50 minutes in a Thai classroom

At the beginning of every lesson the students all stand to collectively say “Good morning Teacher and Master,” or “Good afternoon teacher and master,” Depending on the class this make take place as soon as I walk in, some lessons it will take the students up to ten minutes to find their seats and stand ready for class.

If there is ever writing on the board at the start of a class the students argue over who gets to clean the board.

I always have a Thai teacher in the classroom who is there to translate to the students when they cannot understand. The students often cannot understand when I give them an activity to do even when I think I am making the instructions very clear. I am quite luckily because my partner teachers can speak good English and are therefore able to translate easily.

The Thai teachers are also there to discipline the students. In Thailand it is not uncommon for teachers to hit the students and although I have not really seen it happen I know it takes place. The students know I will not do this to them therefore if the teacher walks out of the room or is not there for the whole lesson the students decide it is their time to have fun and muck around. It is difficult to keep 45 students interested and listening without some discipline.

The other week I was teaching a lesson on feelings and getting the students to tell me something they are happy about. One of the students wanted to answer the question although they were unable to so they translated through the teacher. “The student would like to say she is happy about having a handsome teacher.” I had to write it on the board and the students thought it was quite funny.

Thai students are often embarrassed to speak in front of their peers in case they get the answer wrong. Therefore if I ask the class collectively a question nobody will answer. To eliminate this I take a ball to class every lesson and throw the bal

l at a student make them stand up and answer the questions. The students are actually excited when I use the ball in class and they are more involved.

A couple of times I have been doing spelling tests on the board and will write a word on the board such as ‘join,’ and the whole class will start laughing. It turned out Join was the nickname of one the boys in the class. The students each have a name, a nickname and a number at the moment I call the students by their number because I do not know any of their names or nicknames.

In one of my spelling tests the student did not know how to spell the word so instead wrote a load of random letters with ‘KFC’ in the middle. I had to laugh.

At the end of every lesson all the students stand again and collectively say ‘Thank you teacher.’