Schools in

'Good morning teacher' the class said as one as I stood at the front. It was then when I realised I was a teacher. Following months of waiting and preparation I was now a teacher. It was also then I realised I was not at all prepared. I began with what I knew, introducing myself. 'Hello. My name is Dylan.'
'Diran,' the class replied. 'Dylan' I said again. 'Diran' the class again replied. The Thais struggle to pronounce the letter 'L' so for as long as I am in Thailand I will be 'Teacher Diran.' Each lesson a Thai teacher will be in the classroom, controlling the class, translating any English into Thai the students do not understand or doing whatever else they want. We were told we would not be teaching on the first day only observing. For the first ten minutes of my first class there was no other teacher in the room and I was hoping I was actually in the correct place. Luckily I had a ball in my bag and used it to throw around the class getting the students to introduce themselves. Each of the students have an English nick name although I am unsure whether the students were using their real names or nick names it was so difficult to understand them.
My Thai assistant arrived and I let her take the class although she had obviously not been told I was only there to observe for the day and took a while to comprehend what was going on. She did take over the class but taught a very boring and irrelevant class where the students had to translate English words into Thai from copying the board.
I decided I would teach the rest of the classes for the day. The first day of school was a Tuesday which also happened to be my busiest day of the week with six periods out of seven teaching.
At the end of the class I went back to the office and had about ten minutes to prepare a lesson plan for a class of students with no idea what level their English was. The second lesson was much more successful than the first. I asked the students 'how did you get to school this morning' and 'what did you do on the holidays.' By the final lesson I felt I actually taught a good lesson. I am teaching primary school years five and six and I discovered there is quite a difference in the two levels as to their level of English.
Day two was similar to the first spending the lessons introducing myself and getting the students to talk about themselves. In the first week of classes there was some confusion as to which classes I was teaching when. For the final class I was due to teach on my second day the class was also due to go to music but the teacher for music never turned up. I spent the whole 50 minutes standing outside the classroom with the students as my Thai assistant teacher was chatting me up and getting the students to ask me questions about myself for her own good.
Following the first couple of days I had a good feeling about teaching in Thailand so I was looking forward to the rest of the semester. I did have to go back to my place and sleep though.