Hello Cake, I would like you to meet Dung

Wednesday morning, only hours after arriving in Hang Chat, was our first day of teaching. Many of the other teachers on our program were told they would have a few days of orientation before they started teaching, in which they would be shown around the school, introduced to the students and teachers, and given books and materials with which to make lesson plans. At the Hang Chat Wittaya School (me and Emily’s new place of employment), orientation does not exist and neither do teaching materials. Therefore, we were obviously very nervous and unsure of what to expect. All we were told after being dropped at the Jungle House was to “go to the main building and sign in by 8 am.” Figuring out what that even meant was our first adventure of the day, good thing Emily had us out of the house by 7:30! At about 8:15 we were escorted to the court yard where the opening announcements are done each day, and we were introduced to the almost 700 students grade 7-12 (called “Matayom” 1-6). They put us on the spot after making us stand in front of the whole school while they talked about us in Thai when they suddenly turned and said, “OK, introduce yourselves and tell the students why you are here and what you hope to do.” Of course I made Emily go first and she had lots of random things to say even though we are unsure that any of the students even understood us.

I didn’t have a class until second period but Emily had one first period, which was supposed to start at 8:30. We sat in the English teachers’ lounge with the other teachers and as the clock struck 8:45 and no one was telling her where to go we finally asked and they said “Oh, the students are just late, wait until you see them come down the hall.” So now we know that class starts whenever the students arrive which is usually at least 10 minutes after class is scheduled to start. This is because the students are not given time between classes to get from building to building, and there are 4 buildings on the campus, with the English building being the furthest back and on the 4^th floor (MAJOR quad workout)!

Then, second period I had my first class. I think we are all aware that I have no teaching experience while Emily went to school to be a teacher, so I was basically having a panic attack before my first class. Although Emily will probably want to point out that she was nervous too, as teaching English to Thai students when you do not speak Thai is not the same as teaching American students in their native tongue. Emily and I had talked and helped each other make similar lesson plans to get through the 50 minute classes on the first day, focusing on introducing ourselves to the students and then having the students introduce themselves to us. My first class was small with only about 15 students that were in grade 11 (“Matayom 5”), so the lesson went pretty smoothly. I cannot say the same about my second class! There were about 30 students this time and they were only in grade 8 (“Matayom 2”). The class consisted of me talking to myself and being ignored…quite awkward. For example, I would say “My name is Erin” while making wild hand motions pointing to myself, then I would say “Repeat” and point to the class while simultaneously pointing to the sentence on the board word by word. The “repeat sentence” seemed to go exactly as the when I introduced the sentence though, with exactly zero students joining in, except maybe one over-achiever shyly mouthing it to herself (the over-achievers and well-behaved students are usually girls) in the corner. The rest of the class went similarly as I taught myself that “A is for apple” and told myself that “I drew a frog”. At the end I tried to give the students a break by allowing them to get up from their seats and move around, as I asked them to get in line in order of their height. This exercise quickly ended as not one student would stand up from their seat…again, awkward. Emily’s day seemed to go a bit more smoothly, probably because she has more teacher instincts and is willing to “tell jokes” as she likes to say, but she did have to confiscate white-out from a naughty grade 7 boy that was using it to draw all over the walls and his desk. She didn’t even give it back…she definitely showed them whose boss!

Lastly, one very interesting thing is the students’ names. In Thailand, most people have very long names and therefore they go by nicknames. The nicknames are especially useful for Emily and I because they are easier for us to remember as they are shorter, so we have been having the students make name plates for their desks. The nicknames range from totally random English words (Cake, Boot, Toy), to laugh-inducing words (Porn (meaning beauty in Thai), Kaka, Dung), to actual American names (Mike, Joy, Kat), to still unpronounceable words (Taew, Miew, Aex). The best part is that no matter what, whenever you say the students’ names they will always laugh at you like you pronounced it unbelievably wrong and ridiculously. This even goes for the names that are English words, which I think I should be telling them how to pronounce!