Beatles, Zombies and Earrings

For our last week of orientation, Fulbright set the 10 of us up with a practice teaching gig at a nearby school in Bangkok, Monday through Thursday for 2 hours in the morning. We were split into pairs to tackle a class together. Kelly and I  spent a good chunk of our weekend planning for our first lesson. Planning was complicated by not knowing the following: how many students we would have, what their level would be or if they had an prior knowledge of the language. At 6:15 AM Monday we all piled into a van, and an hour later - despite my fervent prayers to the contrary - we arrived at the school. We sat down with the school director, who told us that this was a welfare school, students were very poor and many had learning disabilities and few knew any English at all. Super. Needless to say, this information did not ease my rising anxiety/nausea. Kelly and I trekked off to our class to prepare for our students.

At 9:00 they walked in - 28 boisterous 8th and 9th grade girls. Our first day was a surprising success! The girls were sweet-tempered (mostly) and eager to learn. They responded well to our efforts to engage them and the games we played with them. They giggled when I coached pronunciation by exaggerating sticking out my tongue and facial expressions. All told, we had a great time with them and learned A LOT about teaching from the MANY mistakes we made. It was a useful trial run, and helped us fine tune a lot of activities, to get a better picture of what works and what doesn't, and how to prevent utter chaos during games (especially those that incorporate running to the board and slapping their hand on a word). The next two days we went over introducing yourself, adjectives, family and so on, mixing lessons with games and emphasizing pronunciation. Occasionally Fulbright staff or English teachers at the school (two guys from the Philippines) would sit in the back of our classroom and observe - usually with smiles.

On the last day, Kelly and I split up the two hours and taught independently. I decided to do part of my lesson on Halloween. As Kelly took the first half of the lesson, I fretted over the vocabulary (Trick or treat? Vampire? Costume? Really, Ali?) and how to explain the whole very American concept of Halloween. I wrote out a script of what I was going to say. When my turn came around, I began with a listening comprehension exercise - "Hello, Goodbye" by the Beatles. I made faces and lip synced as I pranced around the classroom handing out the sheets for them to write the missing words down, prompting many a giggle. Then we moved on to Halloween. I did some "creative" acting to explain costumes and Trick or Treating and then moved into a dialogue with trick or treating. They seemed to enjoy my horrendous drawings of ghosts, vampires and skeletons. I modeled the dialogue by myself, then had the class split into half, one half part A, one half part B. Then we switched. Then partners. I am big on repetition, you may be able to tell. Then I called volunteers to the front of the room to model the dialogue with me - to trick or treat. I even doled out candy (I am not above bribery) as part of the dialogue. One girl came to the front and began the dialogue with another girl. When asked "What is your costume?" she said "I am a zombie," a word I hadn't taught the class. I started laughing. So much for my vocabulary words being too difficult.

We closed the class with a short review game where I again gave candy for answers to questions that covered previous topics we'd gone over. Kelly and I said thank you to our class for being awesome - our class seemed to have been more active and engaged than other ETA's classes. We played Michael Jackson's "Thriller" as we waited for them to walk out of the class. Instead, they came up to us and asked to give us hugs. Then the photo shoot began. I don't know how many photos we took nor how many peace signs I made, but it was adorable and hilarious. They pulled in (reluctant) boys from another class to take photos of all of us. They grabbed Kelly and me and positioned us into dozens of photos. At the start of class, they had given both Kelly and me pairs of earrings. So. Precious.

On Friday we gathered for our last day of orientation with Fulbright. They gave all of us our feedback from the students, which was overwhelmingly positive. When we got to the comment section, one of the students said something to the effect of "We love Ajarn (teacher/professor) Kelly and Ajarn Alison. We want them to be teachers here always." Needless to say, the experience gave both of us a little bit more confidence and a lot more enthusiasm for teaching. I, predictably, got a little attached to these girls, which made me feel more connected to Thailand and excited to teach students for a whole year.

Monday I move to Chiang Rai to begin teaching. Here's hoping my excess baggage fee isn't too exorbitant.

Here are some more photos from our last day. Much love to everyone back home.