Teacher! Teacher!

There are no words to fully describe the feeling that encompassed me before I walked into a classroom on the other side of the desks for the first time. In the van ride over to our adoptive Bangkok school (who graciously allowed us to practice on their students), we passed through various stages: verbally expressing our nerves, going over worse-case scenarios, lapsing into nervous giggles, and then eventually the silence came as we realized that we are going to be teachers. Within the next 10 minutes, depending on traffic.

Over the past few weeks, we had been given lecture after lecture regarding teaching English in Thailand, some of them more helpful than others. The end. They paired us with the other ETA who will be in our province and assigned us Matayom 4 (about ninth grade) and wished us luck. Go. When I hear what my sister is doing to be certified to teach Pre-K to 3rd graders, I am amazed that they even allow us into a classroom in any capacity, let alone as the principle teacher. Yet Monday found Anna and I standing awkwardly in our most professional outfits (it was very important to feel like a teacher, if nothing else), having written "Teacher Anna" and "Teacher Rachel" on the board, waiting for our class to arrive. Moments later, we were inundated with 25 students—20 of whom were boys—all of whom stood to greet us: "Good morning teacha. How are you?" "I am fine thank you, and you?" "Fine, thank you." "Please sit down." And for the next two hours, we fumbled through what we thought were good lesson plans, reviewing introductions and the vocabulary found therein. Within 30 minutes, we had gone through what was supposed to have taken us an hour and were suddenly faced with the monumentous task of trying to hold the attention of twenty 14 year old males. At the end of our two hour block, all the ETAs gathered in a room to discuss our trial by fire.

I really wish someone would have taken a picture of us at that exact moment. The worry had transformed into exhaustion from the previous two hours and the deer in the headlights look was only compounded by the realization of the daunting task we had ahead of us. That, and most of us were covered in this fine chalk dust that sticks extra well to our sweat soaked skin. Day one, and no casualties.

The week got progressively better—we slowly began to understand what worked, what didn't, and more importantly, how long everything would take. Worksheets, mixed-up sentence lessons, games that teach grammar without mentioning scary words like demonstrative pronouns. Day two was more introductions and descriptions. Then came hobbies. Day three was by far the best day for me—I had them creating sentences in front of the class (check out this photo Marie snuck as she was observing) and then they grouped up and made sentences out of words from an envelope.

This yielded such beauties as "Teacher Rachel is very smart and young" and "Owat is shy and not smart" (which we changed to 'very smart' before putting it up on the board). Today was all Halloween. I stretched my art skills, drawing zombies and mummies and even the verb "eating brains." Take that, every art teacher who ever felt sorry for me! Apparently all I need for motivation is no internet, a classroom with no available technology, some markers and computer paper. I was taken aback by the amount of Halloween vocabulary they not only knew, but could recognize from my poorly executed drawings. Before I could even introduce the words, I had cries of "werewolf!" and "skeleton!" But then the most random words would garner nothing more than blank stares, and these were the most unexpected of words. I came into class today prepared to have to mime out what a zombie is, when in fact the most difficult word ended up being "party." Go figure.

The things we took for granted as being understood ended up being the most difficult concepts. The first day, we all shared the awkward experience of not being able to get our students to leave. We tried to tell them class was dismissed in every way we could. We're finished. Class is over. You may leave now. Done. Even a clever miming of "you can all stand up and leave the classroom now" wasn't understood. Finally, literally 5 minutes later, something somewhere was understood and they left the room. Definitely one of the more confusing problems I've faced.

Teaching only in English, while definitely having language acquisition merits, is difficult. Some basic things like asking everyone to form two lines can end up taking 5 full minutes. Today, we managed to get them to form two concentric circles. When we played the music, one circle would walk one direction and the other in the opposite. When the music stopped, they had to whip out their newly created Monster ID cards and introduce themselves to the person in front of them as the 1,330 year old ghost who lives in San Francisco and likes to drink blood and play basketball. Explaining this activity was nothing short of draining. I have found myself looking at activities and writing them off immediately because the instructions would be too difficult to explain. This language barrier should prove to be one of the more intriguing classroom hurdles I'll be facing. Let me just say that the respect I have for teachers, especially those who frequent the immersion method, has jumped exponentially this past week. It should be interesting to see how I will be adjusting to teaching in a technical college after having my training wheels on in an early high school level.

In the afternoons, I did some more sightseeing like things, which will come in a later entry. On Monday, a van comes to pick me up at 4 am and I head out to Ubon to do this for real. Packing is a bit too daunting to imagine at the moment, so phone calls as distractions are definitely welcome! Send me an email, let me know how life is going! This weekend is also the beginning of the Loi Krathong festival—a festival of lights. So whilst you are out trick-or-treating or ghost roasting, I'll be watching an illuminated boat parade down the Chao Phraya River, thinking about packing.