let's travel back in time to my first week here. i spent the week meeting my students one-by-one, shaking their hands, and teaching them introductions in english. ("hello." "hello." "i'm aj. kirsten. what's your name?" my name is ..." "nice to meet you." "nice to meet you, too.") i was sooooo nervous, but i just did that lesson all week, so it wasn't too bad. the only exception is my 5/1 class, top-level fifth graders, who i see 7 hours a week and therefore have to make 7 lesson plans a week for. i don't even remember what i did with them - i think probably a lot of worksheets. the worst class of my first week was my first day with the kindergarteners. one of the kindergarten co-teachers was absent (i have a thai co-teacher in every class to help with classroom management and sometimes to translate instructions into thai), so instead of teaching 2 classes of 25 kindergarteners for half an hour each, i had to teach one class of 50 kindergarteners for an hour. and i was told i wouldn't have to teach them that day, so i had nothing prepared. 5 minutes after that class was supposed to start, my boss threw some alphabet flashcards into my hands, i grabbed some stickers, and she rushed me to the kindergarten classroom. at one point during the class, i sort of looked to the co-teacher for help because i was so unsure of myself, and she just looked back at me, waiting for me to do something. i think that was the first time it hit me that i was actually a teacher, that i was the one who would have to run the show in the classroom everyday, and that the fact that i had never done it before was no excuse. that class was pretty rough, but i think any class where you have to hold the attention of 50 five year olds for an hour is just always going to be hard. luckily, i have not been faced with that situation since then - only, ironically enough, on my first day with the kindergarteners.
it just so happened that a holiday celebrating teachers (they take teachers very seriously here and it is a fairly high profession) fell on the thursday of my first week. so that thursday morning, i attended a teacher appreciation assembly. the whole school attended.
the kids, or really their parents, had made these banana leaf bouquets with flowers and grass and incense, all of which had a symbolism that was lost on me but was supposed to say something about teachers. the only thing i caught was that the grass was sharp like a teacher's mind.
the teachers sat in the front of the auditorium, and the grades were called up one-by-one. the kids basically prostrated themselves in front of the teachers and presented them with the bouquet. and because i was (technically) a teacher, i was presented with many, many bouquets by children who knelt in front of me and bowed so that their head touched the ground.
....this was day 4. that is the only thought that ran through my brain during this whole thing. "this is day 4." it was just so surreal.
then we threw away all the bouquets and went back to work.
and that was my first week of teaching. there is obviously much more to catch everyone up on, but it just started raining here and i need to bike home with my laptop before it gets any worse.
hope all is well back home. love and miss you.
