Teaching in a Technical College

Ok, so now I'm back from Chiang Mai, Myself and Clem have moved into our house and have started teaching the students. Let me tell you, teaching them can be a nightmare at times. To start with they hardly know any English and that doubled up with my not very good Thai, means that communication can be a problem at times.

I have basically started from scratch doing my first lessons on the basic of numbers and introductions. They have managed to go well as well. The first few lessons I did were a bit shaky as I was as nervous as mouse faced with a cat but I pulled through and survived and now I'm teaching with alot more confidence. (Although I still need to gain some more). I will quickly summarise what the students already knew. "Hello teacher", "How are you?", "I'm fine thank you. And you?", "I like teacher", "Beautiful", "sexy" and "I love teacher". As you can see there is some work to be done.

I have to teach two hour lessons. Unfortunately I can never manage to teach for that long. I never really have to though as my students always turn up 30minutes to 1 hour late and that's if they turn up at all! Sometimes when I enter the room all they say is "teacher, check names, go home". They haven't quite figured out that that's not going to work though. One fun thing in the lessons is trying to get them to come up to the front to say the conversation we are doing that lesson. They are all so shy and try to hide, say no and even move to the other side of the room thinking that I cant see them do it. The tricks never work though. Some students even point out who I haven't chosen as well so everyone has to do it!

The house we have moved into is actually really nice. It's quite big so Clem and myself mainly keep to the top floor. For the first few weeks we had no water or electricity which can the feeling of camping just with a nicer bed and sturdier roof. Thankfully it's all fixed now so we can do everything we need to. The only weird thing is that we live in the school grounds so all the students know where we live and when ever we walk home to pick something up, we hear shouts of "Hello teacher" and "My name is .......". It can get a bit scary at times when you are on your own.

That's basically it. The main thoughts and stuff on the beginnings of teaching and our nice new house.