Thai teaching week3

Week three of teaching has, yet again, started out rough. The younger kids, 5-9 years old know a lot less English than what their teachers think they do. The ABCs at random are useless and, while they can repeat what we say, writing down the letter “A” is another story.

            They are sweet kids though. Of course, you’re going to have a few clowns who are really done with the school year already (we can all relate to that), and it comes down to age in retrospect. At five years old, they hardly know the Thai language, we couldn't have expected them to know the English alphabet as well.

            We are making progress though. The 10-12 year olds can spell for the most part and we have moved on to simple sentences. Vocab is a part of the lesson for every group; and spelling is a main focus for the 7-9 year olds, while just to master the alphabet is the goal for 5-6.

            Farmer Community School has really taken off these past few years. Six years ago when they had their first volunteer and offered this English class, the volunteer was teaching six students. Last year they had two girls come and they taught about fifty. This year...Will and I have near 450. The schools in nearby towns were very excited to be able to offer their students two months worth of English lessons, and we’re excited to be here to help. Whether we’re actually doing that is hard to judge with so many students.       

            We are determined though. Will has the charisma I sometimes lack, and I can follow up one on one. We have five more weeks, and after this weekend in Chiang Mai, I feel refreshed and ready to take these next five weeks by storm. Now we know the village, the skill of students, and how we can improve. We attempt to teach 80-100 kids each day. Five hours a day. Monday through Thursday. Practice makes perfect, and we are practicing teachers.