Bpen kru pasa Engrit, na ka.

This is the way every English class in Thailand starts:

On cue from their classroom leader, the students stand in unison and say,

“Good mawning, teacher!”

I reply, “Good morning. How are you today?”

Class, “I am fine, thank you. And you?”

“I am fine, thank you. You may sit down.”

This is the English dialogue that every Thai student knows by heart, and it is a bit of a joke that this is the only English that Thai students know. And by “joke,” I mean, one of those funny-because-it’s-true jokes, as in some cases it is definitely the only English that Thai students know. And I use the term “know” loosely, as I don’t think many of my students actually understand what they’re saying, i.e. what the word “today” means.

Today, instead of “fine,” I used the word “great,” and for the most part, the response was a sea of confused faces.

My budding career as a teacher:

I teach twenty classes a week at Triam Udom Suska School of the North. I am at school from seven forty five in the morning to four in the afternoon, Monday through Friday. I take “public transportation” from my apartment to school, in the form of a song taew, which is in fact a small pickup truck fitted with two rows of seats in the bed. I have my own wooden desk at work, for which I have purchased several different ambiguously useful desk organization apparatuses. I have no classroom but rather travel from class to class to teach. I meet with each of my twenty classes once a week, and each class has just under fifty students.

It has been a little hectic, transitioning from never having taught before in my life to over nine hundred students. At first, some very basic things seemed unclear to me, for example, how and what I should teach. How would I communicate anything through a near total language barrier? How would I learn over 900 names? How would I give grades when I have almost 200 students a day? Then there were other less immediate but still meaningful concerns: how could I possibly be of any help to these students who see me once a week for fifty minutes? What would they possibly retain? And selfishly, how would I find a sense of satisfaction if could not connect with and feel of some service to students?

These mysteries are beginning to clear up, or at least seem less pressing. For example, as much as it pains and embarrasses me, I have to use the students’ numbers for grading. I just cannot learn 900 names at once, especially as they are written in Thai. Additionally, I am really blossoming into quite the enthusiastic mime thanks to my attempts to act out everything I say from “nice vs. mad” (easy) to “you don’t have to copy, because this is just a participation grade” (difficult). My Thai has taken strides exclusively in the area of classroom vocabulary (ex. “poot mai chat pasa thai…” and “song ma hi kru,” meaning “this means…in Thai, but not exactly” and “pass your papers to the front.” From experience I can tell you that these are time-consuming concepts to act out). I smile big, nod and say “very good” maybe one billion times a day. When I am sad, I make the whole class clap about something because that always cheers me up. The rest—figuring out how to feel like I am helping these kids in some way—I’m giving time, letting go of my worries.

The teachers here are extremely kind, giving, and tolerant of my incessant questions. The students are great, which makes teaching much more fun. What they lack in English skills they make up for in sweet dispositions. Some of them are absolute peaches, and even the ones with the most attitude aren’t terribly rude or disrespectful. Happily, they seem far younger than American high school students, giggling all the time and stretching into new teenage personalities.

Also there’s a whole new range of emotions I’m learning. I don't know the word for these new emotions but maybe if you are a teacher you have felt them too?: something like “that sinking panic when the air is going out of the classroom and all at once every student is bored and not paying attention to you,” or “the bliss that comes from students spontaneously laughing because they actually understand and are enjoying the educational game you designed” (yes, I finally made that past perfect game work).

And so it begins, my career as a teacher. I make worksheets, I play educational games, I force Thai children to read dialogues at a full scream because they are too quiet. I may not be a very good teacher, but I am trying!

Yours,
Rebecca