A typical school day

There is no such thing as a typical school day at St Louis School. Every day I still manage to see something which makes me laugh or something I am fairly sure would never happen at a school in Australia.
I arrive everyday at school to sign in using a fingerprint scanner before 7.45am. I will go to the foreigners office and sit there until the start of the first class. At 8am everybody stands for the Thailand national anthem and a prayer which signifies the start of the day.
Every lesson lasts 50 minutes and at 11am lunch is served for all the teachers in a communal teachers eating area. It’s free which is the great thing and for the most part the food is good. If I am hungry enough I will eat the chicken feet which are occasional served. A lot of the time I am not actually sure what I am eating, sometimes the Thai teachers do not even know what it is or cannot translate the dish into English. Every meal is served with rice which is a good thing at least I know what it will taste like.
The day is broken into seven 50 minute periods and depending on what time your class is depends on how long the lesson actually goes for or how interested the students are in listening. The later afternoon classes are usually the ones were not a lot of teaching takes place.
School finishes around 3.45pm although the teachers are not allowed to scan out until 4.30pm. We usually sit in the office counting down the minutes until we are allowed to go home. On Fridays the teachers are supposed to participate in sport at the end of the day therefore we are not allowed to scan out until 5pm.
In a week I teach 18 classes. I teach six classes of primary six twice a week and three classes of primary five twice a week. The class size is around 45 therefore in a week I teach 405 students. I have been teaching now for over eight weeks and I know less than six students names.

On many occasions I have turned up to teach and the class is not there, they either have a meeting or playing games. It can become difficult to plan lessons when you are not sure if the students will be there or not. It’s all fun though and I try to fit my teaching around the relaxed Thai schedules.