Thailand Teaches Me

As I finish my last day of classes and tutoring, it's hard not to see how things have changed over the course of the past few months. It's hard not to see how teaching has had an impact on my perspective, and hopefully a lasting one. 

My office :)

I started out coming to Thailand, teaching as a means to finance it. As the term comes to a close, the focus has shifted: I've been learning how to teach, with Thailand just as the setting. It certainly has influenced a lot in my classroom- the culture of the students, the structure of the education system, my status as a foreigner and the extreme language barrier between my co-teachers, my students, and myself. And over the weekends and holidays, I was able to enjoy uniquely Thai and exotic places and experiences. 

But unlike my study abroad in Brazil (sorry CIEE), the most memorable times for me in Thailand, the lessons I will hold on to, occurred in the classroom or at least in the school yard. 

There is an incredible spectrum of capability and dedication when it comes to teaching, so before I go off on how much I loved my students and how much you can learn from teaching, let me preface it a bit.

I do not have experience teaching.

I am not dedicated to teaching long term, the way students really deserve, to have someone work with them for years or really get to know the system and the school. But in my short time teaching, I spent countless hours outside the classroom designing lesson plans, creating classroom themes, adapting games, making worksheets, tutoring after school and often staying long after classes to prepare for the weeks to come. 

From this experience, I gathered the following incredibly valuable real-life applications:

My fifth graders in traditional Thai garb before their dance
performance

1) You reap what you sow. This may seem obvious, but it wasn't always true for me in my studies. If I didn't love a subject, or didn't see an application for it in my future, I didn't exert too much effort on it. I got by, and generally received decent grades. In the classroom, even if I think a lesson is boring, or pointless, or mundane, I can't let that affect how I teach it. If I wing a lesson, just improvise along the way, kids can often tell and behavior goes out of control.

 If I don't love it, they don't love it. On the other hand, when I built a month's worth of lessons around the "101 dalmations" family theme for my 1st graders, they would bark at me in the hallways, get incredibly excited to see their new worksheets for the day, and they had great test scores for the unit. I saw the effort that I had put into that unit coming back to me in spades. 

2) Patience, patience, patience. I had a second grader poop underneath my desk. Underneath my desk. A second grader. His friend accompanied him, and as the culprit ran around my office swinging his pants over his head, the accomplice emptied all of my desk drawers in the poop zone, papers, tests, games, markers, all permanently lost. In my other second grade class, the kids run around the classroom like its a jungle gym, climbing over furniture and one another, almost every day. 

There was one day that I tried to bring a kid out into the hallway, the director saw and came in to help- they even ignored her. Anarchy. I work to discipline them, work to teach them, but ultimately refuse to let any of it get to me. If I took their chaos personally, or became frustrated by their decibels of chatter, the rest of my day would be affected by my poor mood, the rest of my classes would be affected and ultimately I wouldn't do as well. Deep breaths. Again and again. 

The ridiculous dancing we did one day

3) Kill them with kindness. Maybe this is especially applicable because I'm here for only a short period of time, but I know that I'm not going to be the reason that any of my students become fluent in English. I can't teach them the entire language, and they likely won't remember most of the vocab I teach them. So I don't stress out when the kids are loud and I can't get through the final terms for the day, instead I play a game with them, have fun, dance and sing, just be happy and try to treat them well. 

They may not remember every word that I teach them, but if they remember me as a positive influence, or associate happiness and fun with English lessons, they will be more inclined to pursue it in the future, more curious to explore the songs on their own time.

 I did a "Just Dance Kids" video of "5 Little Monkeys" with my second graders, and just last week one of the students came into my office and asked to play it. I put it on the screen, and she showed me that she had learned the whole song and dance at home on her own time. It was adorable and so exciting. 

4) Engage people. Find their interests. I can't speak Thai. My students, even the 6th graders, can barely speak English. but finding commonalities, games, shows, music, activities that bridge that gap made lessons really exciting. My fifth graders in general were very eager to learn, but when I was able to incorporate their interests they all seemed to do that much better. The boys were really dramatic, so they liked to play charades. The girls, meanwhile, loved competitions and playing Scategories. 

My fourth graders love Frozen, so we did the entire Weather and Seasons unit with that theme, talking about what Olaf liked, what Elsa could do, and even broke down "Let it Go" and "In Summer" into vocab words and pictures. Showing them an application for the words, a channel for them to use the English makes them that much more interested in the topic now, and much more likely to continue to practice it down the line.

5) Confidence is great, but so is admitting your vulnerability. There were days that I couldn't get a class to do anything I had planned. Not even a game or song, they just wanted to run and do their own thing, they went crazy on a whole new level. And yes, assuring myself that I am a good teacher and this may just be out of my control can help assauge my ego, at least for the time being. But then when I went back to the apartment, it does me no good to tell people I had a "great day" or that my students were as cute as always. I don't have to convince people of my quality of teaching by withholding the bad days and my shortcomings. Yes, planning more, creating better lessons and more interaction can prevent crazy days in the future.

But admitting that I struggled, admitting that the kids were beyond my control? That just makes me human. That empowers me to say that hey, to a degree, there is something I can do to avoid this in the future. I can't do anything to change the personalities of my students, and it would be difficult to make them change their behavior when I can't fully communicate. That's incredibly applicable to life- sometimes you can't bring people to acknowledge their own faults, but by recognizing your own, and resolving to improve upon them, you can remediate conflicts and even prevent them. We should each do all that we can to resolve an issue- it doesn't matter if it isn't your fault, if it isn't fair, if it requires swallowing your ego- do what you can, and leave it at that. 

6) Respect. All too often, we start out doubting people. I'm not sure they're a good teacher, not sure the police know what they're doing, not sure if they're a good cook or a good babysitter or whatever else. Not sure that they're doing it better than I could myself. But you aren't doing it yourself. It's their profession. There certainly are people who are incompetent in their position, there certainly are people who abuse leeway given to them, and do the bare minimum to get by. There's a possibility you could do it better. But you aren't. 

My coteachers, who have been amazingly supportive

Assuming the worst of someone is a self-fulfilling prophecy. They will often deliver what you expect of them. But if you hold people to a higher standard, respect them and their work, honor that... they gain pride in it, hold themselves to that higher standard, they want to be worthy of it. 

I came into this with no experience (basic English teaching in Brazil, but nothing like classroom lesson planning). But the Thai community, even my co-teachers and director, people who have much more experience than me and much more authority- they all gave me respect and deference, let me do my job even when I know there are things they could've done better. Because they respected me, asked for my input on the English program in general, complimented my work, helped and encouraged me... I didn't want to let them down.

 It would've been easy to go to class each day and put on a movie or hand out a worksheet, write words on the board and call it a day. But they respected me as a teacher, called me to do a better job, called me to have patience, to engage the students, kill them with kindness, have patience, and to put everything I have into it, knowing I'll reap what I have sown. 

This lovely girl gave me her crown so I could be out of uniform,
too

This whole teaching thing took lots of work. Lots of effort. Lots of compromise. I did it in a paradise, had an amazing staff to support me, a great agency, lovely location, the cutest students, and overall an incredible support system both in Thailand and back home. It wouldn't be fair for me to call it hard, as many other people have much more difficult challenges, but it certainly wasn't easy. It took creativity and loads and loads of effort. It was exhausting. But it was amazing. 

When I first blogged about how much I struggled on my first few days of class, my dad commented "Clare, teaching and persuading actually may turn out to be one of the best things about your trip to Thailand! I believe this is very hard, and you have an obligation to the kids to do your best. You will figure this out and it will get better and better! By the end you will miss it and you will miss the kids. Do not underestimate the power of smiling, laughing, and singing!" And while my sister was right about my  singing being more on the punishment end of the spectrum for the kids, the rest proved invaluable. I guess some people have already learned their lessons!