My last two days in Hua Hin have been nothing short of insane! A mix of good and bad insane. Our group was hosting an English Language Camp at a local school for two days – Thursday and Friday. This school does not have a western English teacher; however, they have thai teachers teaching English classes. Pronunciation is not perfect, so our entire job was to focus on pronunciation… oh and classroom management. These children are WILD!
I started the day with a cute little class of 1st graders. They were too shy to speak English, but not shy enough to prevent them from running around and causing a scene. Telling a student to sit down and be quiet when they have absolutely no idea what you’re saying is the formula for disaster. Imagine kids running around (literally), throwing paper airplanes, screaming at you, getting up and Muay Thai fighting, handing your worksheets back to you because, “No teacha! No!” This made for a long first class. Then, I was fortunate enough to get more rebellious classes the rest of the day. It became progressively less manageable as the day continued. Through all of the mayhem, there were always 5-10 kids who LOVED learning English. They wanted to practice, show me their work, drew the flashcards and wrote the word in English and Thai to remember it, they would hug me and say, “I love you, Teacha!” and that was enough to keep me positive through the rest of the day.
My last class of the day was known as the “bad students” and I thought it couldn’t be that bad. Well, it was. One boy pinned a girl to the ground and started punching her with all of his strength. Two other students were throwing things out of the window (we were on the 3rd floor). They kept trying to go through my bag, and they would take their worksheets and make paper airplanes and throw them out the window. SO MUCH FUN! I hope you sense the sarcasm here!
That night, four of us went out to dinner to have a drink or two to celebrate and relax. While we were sitting down at a sushi restaurant, two of our students came running up to us and were SO excited. They ate our edamame, and kept refilling our soy sauce. It was the best way to end the night.
Day two of the camp was INCREDIBLE! (No sarcasm!). All of the classes I had were so well behaved, they listened, they did their work, and they loved Teacha K! We had Hula Hoop competitions and learned about the circus. They had to draw themselves as clowns and answer fill-in-the-blank sentences. The best part was when they asked for my “autograph” when they finished the worksheet. They really think Western English Teachers are celebrities. It’s adorable. This also worked to my advantage because I wouldn’t sign the worksheets until it was completed – everyone was REALLY well behaved when they caught on to that!
I’m off to my new school in Nonthaburi, Thailand and will have updates on my accommodations and my school when I am all settled in!
