Jennifer – My first day volunteer teaching at a Thai primary school
Thursday, June 4th, 2009My first day ended when school let out at 2pm, and I was wiped out. Only four classes, but it was first- through third-year students. Chaotic doesn’t begin to describe the day. Some of that stemmed from the little ones; it is after all their first year at school, which has only been in session a few weeks. They are still adapting to the idea of sitting and listening, when what they’d really like is to be body-slamming each other into the concrete. Plus, they have the attention span of gnats. I figured it went well, since no one wet their pants or wound up bloody, and ended with hugs all around.
The second years are adorable. Don’t have enough English to fully grasp what is being asked of them (drawing simple shapes), but they have enough experience to understand how to behave in class. They are fascinated by my sunburnt pink skin, and the fact that I don’t speak Thai just cracks them up. When they were gathered around and I was showing them the photos I had brought with me, the little girls fixated on one that was taken of Steve and Drea and me at Gabe’s wedding a few years ago. Some sort of disagreement broke out, with lots of excited pointing from the photo to me. One child tugged at my shirt.
“Teacher?” she asked, pointing to the picture.
“Yes, me,” I replied.
She looked at me wonderingly and pointed to my hair in the photo. I smiled, and made cutting motions with my fingers. She made a mournful face, and patted my hand, then gently touched the face in the photo.
“Soo-ay,” she said, sadly. [beautiful]
The third years were more challenging. In my first class of the day, with the first group of third-year students, the newness of the ‘farang’ [foreign] teacher wore off as soon as I put my photos away and began utilizing the blackboard. I had brought pencils with me as rewards, but was mobbed after handing out the first one. Had children hanging from my wrists, elbows, even the hem of my skirt, which I was sure was going to come sliding down around my ankles at any moment. Kids can sense inexperience like piranhas sense blood in the water, and can be just as ruthless in their attacks.
Several little boys were clamoring for the pencils I had naively taken from my bag. I motioned for them to go back to their seats, and asked them to sit down. One dove into my bag and came up with a pencil. I held my hand out to him and he gave it back reluctantly. I told him, “not yet…” which triggered a collective gasp and surprised looks. “Not yet, teacher?” he asked, and burst into giggles. Soon he and the group gathered around their desks were nudging each other and taunting back and forth, “not yet, not yet…” while the little girls just looked disgusted and went back to whatever they had been working on before I so rudely interrupted them. On their way out I got lots of giggles and hi-fives, but nothing much accomplished overall.
Later in the afternoon, with the second third-years, I figured I had said something iffy with the first group so I went a different route with this one. I didn’t even show the pencils this time, but wrote the letters A-H on one side of the blackboard, and some simple pictures to go along with them [ant, bird, etc] on the other. The idea was for them to write the letter, then draw the animal whose name corresponded to it. Some of them got the idea and did very well, but as I went around the room looking at their papers, I discovered that my artistic skills are seriously lacking.
For the letter “B” I had drawn a bird, complete with wings, beak, and tail. Every kid drew a bird …. Crapping. They were very creative in their interpretations, too: some were shooting out explosively, some were done in large piles with steam rising, others were dropping bombs on the unsuspecting dog or cat drawn below.
Meeting up with Anders later that afternoon, I was telling him about my day and the odd reaction the kids had to the word, “yet.” Well, no wonder — it means ‘f***.’ Between that and the birds with the continence issues, there must have been some interesting dinner conversations going on that night:
“Pong, how was school today?”
“It was great, we had a new farang teacher who kept saying f*** in class, and made us draw pooping birds. And, she had the weirdest pink skin!”
One of Jennifer's 4th grade classes at Wat Muang Pracharam Primary School in Thai Mueang
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