This past week has passed quickly and mostly without interruption (at least during the school day). After a frustrating week last week where the communication barrier seemed somehow worse than other weeks, this one has been a breeze and a joy to teach. Last week was our first full week of school since I have been here - about three months - which probably accounted for the problems. No one, teachers and students alike, were used to having class all day every day! By the end of the week, behavior problems were in full swing and the attention spans were almost nothing.
Many of my students in Mo. 3 (equivalent of 9th grade in the US) will not be returning to school next year. Mo. 3 is the last year of required schooling in this area and many of the students are needed at their farms or in the villages. Especially in the lower level classes, they don't see the reason for high level education and will most likely stay in this province for the rest of their lives. This fallout from this in class seems to be that the students have little to no interest in any sort of written work. Worksheets? Not gonna happen. Getting to class on time? Forget it. It's similar to senior's in High School during their last month of school who aren't going to go to College/University. For this reason, I've changed most of my lessons into activities or games and it's been working well. With the lower level classes, I've simply been doing acrostic poems and I'll put a book together for the classes. For the higher level classes, I've been doing a vocabulary review Bingo game which they love. It's great to teach, especially when all the students are excited.
As the weeks have gone on, I've finally started to accept that you can't expect anything but the unexpected. For a long time I would ask our English Director, Surachat, if we had class the next day and it became a bit of a joke between the teachers because no one ever knew. While in the beginning, this bothered me immensely and was a source of great frustration, I've become pretty used to it now. Classes/ lack thereof are announced in the morning, at 8:00, during the morning assembly. Activities are commonplace and as a bigger school in the city, we've got facilities that other schools use almost every day. Sports are a huge deal here and there are provincial sports, color sports (intramurals), district sports, etc. They all seem to use our football (soccer) fields and eat in our canteen! Almost every morning, Surachat will call over the "native" speakers and we have a "3 minute meeting" where he fills us in on what was said that morning. Just this morning I was told that we would not have first period as all the students have to meet with their girl scouts/boy scouts coordinators. Surprise! Then I was told that this weekend, 250 students who have been perpetually absent for all of the sport games will have to be on campus playing sports. After that, I was informed that I will be part of a parade on Wednesday - what for, I still don't know - where they will dress me up in traditional Thai dress and I will have jewelry and loads of makeup on! Should be an interesting day...I actually can't wait!
Earlier this week, we had a guest speaker here at Nakhon Phanom Wittayakhom. A professor from a University in Australia came to speak about SME's (Small Medium Enterprises). The connection between the University and NKP is that one of the professor's students is from this province and he happens to be the districts education director's son. The lecture was scheduled for 5:00 on Tuesday though it started more around 6:00. (That's something else I've gotten used to - Thai time. Everything is either earlier or later than you think!) I showed up to the lecture in jeans and a polo shirt, having changed from my pink Nakohn Phanom shirt and black skirt that I had to wear for school and I was sorely underdressed! Of course, I hadn't been informed that it was a formal speech - something I guess I should have known. All of my teachers were dressed in black and red formal Thai silk, and the guests at this lecture were government officials and directors from schools all over the area - wearing their school uniforms or traditional silk suits. Whoops. I stuck out with a sore thumb, but that's nothing new. Despite my fashion faux paux, they were appreciative of the fact that I went and I think I earned some brownie points. The speech was in English which was great for me but troublesome for all the Thai guests so each presenation slide was translated into Thai, and then questions translated back into English - it was an exhaustive process and the presentation had to be cut short as translating took so much time.
Afterwards, we had a party! We had a party this weekend to attend which ended up being a "100 days funeral party" as well as about a week ago for the ending of color sports. Our school seems to have no limit on the number of parties they throw and they are always wonderful affairs. I am constantly impressed with the way that our school/ students are able to decorate buildings and rooms for presentations or parties. This one was better than most that I've been to as they were honoring their Western guest. The food was wonderful - they even had salad!! A rarity here. The food was not as spicy as to be considerate of the Western guest and I have to say I really enjoyed it. While I knew we were having dinner after the speech, I was unaware of how big a deal it was. Many of my students had been absent for the past few days doing dance and singing and I didn't know why. Well, this was the reason! We had our Nopowo band playing and some students singing. The cheerleading team did a dance as did other dance teams. The Nopowo traditional band also played traditional Thai music. There were hours of performance. It was very well done and fun to be a part of. Originally, the speech and dinner wasn't something I was particularly looking forward to, but turned into a wonderful night. This tends to happen a lot as the people I work with don't have the English vocabulary to truly explain what will happen at the various functions and I don't have nearly enough Thai to ask questions about it. So I go to an event I think will be boring or normal and am usually pleasantly surprised with a grand affair and wonderful food.
Tomorrow, we have no school again as there is girl guides and boy scout camp. They are doing adventure activities and camp at night. Most of the teachers are involved and while I haven't been told that I need to do anything, I may tag along with the girl guides and see what it's all about. I think it would be an interesting experience and the students appreciate it when I try to learn some about their culture. Sometimes in class I have to write the vocabulary in Thai or explain in (broken) Thai so that they will understand and a cheer almost always arises from the students when I do so, even if I'm wrong. Many time the students have to correct my letters or my tones, but hopefully they see that it's okay to make mistakes (something not taught in the Thai education system...to make a mistake means to lose face).
One last thing I've gotten used to - wearing long sleeves and 'jackets' in 80 degree weather! It's winter here now and I admit, the mornings are truly cold. Sometimes you can see your breath in the air which I absolutely never expected here! However, as my face tends to get red whether I'm hot OR cold, my students have taken to telling me, 'teacher, gam daeng'! meaning, "teacher, red cheeks!". They think it's great, for whatever reason and love to tease me about it.
Other than that, life goes on as usual. This weekend, after the scout camp, I'm going to be helping out at an English camp. It's held at Annubahn, the school Haley teaches at, and I'm looking forward to it.
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