Vagabond With Flowers: Teach me how to learn

Yesterday was my first day teaching English here at Isara! As I've mentioned in the previous post, there are 3 classes (each an hour long) we teach ranging from ages 7 to adults in college and even a few elderly adults. I felt somewhat hesitant about teaching children since I haven't been exposed to that environment in quite sometime. Sure enough, once I entered the class and saw those adorable smiling faces, I instantly felt comfortable to teach.

I have had experience teaching before while in high school (this was my brief exposure to teaching younger children) for 3 years while I was in the Teaching Academy at Independence HS. I can honestly say that those three years teaching for one period a week were some of the happiest and rewarding times of my life. After those years passed, I found myself teaching again volunteering at the IRC (International Rescue Committee, a refugee and asylee resource center) in San Jose. I taught a few times a week English classes along with helping with job development sessions (resume editing, mock interviewing, job searching) for a few months, which helped me become familiar with second language learners. I've learned from my volunteering at the IRC that English is in fact, misconstrued with infinite amounts of “exceptions” to figures of speech, vowel placements, tenses, formalities, prepositions, etc, etc and frankly, such a difficult language to learn. Oh and another thing, ACCENTS! Accents create even more confusion! Sharpening R's or silencing letters when they're placed next to another... geez.

One thing I learned about the Thai education system (and continuing to observe as I teach here) is their method of teaching through rote memorization. Rote memorization is a method often used tying listening to repetition-- with the students here it's listen, repeat, listen repeat. They even replicate the intonations to specific words. When Lara and I shadowed the class last Friday, we noticed when the students greeted us they said "Hello, TEEEEEEEacher, HOWWWWWWWW are YOOOOUUUUU?" all in sync, sometimes even adding more emphasis on letters that didn't need any. In depth understanding of the meaning of the words or understanding of context is often overlooked here. Isara's after school English classes made it an important goal of theirs to increase literacy and understanding of the usage of the English language.

Anyway, Ming, Lara and I organized a short lesson plan for each of the classes to affirm previous lessons taught by their school teachers. We covered the Alphabet and tied pictures each of them, had the beginners class draw the pictures that began with the letter that were on the board, fundamental math problems with the intermediate, and formal letter writing with the advanced group.

With my experience teaching, one thing that I have in common with the children is enthusiasm. I am as enthusiastic to teach as they are to learn. Communicating with the kids here makes me melt as they sometimes begin to struggle with constructing sentences to simply ask “how are you today” but ending with an endearing smile on their face. I am definitely excited to continue teaching here. I hope my alacrity will be shown through my teaching and the students will become comfortable with us teaching them. =)

A few pictures of our first day teaching