It takes about half an hour to get to school in the morning. The morning assembly takes place at 8:00, so there's about an hour to get settled in before the day starts. The bus drops us off between the Prathom and Mathayom sides of campus at a small school store. The store sells school supplies for the students, but also stocks some snacks, and has a little bakery attached where we can eat breakfast. I wasn't very hungry that morning, so I picked up a small juicebox-looking carton of "choco-drink" before heading up to the Mathayom English office.
Since it was the first day of school, the assembly was much longer than it usually will be. All the students sat on the floor, and we teachers sat in chairs in the back of the room. The assembly hall is a large room with floor to ceiling windows that open to allow a breeze to blow through. It was a hot day, but sitting still with the fans going, it's not so bad.
The students stood to sing the national anthem and recite their prayers while the head teacher bowed at the alter on the stage. Then the head teacher spoke to the students in Thai. I couldn't understand, but I'm sure she was welcoming them to a new year. After the welcome, they had the new teachers come up on stage and address the students. There are three new American teachers in the Mathayom English office. We each introduced ourselves and said how happy we were to be in Thailand and at the school, then we returned to our seats to watch a video message from Princess Sirindhorn, the Princess Royal and sister to the Crown Prince encouraging the students to study hard this year.
After a while Tip (the head English teacher) whispered to us that we could go since we didn't understand anything, and the three of us plus Geoffrey went back to hang out in the air-conditioned English office with a pot of coffee. There were no morning classes on Monday because of orientation and homeroom meetings and things like that, so I didn't have my first class until after lunch.
There are essentially two "schools", Prathom (elementary) and Mathayom (high school). M1 is equivalent to our 7th grade, and M6 is like our senior year. This semester I'm teaching M1-M4. The students go to each of their 50 minute classes once per week, but I'll see them more often than that. Every year the students take a "main" English class and two "extra" English classes, speaking/listening and reading. Every student attends English at least three times every week, and more often in the upper levels.
My first class was M4 Reading, although I haven't done much teaching yet. For the first week of class we are meeting the students in their homeroom where the teacher will divide them into three smaller groups. The main English classes meet as a home room of about 30, but the extra classes are around 9 or 10. Every class this week has been mostly the same; we've been splitting the class, distributing books, and introducing ourselves. That's about all we have time for in one period. Everything is really crazy and hectic, and the Thai teachers have asked us to just "go with the flow". I'm ok with that. Everything here just ends up working out. Mai pen rai as they say!
The Thai teachers made sure that the Americans get the best students in their class. Not only is this good for us as we have little or no teaching experience, it's also good for the kids. These are the students who are the most motivated and have the most to gain learning from a native speaker. Unfortunately my first class just felt awkward. I think the students could tell I had no idea what was going on. The Thai teachers kept coming in and switching students in and out of my room as I tried to introduce myself. The M4 students are sophomores, and know English very well. They are a little shy though, and don't want to speak up in class. I haven't had much time with them yet though.
The most important thing to do on the first day though is to pass around a roll sheet and have students write down their nickname. Names in Thailand are very long, and at birth everyone's parents give them a nickname. Almost everyone goes by their nickname. Sometimes it's a shortened version of their name, sometimes it's a Thai word with some significance or meaning to the parents, sometimes it's just a name that sounds nice. Sometimes however, the parents choose an English word for the nickname. My American co-teachers and I have had fun sharing the best ones with each other. I have Dollar, Bank, Captain, Boat, Icy, and Pizza among others. My co-teacher Ryan has a Cake and a Jam, and my co-teacher Rachel has a Penguin. One of the Prathom teachers has students named Party and Sprite. I'm not making this up! The parents sometimes chose these names to convey a certain status, but to us they just sound funny. Luckily in Thailand, nicknames are very informal, and it's ok if they're funny.I did this twice more for two listening/speaking classes. By the end of the day I was already exhausted. The van driver was really nice and drove us all the way back to our apartment. Unlike before, we were all very quiet on the way back. It was a good day, but very tiring.
The next day was even better.
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