Sabbaii Sabbaii / mai bpen rai krap

"Why worry about it?   What would be the point in that??"

Brilliantly said words from Desmond, the LOST character, and the only man in the world known to have survived a catastrophic blast of electromagnetic radiation :p
But that basically sums up the attitude of your average Thai here in Chiang Mai.  No need to worry about things. Enjoy the day and the moment for what it is, and don't get too caught up in your worries.



Now, at the end of my first post, I said I was going to write more about my classes at a later time.  Well, I have time for it tonight :)

Contrary to what I expected before getting here,  I am not writing curriculum, nor did I have to create my own syllabus or select any materials for my courses.  Since I've arrived here, everything had been pre-prepared already.  The curriculums had already been written, and the plans laid-out; you only need to familiarize yourself with the lessons to prepare how you will approach teaching them all to the students.  Most of the hard work is already done for you, but its still a lot to prepare handouts and worksheets and think of ways of explaining things to students in a manner in which they will understand.

The students here at very passive compared to Western students.  Most do not want to speak up in front of the class, unless prompted.  They prefer to sit back and let the teacher lead for the entire lesson.  You become a lecturer rather than a facilator of learning.  This is not really teaching-- and I believe does not really increas "learning"-- you only train your students to de dependent.  Students learn from engaging and interacting with a lesson, not from being talked at for 75 minutes without a cease.  But that is exactly what would happen if you did not think of more creative ways to elicit the participation of the students. 

The trick is to get them to work together in small groups.  Since they can't bear to work alone, or to speak their opinion or put themselves out in front of the class, you have to teach to their culture, to the style of learning which they are used to.  They may not be "stepping out" and taking that "risk" that you wanted them to make, but at least its a start.

So you give them an assignment and you say to everyone "do this individually,"  and not a single one of them will do it.  You assign homework in this matter, and you come to class the next day, and nothing has been done....   But when you assign it to them as a group-- when you allow them to work in pairs, in groups of 3, or 4, or 5--  its like magic :)    You give them a task in-class as a small group, and this time, they do it!   You assign them a page for homework as a group-assignment, and next time you come to class, they bring it in.

I once read that to be a successful teacher in Thailand, one has to be 1/3 teacher, 1/3 entertainter, and 1/3 businessman.  And so that is what I have become for them.  All things for all students, so that a few might learn. You prepare for your lessons, gather your materials, and know your stuff.  But then you find a way to present it that engages them,  in a way that expresses your own passion for learning, and for problem solving and figuring things out.  And then you make it fun for them-- miming the difficult vocabulary, acting it out and looking a fool in front of them at times just so that they will "get it".

But its all for a good cause, and if they are getting it, then that's the whole point. If I have to act everything out in front of them, raise my voice, and make it all dramatic; if I have to do something spontaneous like walk out of the room all of sudden to get them to learn the word "spontaneous", then I will do it.  If playing memory games with cartoony  flash cards will teach them relative clauses better than a boring textbook explanation, then I will use them.  And if I have to strap a roll of tape across the room and run through just it to demonstate what it means to "cross the finish line" in a sprinting competition, then so be it. It will be done.

And often, I find, its simply the little things that count.  Learning names;  remembering faces;  using multi-colored chalk instead of just white chalk all the time;  using the overhead once in awhile;  letting students write on the board instead of me;  drawing students into the lesson by using them as the example;  changing the stories in the text to fit the students' own context in their everyday lives.  These are the types of things that will help to draw in your students into the lesson.

I only teach one or two classes a day, depending on the day, so I try and put as much energy as I can into each of them.  I look at it like I would a game of soccer, where professional soccer players have to pace themselves throughout a 90 minute game.  Similiarly, whereas I was once putting in 5-6 hours of teaching in one day,  I now have the same energy as I had before to put into no more than 2-3 hours a day,  or just a third to half of what I was putting in before.  Admittedly, teaching is an exhausting job.  And talking in front of people-- moving around and exerting yourself, trying to get 30+ students to understand words and concepts unknown to them, is something that I am glad to be doing for only the amount of time a day that I am currently doing it. 

So, in all, my new work schedule here in Chiang Mai has been a welcome change.  Outside of the teaching,  I have been writing the quizes & exams alongside my Thai co-teachers, doing editing & proofreading, and helping with course materials i.e. preparing handouts and worksheets.  We may eventually be writing a new curriculum for one of the courses I am teaching, but that will not be happening today :)

So to recapitulate on the point at the beginning of this post,  why worry about today that which can be saved for tomorrow? If it is something that is out of your hand, or if nothing can be done from worrying about it, then why do so?  That's not to say that you should simply ignore problems as they arise, or forget about planning for tomorrow that which needs to be prepared, but just to take things in stride and not worry about the things for which you have no chance of having any impact through your actions.

Well, that's enough for now, I think.   I will write more later-- on the happenings outside of the workplace, as more has happened here than just the teaching...