back to the grind

Nummon approached me before class to tell me that we wouldn't be dividing the students into three small groups today. Instead, I'd be teaching all three class periods (with 40 students in each class, mind you) myself, so the our new student-teacher, Pear, might gain wisdom and insight from my teaching style.

Specifically, she wanted Pear to observe and take notes on my "teaching techniques and classroom management." I almost laughed when she said it.

I've been teaching -- "teaching" -- for four and a half months. I never earned a teaching credential. I didn't do a TEFL certification program. I've never even substituted in an American school.

I had a six-hour ESL training day at Baylor from a lady who teaches English to Mexican immigrants at her church. That's it. No test, no license, nothing. And a teacher-in-training is supposed to learn classroom management from me?!

Then, Nummon showed me the worksheet I was meant to cover in class. The front page had two long paragraphs about the King of Thailand -- when and where he was born, where he went to school, the 53-letter names of his parents, grandparents, sister, and brother, his coronation date, etc., etc.

It had words and phrases like "Massachusetts" and "coronation ceremony" -- words that fourth graders learning a second language don't really need to know.

She told me she wanted me to teach them about why Thai people love the King, because I'm obviously the most qualified person to do that. She gave me some tips, like, "The king is the center of our heart."

The last page of the worksheet introduced the past simple tense with "to be."

To illustrate the difference between am/is/are and was/were, I filled two buckets with plastic produce and labeled one "Today" and the other "Yesterday."

The idea was that I'd pull out a carrot from the "Today" bucket and the class would say, "Today there is a carrot." Then I'd pull tomatoes from the "Yesterday" bucket and they'd say, "Yesterday there were some tomatoes."

Pear took loads of notes on goodness-knows-what during the first class, and then assisted me in the second class as I turned the bucket practice into a game between Team Cabbage and Team Asparagus.

homemaking

The students made a list of classes they take in their workbook yesterday. Along with Thai, history, and geography, several mentioned something called "vocational."

I asked Nummon about it. She said the kids learned cooking, flower arranging, sewing, and sweeping.

"Sweeping?!" I said.

"Yes, you know, what the different tools are, how to use a broom..."

"Why do they learn to use a broom at school?"

"Because it's something they need to know later in life."

She said this as if sweeping were a totally normal thing to teach a fourth grader in a school class.

How much instruction is involved, I wonder? I mean, the only way you can really mess up is by holding the brushy end up and scraping the stick against the ground... but you'd think most people would figure that out without 30 minutes of classroom instruction.

dancing queen

Today, I started one of my classes a little bit early because the kids were finished with their milk break.

We have dictation first thing on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Today, the first word was "dance."

I repeated it a few times, and the bell rang. And by bell, I mean the little ditty that plays when classes end and begin. It's kind of a tropical sounding song. Kind of bouncy. It's hard to describe; you just have to hear it.

Anyway, I didn't want to continue reading the dictation words over the bell, so I did the logical thing: I started dancing a little jig. I don't know what came over me, really. I never dance in class. Or anywhere else, for that matter.

The kids started saying, "Teechah, numba two, numba two." They were not impressed by my dancing and wanted to hear the next word.

"No, it's not time for dictation; it's time for dancing."

They stared at me, unimpressed by my shenanigans.

Thais confuse me enough. It's only fair that I get to confuse them once in a while.