of the day is when I read to the kids as they get ready for their nap. Once I'm done reading, I get to go home as the kids nap for the next two hours. I come back at 2:00 and the kids wake up and put their blankets and mats away. We then brush their hair and they drink milk once again.
Once the students are awake and ready to learn again, the head teacher teaches about the subject of the week. During this time, myself and the other two teachers try to keep the kids sitting in their lines and paying attention, but it's a challenge. Over here in Thailand, discipline is very different than in America. The students get hit on their legs or their backs with metal rulers. Now I haven't done that yet, instead, I simply say their name and gesture as to what they should be doing.
When teacher June is done teaching, the students practice lining up again and we walk back to the cafeteria for snack time. Even though it's like 90 degrees and really humid, we eat soup everyday for a snack. It's actually really good soup. Pretty much all of the food is great, but I'll save talking about food for another post.
To end the day, the students come back from snack time and play with the blocks, legos, dolls and the other toys in the room, until their parents come. Finally at 4:30 I get to go home and usually I'm so exhausted from wrangling kids all day that I come back and eat dinner, work on the next days lesson plans, and then go to bed super early. There's not a ton of stuff to do where we live, so during the week we devote ourselves to school. Look for my next post to find out what we do on the weekends when we have time to get out and explore!
No comments:
Post a Comment