The semester is quickly coming to an end and I only have two more days of teaching. I thought I would take a moment and reflect on my teaching experience.
The Good
-This semester I had 2 or 3 classes that I absolutely loved. The students were always energetic and enthusiastic about class, no matter what I was teaching. They were generally engaged in the lesson and I always had fun teaching them. I looked forward to seeing them every week. I was also able to bond with a few of the students which is extremely difficult to do when you have such large classes. If all of my classes were like that, I would have no problem continuing to teach in Thailand
-Being able to build relationships with some of the teachers at my school was huge. All of the teachers were extremely nice to me and made sure that I adjusted to life in U-Thong. So many of the teachers would go out of their way to do anything for me and I really appreciate all of the nice things they did for me
-What I like to call the “aha” moment. It is difficult to teach a language to students who have spent the last few years learning English from a Thai teacher. Sometimes it was really difficult to get my point across because they just didn’t understand me. I felt so good when I could tell that a student finally understood what I was talking about and had that “aha moment” Sometimes it happened to me when a Thai student tried desperately to communicate something to me in Thai.
The Bad
-Having 55 students in each class was crazy. It was impossible to find lesson plans that kept the kids engaged. I would say about 90% of the students could care less about learning English and that made it hard for me to get excited about teaching them.
-Having so many classes was also difficult. I would plan one lesson per week but it I would have to tweak it -for different classes. A lesson would go over so well with one class but then completely fail in another class.
-My M5 classes pretty much stopped showing up by the end of the semester. I probably saw my Friday afternoon classes about 3 times the entire semester. It was frustrating that I still had to go to class and wait around to see if they would show up. It was always amazing to me that an ENTIRE class would agree to ditch class
-The lack of resources was very frustrating. I had to plan my own lessons, which was difficult, especially with an unreliable internet connection. I was unable to do a lot of the lessons I wanted to do either because of lack of resources or because there were just too many students to make it work.
The Just Darn Cute
-I am kind of going to miss hearing “helllooo teecha” about a thousand times a day
-I am really going to miss my students laughing at me when I butcher the Thai language. They always thought it was so funny when I tried to pronounce anything in Thai.
-I thought it was funny when my students got frustrated with English and they would ask me to “speak Thailand
-I am going to miss students calling me beautiful and random boys saying “I love yooouuu”
-I am also going to miss groups of students running up to me and saying random things in English and then running away giggling.
-Some of the students were just so darn cute. They always sat in the front row and smiled and nodded at me the whole time I was teaching. Definitely going to miss those smiling faces.
There were many times that I got extremely frustrated with the school and with teaching, but overall I am so glad that I had this experience. It really gave me insight into the life and culture of the Thai people and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. There were days when I couldn’t wipe the smile off of my face, but as always in life, there were bad days too. I am both excited and sad to be leaving U-Thong and the school. There are a few things I will miss about teaching and I will miss the connections that I made here.
Now it is time to pack everything up and begin my travel adventure. First stop Sukhothai. Can’t wait!
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