Kids will be cats...

Today was not one of my finest days as a teacher. It was the first day back to school for my grade 2s after a week of holidays (not sure why they had a week off... I still had to go to work). This class is rowdy at the best of times, and after a week of freedom they were absolutely out of control. By the end of the class I was totally out of ideas as to how to shut them up, after taking away half of their team points and refusing to let them play any games unless they behaved better.

We were doing a cutting and pasting activity. At the end of the class when I asked the kids to clean up, they sort of did, but brought me one gluestick without a lid. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back. I only have 6 gluesticks for my whole class, so to lose one would really be a pain. "Nobody is going for lunch until we find that lid!" I bellowed. About 3 kids started looking for the lid, and the rest of the class dissolved into a game of "cats".

This is what it felt like. In this scene, I am off to the side losing my mind while the kids crawl around on the floor meowing and getting in cat fights. I hate cats at the best of times. At one point, one kid came and rubbed her head on my leg, meowing like some kind of feline demon. All I wanted was a gluestick lid. Why wouldn't they just find the damn gluestick lid? SOMEBODY COME AND MAKE THESE ANIMALS FIND THE GLUESTICK LID! After abandoning the search and ordering the kids back to their desks before lunch, I finally found the lid. One of my students was pretending it was a cat toy and batting it around the classroom. At this point my head blew up. I tried to enthusiastically thank the kid who brought me the lid, but I really wanted to turn into some kind of hulk teacher "YOU WON'T LIKE ME WHEN I'M MAD!!!" and sentence them all to some terrible punishment.

This is how it probably really played out. Teacher was freaking out at the front of the room, but didn't seem to be asking anyone to do anything specific. Cats sounded like a fun game. Hey, cats was a fun game! Let's see if teacher wants to play cats, maybe it will cheer her up and she will stop yelling...

Teaching Challenges

I debated whether or not to post this as we have tried to post the brighter side of things here in Thailand, but there are always bumps along the way, such as my recent teaching evaluation at our new workplace. It was humiliating, I mean who wants to be told after 5 years training to be a teacher that you really aren't that good... but at least you dress very professionally and smile a lot. It especially hurts when I know I go out there every day and try my best.

I suppose most of the conflict comes from the fact that my idea of a "good" education and a "good" teacher are not quite simpatico with the ideas here. The appearance of things is extremely highly valued, so how you look really is at least 50% of how you are perceived as a teacher. Along the same vein having kids show things that they know in a concrete way is held in high regard, so the "repeat after me" style reigns... whereas my biggest achievement would be to get my kids to start sounding out words (something much less glamorous to demonstrate).

Luckily, I have a fabulous support system out there who have reminded me that there are people who feel the same way I do about education. Rather than raising a toast to all these fine folks, I feel like I should engage in some discovery learning... perhaps I will go fill up the sink and see what sinks and floats? xoxo

Kindergarten in Thailand

Now that we have been here for a while, I have been informed that I should post something about my KG classroom since it is different from back home. This is one of those cases of, when you see it every day it becomes normal so I apologize for not sending anything earlier.

This is a picture of my class at work (colouring pictures of the three bears). As you can see, no tables or chairs in the kindergarten classroom. I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor, and then a lot of time washing my clothes because they always end up covered in plasticine, dust or crayon that I have sat in!

Here is a picture of one of my students showing me his work. I hear "tea-SHA!" all day long! They love to show you everything that they do. I think this is a universal kindergarten thing though, not just in Thailand. If you look at the very bottom of the picture you may notice that I (and my students) are not wearing any shoes. Wearing shoes in the classroom is considered disrespectful so we all go barefoot. I have taken to wearing socks (like the kids) after a couple days of tracking black footprints home!

In this picture I am helping one of the little ones write his nickname in English. I am proud to say that most of them can write their names and after this week, nearly all of them can write their numbers up to 10! :)

I like this picture because it shows just how tiny some of these kids are! This is my smallest student (you may recognize baby Jesus from the Christmas play!) having to crane his neck up to talk to me! :)

Things from the market

Since our school is a temple school, it shares its grounds with a temple... sounds pretty simple. Because of this it is both a school and a sort of community centre where community events are held, such as the morning market on Tuesday and Friday mornings. You may have heard us mention the market before as it is somewhat a bone of contention with us teachers here... not because we don't enjoy purchasing fresh produce or delicious sticky rice but because sometimes the vendors seem to us to be selling questionable items to children of such a young age. On the primary side of the school this seems to be less of a problem but the poor matayom teachers really get the short end of the proverbial market stick.

The first example of this was the fireworks incident. A market vendor was selling firecrackers to students, and as mentioned in a previous post they were detonating these mini bombs all around the school. Shane lost the hearing in one ear for the better part of a day as the result of one of these charming fireworks.

The next item children were purchasing before school was hair elastics. Sounds harmless right? Not when they are strung together to create a slingshot from which students shoot tiny paper balls at each other. Watch out or you might lose an eye! However, I suppose you can't really fault market vendors for selling hair elastics to children like you can for selling them explosives.

Following the hair elastics incident came the BB Guns. Shane was collecting them to arm the staff in case of a students' revolt but they started taking up too much room on his desk, so they have now gone to the tough Thai music teacher (who is known to be liberal with his "pia" -a bamboo rod used to smack unruly students). In order to reclaim your BB gun you must go through him, I will be curious to see who actually gets their guns back.

Probably the most hilarious thing that kids have bought at the market though is pets. Here is a conversation we had recently after market day:
Shane: "So, did any of your kids have like, gerbils in their pockets today?"
Hannah: "Um, no... did yours?"
Shane: "Yeah, I think they got them at the market and they were keeping them in their backpacks or pockets or something. There were gerbils all over the place all day."

Oh yes, the old pocket gerbil. I wonder if they cleaned their pockets after having a rodent pooping in them all day. So far on the primary side the biggest surprise that we have had is fish. A student marched proudly up to the front of the room saying "teacher! fish!". Indeed, he had a bag full of fish which he then proceeded to stuff in his desk. I later saw him with the same fish in a water bottle. Their chances of survival are probably slim.

 Kids selecting fish before school

 More fish

 These kids are looking at the vendor's selection of BB guns like, these are garbage! Where is the guy from last week?

The pig goes oot oot

One of Hannah's pet interests is finding out what noises animals make in other countries. You should try it some time, the results will often surprise you. This fact was brought to the fore the other day in Kindergarten when teaching the kids the classic song "Old MacDonald". Although the kids cannot understand the words (and so far can only sing the Ee I Ee I Oh part) they CAN make some excellent animal noises and thus it was discovered that in Thailand:
The dog says "hung hung"
The duck says "gawp gawp"
The pig says "oot oot"
Chickens say "kataw kataw"

I am hopefully going to figure out some more sweet animal noises this week. Need to get some sort of animal flashcards going on. Then I can teach the kids the English names and myself the Thai sounds!

Also notable... in Thailand trains say "choo cha choo cha POOT POOT" rather than "chugga chugga choo choo" We make a train to go from one station to another in our colour groups so I get to hear this fairly often!

This week is "Sport Day" (an inaccurate name as it lasts all week) on the Matayom (highschool) side of the school. As with any celebration or festival in Thailand this:
1. is a giant production
2. includes some form of pyrotechnics
3. exhibits some lack of organization
In Canada, when you go to see fireworks they are generally lit far from where the crowd is standing. There is some kind of organization to prevent you from getting your face blown off. Usually in Canada, fireworks involve some kind of aerial display of sparks. Fireworks are also regulated. In Thailand none of these things are likely to be the case. They often light fireworks right next to you (in fact we hear that there are some celebrations where they actually shoot Roman Candles at people). The fireworks do not always include any aerial display, and seem to be more like bombs...
Today for sports day they seemed to be filling coconut shells with what we assume was dynamite. These explosions were terrifying (sending kindergarten children diving to the floor and screaming even though they
were across the road in another building) and sent shrapnel raining from the sky onto the students below.
Another highlight of sport day opening ceremonies -the flaming baton twirlers. Unfortunately these poor kids had apparently missed a couple of practices, and weren't quite up to the challenge of keeping a flaming baton away from their bodies... ouch. 
All-in-all, a magnificent opening ceremony for Sport Day.

*No children were actually harmed in the making of this blog post*

Also, a note to our faithful readers. Just to keep you informed, we have now broken our record for most family members on a motorbike. The previous record was four, we have smashed it by seeing a family of six all crowded on one bike. Another family of four was also seen with the addition of a chicken, hardly record breaking but hilarious nonetheless...

T'was the day before Christmas

and we saw through the fog, every creature was busy -even the soi dogs.
The stages were being decorated with the utmost of care,
in hopes that the President of the Obejaw soon would be there.
The children ran wild as is usual here,
For them to suddenly get struck with nerves was the teachers' biggest fear.

I in Reindeer antlers and Shane in a Christmas cap
were wishing we could take a hard-earned Christmas nap.

Yes, yesterday was our big Christmas eve spectacular at school. Each campus had a seperate show, sharing one Santa (who may have developed heat stroke during the event) to hand out small gifts and candy. Shane's side (Matayom or highschool) had a Rockin Around the Christmas Tree song and dance followed by "T'was the night before Christmas". Hannah's side had a KG1-KG2 nativity scene and song, a Prathom1-3 Rudolph sing-along and a Prathom 4-6 Jingle Bell Rock.

Everyone worked really hard to get everything ready on time and Shane's show even had to restart as the guest of honour, the president of the temple schools arrived! Both shows went off without any problems (despite the fears of all of us teachers!) and were super adorable. The kids were amazing and we are so proud of all of them!

Here are some pictures from the Christmas show... video to follow when we have better internet connection! (Hopefully this week!)

 My little KG1 angels! lol

"baby Jesus" in his manger...

Some of my students hanging out on our Christmas/New Years party day at school!

Handing out presents... Sweatiest santa ever lol.

Adorable...

Our little tiny Christmas tree!

Nicknames & Kids

Hello all,

well it is nearly the end of month two here in Thailand and as teachers we have been realizing that this blog is bereft of any mention of the kids we are teaching, so we thought we would add a little information about the little darlings.

First of all, kids here in Thailand are referred to by foreigners by their "Nicknames". These are names, that are designed to help out the farang of the world who when trying to pronounce Thai names can become so terribly lost. Quite a helpful gesture really...

We have been told that these nicknames are chosen sometimes because of a trait of the child (for instance a small child may be nicknamed Lek or Noi which both mean small), because of something the parents like (for instance Paytong -a Thai form of bocce ball), a short form of the actual name, something that the parents think will be fortunate for the kids, because the word sounds good or even more spiritual reasons. Sometimes they choose thai words, other times they choose English words, and sometimes the English words strike us as funny... not because there is anything wrong with the Nickname Bank but only because it is generally different from what we are used to calling each other back home! So, here are some of the nicknames of kids in our classes...

Bank, Bong, Bomb, Arm, Manow (means lemon), Filmy, Tankwa (means cucumber -being cool-headed is extremely valuable in Thai culture), Pee, Poo (in the same class and one after another on the attendance list), God, First, Best, Mail, Guy, Pet (means duck), and many others... These caused us a smile when we arrived at school.

Another common occurance in Thailand... well actually apparently just at our school, is kids throwing up out the window. Not so much on Shane's matayom (high school) side, but in the Kindergarten and Prathom (grade school) classes this happens on basically a weekly basis. Here is an actual conversation that occurred between Hannah and another teacher here:
Hannah: "so... do kids like, throw up a lot in your class?"
Other teacher: "No... why?"
Hannah: "Oh, I guess it's just my kids then. They throw up all the time."
Same goes for nose bleeds and any other messy incidences... straight out the window.

Another thing that Hannah has had to get used to here in Thailand is the limited resources. For instance, the activity book we have to use includes MANY pages of cutting and pasting things... However, we do not have a full class set of scissors (only around 15) or squeezy glue bottles. At the beginning of the semester Hannah was handed a bottle of white glue. One with a screw top. It didn't even have a stick to get the glue out. The common practice with this is to walk around the classroom allowing each child to stick their fingers in the jar and get some glue... as you can imagine this results in utter chaos. Hannah has now graduated to cutting open old water bottles and finding stick-like objects to hold and spread the glue.

Another thing we're having to get used to is the practice of selling dangerous firecrackers to children. These are sold at the morning market that occurs on the school grounds just before school begins. Some charming man sits out there selling these improvised explosives to the highschool kids, who spend their day merrily throwing them off the top of the building to land in the courtyard below. One such blast knocked Shane's and most of of his class's hearing out for most of an afternoon. THese are not those little black cats that you throw at the ground with a pop, these things may be made out of TNT and have a boom loud enough that you feel it in your chest. They don't light up, they just make noise... and now if you are caught with one you are headed straight to the Thai disciplinarian at the school.

If we haven't mentioned the Thai disciplinarian before... his name makes kids tremble in their seats. He went around to the parents' houses at the beginning of his time at school and asked if he could hit their children. They agreed, and so he does, with a bamboo rod. These aren't your old-fashioned slaps on the wrist either, this guy gets his whole body into the swing. We try not to get kids in trouble with him.

Sorry no pictures tonight, we're working on compiling a collage of soi dogs...

Chicken Loom

Yikes! Sorry about the long delay between posts this time... it has been pretty crazy around here.

One of us (Shane) got quite ill with some sort of food poisoning (but with the help of lots of bedrest and antibiotics is now feeling much better) which made for somewhat less adventuring on our part. It was also the first week back to school for the primary classes and was therefore very busy with lesson planning and such.

Junior kindergarten is, as expected, completely adorable. The kids refer to Hannah as "Teacha Na", an oversight which is in the process of being corrected. One trait of Thai speakers is the tendency to put the emphasis on the last syllable... something which we are trying (and failing) to not aquire! For example: copY this off the board or simply when saying Hannah's name "hanNAH". Currently in Kindergarten and grade two we are learning the rooms of the house, you know, your usual bed loom, bath loom, living loom and chicken loom... We are trying our best to pronounce kitchen with the utmost clarity (and actually at this point we are winning!).

This past weekend was the Thai festival of Loy Krathong, a beautiful festival where Thais apologize and give thanks to the river gods for all of their sins of the past year and float krathongs down the river with lit candles to symbolize wiping the slate clean. The longer your candle burns, the more luck you will recieve in the coming year. We were unable to make it to one of the bigger river festivals because of Shane's food poisoning but luckily our condo complex had a smaller version of the festivities so we didn't miss out entirely.

We have also moved into our new apartment! Apart from some minor hiccups while we get all the logistics sorted out we are really loving the new place. Pictures will come once we have everything settled and maybe some decorating done!

Our School

Our school is wayyyy out in the country in a rural town called Sam Khok. It is very different from some of the other schools our company works in (for example the Sacred Heart Bangkok which is 11 floors with an olympic sized swimming pool on the fourth floor ) and is therefore very different from schools we are used to back home. Here is one of the classrooms. Notice that the windows do not have any glass in them (therefore no air conditioning) and instead just have wooden shutters. This can make things pretty noisy if the band is practicing outside!

 

 The picture above is the courtyard outside the Ideal office. Some of the kids hang out here between classes (or during classes when they decide to show up late) or for lunch. There are several stray dogs who hang around this area hoping to get treats from the students!

The picture below is one of the ground floor open air classrooms. These classrooms don't have windows of any kind, let's hope it doesn't rain!

This is the beautiful temple beside our school. Inside there are peacocks, flowers, fruit and of course monks. We are told that one of the monks can tell your future! One of our co-workers wants us to go and ask if we can have our future foretold.

This is a picture of Hannah's school under water. We will have to post a picture this week since we are finally opening the school on Monday (at least that was the hope last week)!

"I don't understand 90% of what is going on around here"

Today Shane recieved an email from his brother asking if we had found a good place to get suits yet... This is a difficult question to answer because things are not like they are in Canada. For instance, in Canada if one wants to buy beer, one goes to The Beer Store and if one wanted a suit one could probably find a clothing store with some smartly dressed mannequins and make the correct assumption that suits would be inside. In Thailand you might have a store with a 90-year-old woman on a sewing machine at the door, a 14-year-old auto body specialist in the back and some sort of food vendor serving out the front. Can you get a suit here? We still aren't sure...

Teachers also fill a different role here, at least the Thai teachers. For instance, today if you were walking around the school you would have noticed many children with a stripe shaved in the back of their hair cuts...

You might think that this is simply a new fashion trend in Thailand, but you would be wrong. Apparently one of the Thai teachers decided that the children were letting their hair get too long, and in retaliation attacked them with an electric rasor. Take that Thai hippies!

PS. Dear Tim and Ian, this is my first webcomic attempt. I hope you are happy. One day I might learn how to add alt-text for you too :)