My First Week of School : )

"My head hurts." So said one of my students in Thai. Aptly enough the newest one who couldn't understand a word I was saying. Poor fellow! But I can relate. By 6pm my head is hurting too and I hardly make sense when I talk. I think I am digressing more than the students are progressing! Not a pretty turn of events.

For all of that, my first week of classes is over! And on the whole I would have to say it went well. I made it, number one. Plus, the students really did seem to be learning. I am really enjoying seeing this new side to them. The side that earnestly studies and works with the other students on their class work. As the teacher of first year English I will have to share the credit for whatever the new students learn with everyone else.

The week had its wrinkles but most have been ironed out. It is hard finding the balance between too easy and too difficult, especially when there is a major communication barrier. I am trying to relate to the newer students (Fon and Chai just arrived a week ago with little to no English) and give them a break because their heads must be swimming with all the new information - new physical environment, new classmates, and the prevalence of English being spoken.

On Monday and Wednesday I had three classes: Computer 1 (typing), Choral, and Athletics. The last class I don't really have to worry about. We just go outside and play soccer. The other two, however, took monitoring.

The great thing about a small school and two teachers is that it is flexible. We had a hard time placing one of our students, Malat, because he is in the first year, but was testing towards the top of the class in everything. Since we don't want him to be bored in all of his classes we are allowing him to finish his typing class on his own and move into the advanced class now. One problem partially solved.

Choral went very well on Monday and went downhill from there. My project for the weekend is to think about how to fix that class. My problems are: the strong singers who sing loudly and at their own tempo, the "weaker" singers who aren't singing out at all, and those that don't understand that if we split into parts they are not singing the melody. All of this combined makes for a rather tedious class in which I feel many students are getting bored. It helped today when I told them to pay attention when the other groups are singing, because it will help them learn pronunication and timing. I have to remember to always point them in the direction of what will help them out.

Tuesday and Thursday I taught: Piano, Beginning English, and Music Theory. If I am not infinitely more well-versed in music by the time I get home, I have a serious deficiency! Piano was fun all week. I had ten students between Tuesday and Friday, each for half an hour. I think what I enjoyed most was that we could start at their level (which, for all but one, was the very beginning) and work at their own pace. I also enjoyed getting to know them a little better and also, while sitting there with them, I can see right when the light bulb goes on and they understand something.

Music Theory was a lot of fun from the start because I have very good materials to teach from. It is an elementary level book with worksheets and quizzes that really reinforce what we are learning. It is also really helpful because it crosses over a lot with choir and piano.

That leaves Beginning English, which I really needed to change. That class was so challenging because two of the students have a decent level of English and have been here at the school for a few months. Then there are the two new students. The first class Malat was bored while Fon and Chai were thoroughly confused. What also complicates matters is that three of these students speak Thai and Malat speaks Burmese. So Rat is kept busy trying to fill in the new students. On Tuesday we spent the first hour of class going over phonetics (which went well) and the second going over basic questions (What is your name? My name is... Where are you from? I am from... etc.) - which did not go well. After becoming mildly discouraged I came in to talk to Stacey and she mentioned that the teacher last year walked around the village pointing to things and saying the names. On Thursday I had a plan. I walked in, confidently wrote our agenda for the day on the board and proceeded to actually do said agenda with success. We first went over phonetics, which was made easier this time because the students did not have to write down the information from the board and instead read from phonetics books Stacey found. This helped a lot to put all the students at one level since it takes awhile for Fon and Chai to write. Then we worked on very simple grammer with the present tense of the verb to be. I had all the students stand up so we could act out I, you,he,she,it,we, and they. Then we used nouns from the classroom. I worried that it would be too hard, but I think they understood enough to build on next time. In our second hour of class we took our walk around the village pointing to things. All of the students found this fun because all of them had something they wanted to know the English word for.

While I am sure future weeks will bring more problems to work through, I enjoyed those I had this week. They really dealt with how each of the students learn and will provide a foundation for issues that arise in the future.

I will keep you posted.