February–Scout Camp

Scout Camp ended up covering most of two weeks. The 4^th – 6^th graders went away to an overnight camp for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of one week while the 1^st – 3^rd graders stayed home. Then the 1^st – 3^rd graders had a day camp at school for Wednesday and Thursday of the next week while the 4^th – 6^th graders stayed home. Friday of the last week was a holiday for everyone.

Kru Meow invited me to come stay with her at the overnight, but Gary and I decided I couldn’t afford to spend those two days away from school preparations. The students told me a few stories the next week of what they did.

At the end of that week I participated in the first day of camp for the 1^st – 3^rd graders.

That day they went on a trek in groups of about 7 -8. They went out to follow the arrows and find the route on their own. The smallest student in the school led the first group,

across the parking lot, out the school gate, and up the street.

After the groups took off, some of the teachers took off in another direction. They set up stations for the

students to do things at different points along the way. The Scoutmaster, Kru Ew, thought this

challenge was pretty funny. The rubber bands had something to do with the group collecting what was with them. They were all gone by the time we finished up with the last group so I didn’t see them actually collect them. There they were at the reporting station, though.

I ended up at the “senses” station. They had the students try smelling and touching things

blindfolded. They even had them sense things that weren’t there (Look out! You need to jump here!). Then they took off the blindfolds to let me show the students some optical illusions. That didn’t involve speaking too much Thai. I was able to get them to count birds and fish in that one Escher

drawing, but I didn’t quite understand the instructions on the paper they needed to stare at until Meow met up with us.

At the next station they had to answer some questions about nature and animals and sing a song.

Then they had to go across this narrow dam and around the teacher standing on it. Once the whole group was across, they started off, following the arrows again.

They stopped outside Malee’s house to have lunch. First some noodles. A little later they shared bowls

of green papaya salad. At the end they helped to

make some sticky rice with sesame. Yum.

For their last station they had to wade under a stick

placed low over the water. They all got a little wet doing this. That was ok, because they could dry out while we played some English games.

First, we played “Duck, Duck, Goose”. Several of Zoe had played that game before. I don’t know if they used the English words. Then we played 4 corners. Meow had made some nice numbers for the posts in the canteen to help identify the corners. We played until one boy stood near the blindfolded boy and told him, in Thai, which number to call.

They had some watermelon, sang some songs, and

then tried out Capture the Flag. We wondered if they were going to figure out how to play it. Some teachers tried coaching them a bit. Then, suddenly, we saw a quick little 3^rd grade girl running across the center line with the other team’s flag. The other team managed to steal the flag too, just before the time to quit for the closing.

The next day they did activities around the school, including watching The Jungle Book in English on a computer, downloaded from the Internet.

:J

School days in May

IT STARTED! The first few days reminded me of when I used to go downhill skiing. I was not too good at it, so I would always start out on the Bunny Slope. Once I fell there, and got used to it being not so bad, I would go on up to the intermediate slopes. In the same way, after some parts of some classes went not so well for me, and it was ok, I felt less anxious about the rest of the classes.

God provided well for me as I am learning to go with the flow of the Thai management. The English curriculum books came the Friday before school was to start. However, each class was short a few books, only two out of the six teachers’ guides came, and those two were in Thai. When I helped “watch” the school on Saturday, though, the administrators meeting that afternoon asked if I would like a young lady learning to teach English (Noot) to come help in my classroom for two weeks.

I said that would be great, especially if she could interpret the Thai teachers’ guides for me. I didn’t tell them I wasn’t sure if she would learn any good things about teaching from me, since I hadn’t run a classroom before. Noot did come and did interpret some of the teachers’ guides for me. She was really helpful in a lot of other ways too. She taught one grammar class for me and took over in a phonics lesson when the oversight committee for the school wanted to meet all the teachers for 5 minutes in the middle of our classes. I hope she learned something useful from me!

We had teacher meetings in the afternoon for a couple of days before school started and every day after that for most of the first week. They lasted over an hour and were all in Thai. Kru (that’s the title for a teacher in Thai) Malee interpreted for me, in summary, what they were talking about. The first meeting like that, on a hot afternoon, I nearly fell asleep after an hour or so. That helps me understand when the students sometimes kind of nod off when I’m talking on a hot afternoon. Now I’ve gotten more used to hearing with little or no understanding. Sometimes I think I understand what they are talking about and then Kru Malee tells me, and I’m way off. When they talked about what the teachers should wear on Mondays and Tuesdays, I understood. White shirt and black skirt, and pink shirt and black skirt were words I know. Then they went on to exercise wear for Wednesday and lost me. Scout day on Thursday wasn't any better. Traditional Thai day for Friday I already knew about. I asked some friends to pray for shorter meetings one day, and they stopped having them for about a week!

The first week I stayed at BSF, just up the road 5 min walking. I thought I would work in the classroom in the evenings to get things organized. I found out they close the roll up doors at

about 6 pm, though, and don’t want to have teachers out there by themselves. I did bring work back to BSF to work on, and I was able to get there in the mornings when the roll up door went up at about 6:30. Now I am going home every afternoon, but getting up earlier so I can get my bike ride and my shower and clothes change at BSF done and still get there at about 6:30. I’m getting my exercise from my two ½ hour bike rides every day.

God has also provided a great assistant teacher in Lauren. She taught English at BSF in April during the break from her year of teaching in the south of Thailand. When she went back down there, she decided she liked her work at BSF much better than her work down there, so she quit there to come back up here. She plans on going to graduate school in October. She will be

with us for the first term, anyway. It’s wonderful to have her assistance when the students at different levels need to be split up. She also does a good job teaching the younger ones their grammar curriculum. She knows more about English grammar than I do since her college major had to do with teaching English at a high school or middle school level.

The children here are taught to be polite, so they are much more respectful than American students. Still, I’ve been blessed by the eagerness of most of the children to learn English beyond their habitual respectfulness. One girl chose to sit in the one extra desk I put up in the

front. I was planning on using that one for students who have trouble staying focused or in their seats, but her sitting there made it less of a negative for the other student I pulled up front. At least he was sitting opposite of Rachel then, and not up there by himself! Rachel and another student were the ones who said, “Can we write in our journals today?" when they first got them. At lunchtime, the room fills up with students wanting to play the English games we have.

It was Tuesday when I found out we would have a holiday today, Friday. Then, Thursday evening, at a teacher’s meeting, it was confirmed that we wouldn’t have school Monday either. The teachers are going to a seminar that goes from Saturday through Monday. Also, I agreed to “watch” the school with Lauren on Saturday since the Thai teachers will be at the seminar. That means I will have Saturday to work on the room and two days to rework my planning! It will be good to review everything at this point and work on my record keeping. I have been asking Meaw, the school secretary, for a schedule for the year, but she keeps telling me it isn’t ready yet.

So far so good!

:J