CCT Volunteer Annie Kaplan Last Blog Post (Wat Kuang Singha School)

10 weeks ago I left on a plane to a place where I knew little to nothing about. I knew Thailand had a King, I knew I loved Thai food, and I knew I was ready for something different. Other than that, my knowledge of this country was extremely limited. Today, as I wrap up week 10 of being here and week 7 of working in a temple school, I have learned more than I could have learned in an entire semester of classes back home.

My work at Wat Khuang Sing School has been the most life-altering time I have yet to experience in my 21 years on Earth. I have been challenged as a person and as an educator, spending every waking moment attempting to improve myself and my teaching. I can remember my first day here like it was yesterday. I arrived shaky and nervous, unaware of the love I was about to receive from the students and teachers. Things have gotten better week by week too. As I grasp what my students know and want to learn, I have been able to adjust my lesson plans and simplify instructions to help comprehension. 

Last week was one of my favorite weeks by far. I taught all three classes I work with the Macarena, a personal party favorite of mine. It started with P4 last Monday as a way to kill time during the transition period, but slowly crept around school. By lunch the next day all of my coworkers were talking about how they had seen the dance and couldn’t wait to learn it themselves. P6 learned it next, bringing out a side of them which I had never seen before. I don’t have much of a chance to interact with them as my mentor teacher teaches that class alone, but this moment I’ll cherish forever. The character each child brings to such a simple dance is what I love the most about the Macarena. By the time I got around to teaching P5 the dance, many of the girls knew it already. They had seen their friends doing it and heard the music in the hallway throughout the week. By the end of Week 10, I hope to teach and have them master the Cupid Shuffle.

Something that has come along with this summer is my second guessing of my future profession. Like many of my family members and friends know, I want to be a Social Studies teacher initially but then eventually go into Education Policy. Every day I wake up though wishing I was working at summer camp or doing something different with my day. Preparing each day’s lesson became a nuisance which had me questioning if I even want to be an educator for the rest of my life.

cher teaches that class alone, but this moment I’ll cherish forever. The character each child brings to such a simple dance is what I love the most about the Macarena. By the time I got around to teaching P5 the dance, many of the girls knew it already. They had seen their friends doing it and heard the music in the hallway throughout the week. By the end of Week 10, I hope to teach and have them master the Cupid Shuffle.

 As I talk to my fellow interns and friends back home, I realize that hating work as a teenager is just kind of a part of life. We are all adjusting to the daily grind and figuring out how to balance work life and social life. We are testing the waters with jobs we like, dislike, and slightly tolerate. It’s a part of life I’m coming to terms with slowly but surely. With my final year of college approaching, I’m ready to see where life takes me and how this internship changed me for the better.

but this moment I’ll cherish forever. The character each child brings to such a simple dance is what I love the most about the Macarena. By the time I got around to teaching P5 the dance, many of the girls knew it already. They had seen their friends doing it and heard the music in the hallway throughout the week. By the end of Week 10, I hope to teach and have them master the Cupid Shuffle.

(Thank you Wat Khuang Sing for giving me these three)

CCT Volunteer Sarena Sanchez Last Blog Post (Wat Kuang Singha School)

Well, my final weeks at Wat Khuang Sing School as an English teacher have come! It's been a rollercoaster of emotions including stress, exhaust and SOOOO much joy! The kids at Wat Khuang Sing School are such a joy and bring a smile to my face every time i walk through the gate and hear "Teacher Arena!" (lots of them can't pronounce Sarena). Many of them have asked about my personal life since learning that i will be going back home to America this week. A few of the girls insisted i tell them about my boyfriend, who doesn't actually exist and others are very intrigued with the fact that i'm planning on returning to my old job at Disneyland! I'm definitely going to miss working with them everyday!

This past week i introduced Bingo to my younger classes and not only did they love it, but my co-teacher really enjoyed it as well! Since the younger kids don't have strong reading skills yet, we used pictures of vocab that we've learned over our time together. I had a hard time finding a Bingo card maker that uses photos online, so i ended up making all 25 by hand by cutting and pasting each picture into the individual squares. Sure, it was a bit tedious and super time consuming, but it was definitely worth it when i saw how excited the kids got when they realized they had Bingo! I'm glad i was able to introduce this game to them and i hope my teacher liked it enough to continue using it in the future!

Speaking of my teacher, in the beginning, it was difficult to adjust to having another adult in the classroom, but by the end of week 6, it has been so much easier! I have learned a lot from her teaching style and the activities that she prepares for the different age groups. I will be taking back a lot of useful information and techniques that hopefully i can use in my future career.

I hope the students and teachers at Wat Khuang Sing School won't forget me, because i will definitely not forget them any time soon!

CCT Volunteer Duncan Brady Last Blog Post (Wat Baan Thong Gai School)

On the Impending Journey home and the breeze off the Hudson...

*** THURSDAY, AUGUST 3RD, 10:25PM***

I think it would be fitting to begin my final internship-focused blog post by stating that this is my fourth attempt at formulating any sort of information of clarity surrounding my last two weeks (and cumulatively my last ten weeks) in Thailand. It’s not to say that I’ve been struggling so profoundly to find the right words, although that certainly adds to the challenge. The real reason is that I have been besieged by so many oncoming distractions and responsibilities that there is quite simply no time to take a seat, take a breath, and type a memoir. For anyone who knows me well enough, my inability to take a seat and take a breath is often the biggest challenge I have in accomplishing any sort of long term or difficult task. And if you don’t know, now you know…

I give thanks for the menial tasks and myriad red herrings that sprout up ahead on my metaphorical path to blog completion, however, as most of them manifest in the form of young children seeking love and attention or new coworkers back home in need of some words of advice from yours truly (Because I’m apparently an adult who can give work advice now). My ever-increasing plethora of busybody battles really just makes me feel at peace. The heavy weight of responsibility comforts me like a warm blanket in the winter in the same way that an ant receives comfort from the purpose it feels in carrying thrice its weight over its tiny shoulders from ant hill to queen.

Nonetheless, as I sit in my penultimate remaining pair of unwashed and unpacked shorts, (the rest are tightly rolled and stuffed into a collection of suitcases at the foot of my wooden rig I choose to call a bed) I am listening to “American Privilege” by Allen Stone in one ear and the sounds of my roommate waking up from his religiously taken 8-10pm nap in the other. I’m mulling over the mundane aspects of living in Thailand, and realizing that it’s only when you settle in to the moments of regularity in which the profound quality of your shock into a foreign world becomes your reality; when your distinct shift in paradigm holds such a clearness in its cogency that you forget, even if for just a moment, that there was ever a reality apart from that which you are currently held.

In my last entry, I think it is safe to say that I tipped my glass rather heavily into the bitter half of a bittersweet feeling. Luckily for anyone foolish enough to dissect my mind by reading what I have to say in this far-from-succinct account of myself, there is an omnipresent truth that our youth learn from an early age in the subtle art that is the Sour Patch Kids commercial: “First they’re sour….Then they’re sweet”. If the seventh inning stretch was the sour valley of my sinusoidal ride in Chiang Mai, the sweetness of melancholy is hitting my tooth now in the bottom of the ninth.

Before I left for this trip, I debated whether or not I should bring my big, shiny camera along with me. I’ve always lived by a precept that to take pictures is to remember what you did and to live in the moment is to remember how you felt (my ghoulish ramblings of the previous blog post are a testament to this). However, it occurred to me that there is really no other outlet for me to remember the faces of the 120+ children and teachers I experienced day in and day out for the last seven weeks. The Baan Thong Gai School is not a tourist attraction that I can Google and see in seconds. If I want to ever see the faces of my students again (something I may never have the chance to do in person), I’m going to need some pictures to do the job. I had not taken my camera out of it’s case in ten weeks, but yesterday I realized that the only thing really worth taking a picture of on this trip was right in the heart of Baan Thong Gai.

…So I made a day of it.

I brought the big ole’ Nikon D52 in, and the kids were glued to it like dry macaroni on the mane of a clipart lion. I’ve never been so concerned for the safety of my camera equipment, something I dropped a substantial amount of cash on two years ago, in my life. The kids were passing the camera around like a volleyball and their little hands could barely hold it up, but after several hours of walking around the school and snapping as many pictures of the kids as I could, I feel like I really documented a day in the life of the many Burmese, Laos, Indian, and Thai students I have the pleasure to hang out with on a daily basis.

Because all of the pictures are on a memory card that is not compatible with my broken SD card slot, you’re going to have to wait until I come back home with an adapter to see the lot of them, but I promise that they are worth the wait. Just scanning through the pictures quickly was enough to bring my heart to a melting point.

I had a lesson planned for my fourth graders this Tuesday, but when I told them it was my second to last class, they unanimously dropped what work they had, and rushed into the adjacent room, returning with a stack of blank papers shouting “Make a card! Make a card!” They then preceded to independently fold, cut, write, and color goodbye cards for me, without me ever instructing them to do a thing. I was speechless for about an hour, because these kids have so much love and kindness in their hearts that they just want to share it with me, and whoever else they can. You just can’t replace that with anything.

My stomach is actually sore from the absurd number of times I have been aggressively hugged around the waist by several students at once. Between the many hugs, the few tears shed from some of my students, the amazing gifts that the teachers and students have been giving me throughout the week, and the going away party that the teachers hosted for me this evening, I don’t know how I’m supposed to walk away from this school tomorrow. It’s just going to be too difficult.

As the age-old sour patch kids motto goes, “first they’re sour….than they’re sweet”. But earlier I failed to address the third, and arguably most important phase in the triumvirate of sour patch kid flavors. “Sour, Sweet, Gone”. If my last blog post was sour, and this was sweet, than unfortunately we all know where this is going.

Kids, honestly I could go on and on. There’s so much I could say about all of these students, and all of these teachers, but there just isn’t enough time in the world, as, like I’ve said before, my full day at work begins bright and early tomorrow, and I need to sleep some time. I’ll follow up some day soon with a trip conclusion and many, many pictures. For now however, enjoy what little I can give you, and take care. ((Also whoever read my blog from the Czech Republic, thank you so much. You have officially brought my viewership to four continents!))

—If you managed to catch all three of this week’s Lin-Manuel Miranda references, be the first to message me and win a souvenir prize from Thailand! — (Offer expires after 11:59pm August 3rd – EST)

CCT Volunteer Duncan Brady 2nd Blog Post (Wat Baan Thong Gai School)

Boy, is teaching people in a different language hard! It has been getting easier with each week, but is still by no stretch of the imagination easy. The difference between where I am now and where I was 3 weeks ago is that I actually have a grasp on how much English my students actually know. This allows me to plan ahead for them more successfully, rather than being surprised by their level of knowledge the hard way. Unfortunately, it is still difficult to lesson plan every day for a set of six different grade levels with six varying degrees of ability. Actually, I should rephrase that. Each grade has a varying ability level, but the spectrum of ability within each classroom is even more severe than the spectrums between, so making plans for a specific class here is incredibly difficult. The age range in every class is at least 3-4 years, and in one or two of my classes is upwards of 5-6 years between the youngest and oldest student. Needless to say, when you have a student from Burma who is twelve-years-old and speaks Thai as his second language and English as his third language, and a student from Indonesia who is six-years-old and is still learning the written fundamentals of her own first language in the same class, it can be tough to make an engaging lesson that accommodates all 25 students. So yes, it is still a tough job, but it is getting easier and easier.

I’ve been picking up particular Thai phrases that are helpful in school from the kids. Even though most of the time the young students just stand in front of me and spout Thai at lightning pace, I eventually can grab a phrase or two that they are trying to tell me. I would cautiously recommend to anyone considering ESL as a career that they become proficient in world languages before jumping into the career, however. I’m at the point where my face and presence are regular enough to the students, and the same in reverse, that I have an individual connection in some way with mostly all of the students. There are inside jokes and tendencies that I have developed with many of them (almost all of them in Thai or just with body language, because it would be too difficult in English to be funny to them). My Sixth grade class was even able to ask me when I’m going home to America, and when I drew out the days we had left on a calendar they all started complaining that it was too soon and that I needed to come back –Or at least that’s what it seemed like. Again this is all in very broken English-Thai conversations–.

I’ve been trying to learn the names of my students more effectively as well. The task was so daunting at the beginning that I almost ignored it altogether. There are just too many students, and the names are just too difficult to pronounce. But this last week I committed to memorizing the names of my sixth graders, which is the smallest class, and I was able to do it! So I moved on to my fourth graders, and I’m getting close. If I can keep up the pace, maybe I’ll have this whole school memorized before I leave. The problem is, that will likely only make me miss them more when the time comes for me to go.

The weird stage I’m at right now is in coming to grips with the impermanence of my time here in Chiang Mai. Although I miss home so much and want to be back in America, I’m terrified by the idea that it could be years, decades, or even until the day I die before I have the chance to see these people again. What it takes to fly to Thailand is just more than I have the capability to do a second time financially. Maybe someday though, it would be great to come back with my family and show them the place I called home for a few months. So I’m here in this seventh inning stretch, where I miss home and want to go as soon as I can, but I love my home here and want the trip to stretch on forever…

Despite all that, I can’t forget that I’m not here on a vacation. I’m here to do a job, and my job is to educate young, underprivileged Thai students and S.E. Asian refugees in the English language. When I remember that I’m here helping people, it makes it easier to continue forward during those nights when I just want to sit and miss home. The lesson planning, the early mornings (comparatively), and long days all come together for an incredibly rich experience.

CCT Volunteer Sarena Sanchez 2nd Blog Post (Wat Kuang Singha School)

The past couple of weeks have been such fun at Wat Khuang Sing School! I’ve really found my groove as a teacher and am really enjoying leading the classes!

One Friday we were lucky enough to be a part of an awesome celebration that included the entire school! At the end of the day the classrooms all lined up in a huge group with the band at the very front and the teachers right behind them. The regular teachers put us towards the front, where people of importance usually go. We then walked off of the school property and began a parade with the entire school where we walked around the neighborhood and ended at the temple. We went inside and listened to a monk talk and listened to the students recite many things. We also were given things to give to a certain monk. It was a super cool experience and I’m so glad we were able to be a part of it!

At the beginning of week 4 my teacher returned! It definitely took some adjusting to have someone else being in the classroom with me and feeling like I was being watched the entire time and almost evaluated. It was a bit nerve-wracking, but once I became a little more adjusted to it, it was such a huge help to have someone who could translate things that I struggled to get across. I also am really thankful to have her back because I am able to learn a lot from her. Teaching is what she does for a living and I have been using her strategies to make my own lesson plans better suited for the classes! 

I can’t believe there is only a little over a week left for me at Wat Khuang Sing and in Thailand! I am really going to miss the kids and other teachers in the school. I can’t wait to see what other adventures the last week brings!

CCT Volunteer Anne Kaplan 2nd Blog Post (Wat Kuang Singha School)

For today’s blog post I want to talk a little about my desire for cultural experiences and how working at Wat Khuang Sing is slowly fulfilling them. It’s been great, but the cultural experiences are happening just a little differently than how I’d imagined.

Friday July 7^th was the start of Buddhist Lent here in Thailand. To commemorate the holiday, my school had a procession and ceremony at the temple next door. We had heard throughout the week that Friday was not going to be a normal day, but we weren’t sure until Friday as to how we were going to be involved in it. The Vice Principal of our school approached us as lunch on Thursday and asked Sarena and me what our teaching schedule looked like on Fridays. We told her that we each only teach one class in the morning, but were more than excited to stick around to observe the ceremony after school.

Around 3PM the procession started and Sarena and I watched from the back. We did not expect to do anything but observe until we were lovingly pulled to the front row by some of our favorite teachers. They wanted us to march in the parade AND carry alms! We walked for about 20 minutes (definitely the LONG route to the temple next door), until we were again lovingly dragged to the front of all the children. They wanted us to participate fully in one of their most religious, cultural events. There wasn’t a moment where we felt lost though. While the language being spoken wasn’t our own or the display of religion wasn’t something we were familiar with, the teachers translated all along the way. Words were chanted, monks spoke, teachers delivered baskets to each of the monks, and OF COURSE so many pictures were taken. My back and feet and smile hurt from all the laughing and kneeling but I couldn’t have cared less. 

In the end, it was so nice to be included in this incredible event put on by our school. I take for granted every day I have here until I experience moments like this. As a Comparative Cultures and Politics major, it’s the cultural immersions that I came here for. I wanted the change in pace, religion, culture, values, and overall difference than what I’ve had in America for the past 21 years. I spend so much time in university looking over case studies about the world that I tend to lose perspective that my studies are just representations of real life. Every case study in every class has real people they’re about.  

I’m so out of my comfort zone here, but there’s something so comforting about that. I walk into class most days expecting it to be horrible, but leave school every day with the biggest smile on my face. Each class has their own personality and specialty and now in one of my last weeks I’m learning how to use that to my advantage. P4 loves to dance, P5 has a thing for the game Hangman, P6 specializes in impromptu karaoke, but one thing I know they all have in common is that they LOVE to color.

Anyways, Annie Out.

CCT Volunteer Tori Carey Week 3 Teaching Placement Baan Thao Boon Rueng

This week in Baan Tao Boon Reung School the children practiced how to tell time. They made their own clocks by using paper plates for the base and cut out arrow shapes for the hands. They had so much fun doing this. Each student got to show their own creative side, while also learning about time. 

 Later on in the week we went on a field trip. The whole school got to visit Chiangmai Zoo on Thursday. We had the best time! The children got to see a range of different animals. Each student was also provided with a zoo booklet which they recorded each animal they found.

We also got the chance to watch a live bird show. Which some of the children got to participate in it. They held out their arms while the birds landed on them, which brought a lot of laughter to the crowd. Their smile says it all! It provided great fun and entertainment for everyone there. 

 After lunch the children all got to go into the water park, which of course I had to go in, despite not having a swimsuit or towel! We got to play some water sports and had a couple of water fights (teachers vs students...which got a bit competitive!)

It was another busy week here at the School however, no matter how hectic or busy our week gets we always have so much fun. 

CCT Volunteer Sarena Sanchez's Blog Post temple School Wat Kuang Singha

A week and a half ago I started my internship at Wat Khuang Sing School where I am teaching English to students. While my time there has not been long, I have experienced many different things. I am teaching English to students 1^st through 3^rd grade and have learned so much in such a short amount of time. The Thai school that I am placed at is extremely different than any school I have seen in the United States. The students are very orderly and polite and the school has a schedule that even includes time for the children to brush their teeth after lunch! There are no bells that indicate when classes are over or starting, but at certain times of the day specific songs play that signal that it is time for either an activity such as lunch, or time to concentrate while returning back to the classroom setting after play time.

Some challenges that I have faced so far include learning how to manage a classroom full of children, lesson planning strategies, and my teacher being out of town for the first three weeks of my internship. As for learning how to manage the classroom, I was able to reach out to friends who have previously taught young children. Specifically a friend who taught English in Korea, where she did not speak their language was extremely helpful. She gave me tips on non-verbal signals and other techniques that made a huge difference in my classes! One thing that definitely made me nervous at the start of my internship was the idea of lesson planning. I do not have any previous experience with creating my own lesson plans and was struggling with what to do. Once I had a better grasp on the information that the children already knew, it became a bit easier to manage. My lesson planning could still use much improvement though and I will continue to work on it! Lastly, when I started my first few days at the school, I learned that my co-teacher would be going out of town for three weeks, leaving me to teach my classes on my own and also take on a majority of hers to teach on my own as well. At first that was extremely intimidating, as I was not used to leading a classroom on my own, but it eventually grew to be a blessing in disguise. I believe that running these classes on my own has given me the opportunity to create a stronger connection with the students, as I am who they go to when they have a question even though we may not understand each other’s languages fully. I will be excited to have my fellow teacher return, but I am grateful that I was able to learn so much from being on my own.

One of the most interesting things that has happened at my school so far is that last Friday the students put on a market in the morning! Each grade had foods to sell. Some of those were popcorn, omelets, fried banana and fried mushrooms. They also sold books, toys and trinkets to other students. I spoke to one of the other teachers who told us that the market happens once a month and is helpful because not only does is build a community among the students and teachers (who also help and participate), but it gives the students invaluable life lessons. It gives them the opportunity to see what running a business is like and lets them practice skills such as counting and money handling. I thought that this was such a great idea and would love to see something like this happen at schools back home!

CCT Volunteer Duncan Brody Blog Post Temple School Wat Thong Gai

   I guessed before coming to Thailand that the story of this trip would be ‘not knowing anything and just going for it’. It turns out I was very right about that. Even the day just before my internship began I knew close to 0% of what I needed. All of the interns woke up on that 4^th Monday (1^st Internship Monday) and drove to the Arts Relief International house. From there, the twelve of us received our general orientation. Luckily, the teachers had a second day of orientation to accomplish a more specific understanding. Our orientation/group leader notified the three of us (ESL Teachers) that our internship was particularly challenging, and that it would require a significant level of resilience and preparation. Since we’re teaching multiple classes of varying age and ability levels everyday our lesson planning needs to be differentiated as well.

    You appreciate the work that goes into being a teacher rather quickly when you’re thrown in to the mix without any warning. I approached my first day of teaching without a knowledge of what speaking/reading/writing level any of the students were at, what my schedule would be, how many students I would have/what their names would be, where my school was or how I would get there. So, when day 1 rolled around I figured it all out the hard way. Here are the answers to all the questions that burned in my head leading up to the start of my work: I teach solo for 6 classrooms ranging in age from 7 to 15 (1^st to 6^th grade). Each class has around twenty students. I teach 2 to 3 of these classes each day (2 on Tue. and Thurs. because I study Thai at the University and miss the morning class block). Mondays are definitely the hardest because I teach grades 1, 2, and 3 all on the same day. The ability level varies from knowing basic conversations/directions/animals etc. to knowing close to no English (this includes letters and numbers). Telling these students what to do is nearly impossible. To get to work I take a twenty-five minute Uber each way every day. This is kind of a blessing in disguise because it gives me the opportunity to meet and have interesting 20 minute conversations with ten different people during my commute each week. I need to spend about 1-2 hours a night working on lesson plans, materials, or doing research of some kind to help improve the classroom.

     These logistics don’t even come close to giving an accurate picture of what my day looks like, however. When you line up the responsibilities and stresses in a list you wonder why you would ever do a job like this, but the reality is something you couldn’t replace with the world. Although I spend the majority of my day hearing little kids (and teachers) spouting out Thai words, one on top of the other, that I simply don’t comprehend, I have met some of the most colorful personalities I have ever known in my short two weeks at the school. The teachers seem to be obsessed with having an American teacher as a ‘play-thing’ to test their English on and tell jokes around, and the kids treat me like we’ve been best friends since birth. Although I give the 1^st – 2^nd graders a lot of flack for being difficult classes that are uncontrollable, the kids have the hugest hearts and are too darn cute to not love. My favorite class is the fifth graders, however. They are such a smart group, and they are all incredibly dedicated to learning and growing together. I’ve never seen such a special group of kids who care so much about their education.

    Something that I realized on my first day on the job is that you can learn more about a culture by witnessing one full day of school than from spending three weeks taking classes at University. As I walked around the school yard and saw the way that the children learn, spend their free time, perform standard daily rituals, and react to their peers and teachers, I became so acutely aware of what that means for the society they live in as a whole. School is where so much of your childhood is spent. These are the years that form the foundation for the rest of your life, and over half of the waking hours of everyday are spent here, learning your values and your desires. That is why I think that teachers are some of the most important people in the world to shaping what children grow to become.

CCT Volunteer Annie Kaplan Blog Post (Temple School Wat Khuang Singha)

Sawatdeeka World! Hi, I’m Annie Kaplan from Danville CA checking on during week three of her internship at Wat Khuang Sing School. I am a Comparative Cultures and Politics/ Secondary Education double major at Michigan State University who hopes to one day work as a history teacher in America. This summer I have decided to make a daring decision and work as an English teacher in Thailand. Both the country and subject were extremely unfamiliar to me which made this a big decision. It was not an easy choice and has not been easy thus far but I think it will all be worth it in the end.

Our group has now been in Thailand 5 and a half weeks. We took classes and went on excursions the first three weeks but since then have been fully immersed in our internship placements. Through these experiences we are all learning so much and will come away from these 10 weeks having absorbed so much through just living and communicating in a new space.

There are 11 interns in total, but at my school it is just my friend Sarena and I. Every day we Uber to school to begin a day filled with learning, teaching, and facing something completely different than what we are accustomed to in the United States. Our first week, in my opinion, was the biggest culture shock I have had in Thailand thus far. Everything is so different compared to my public school upbringing. Our school is a Buddhist temple school, meaning that it’s a government run school with very strict rules. The kids wear a variety of uniforms throughout the week, and sing and chant whenever there’s a transition in the day. Teachers are tough, but show so much dedication to their practice. My favorite part has definitely been the amazing cook at our school who is able to cook for 300+ people and accommodate my strict vegetarian diet! The most shocking to me has been that teachers do not stay in one room, it’s the kids that do. Teachers rotate grades and classes throughout the day bringing everything they need with them as they travel. While I saw this as unfamiliar, the kids take to their daily tasks with more happiness than I’ve ever seen. As a sixth grader, I liked school but nowhere near as much as some of the students here do. When I was in middle school, I was constantly falling asleep in class but the way teachers command a room engages the students unlike any I’ve ever seen.

I am placed with P.4 through P.6 which are the oldest kids at the school. They are learning a range of subjects from clothing to daily actions to common English phrases. Making the transition from studying social science education to English education has been strange but there has not been a moment where I felt that I didn’t know what to talk about. Part of my time at Wat Khuang Sing is spent teaching, and part is spent observing how to be a good teacher. Structuring lesson plans and building activity blocks are skills I am working on with my mentor teacher, who is showing me different ways to engage students and present lessons. We rotate from PowerPoints to flashcards to working out of the book, a sure fire plan to keep students focused.

Games are another strategy used by the English teachers here which has been one of my harder tasks to tackle. Something about explaining a game in a foreign language just makes it a tad bit harder for both the kids and myself. There have been moments where I have gotten up in front of them to teach and the level they understand of the words coming out of my mouth has been zero. So yea, it’s been tough. I’ve been stressed and exhausted and overwhelmed but there’s something tremendously uplifting about seeing the smiling faces of my kids every day.