The Students Constantly Amaze Me

Wednesday, 26 January 2005

As Christy and I discover the new responsibilities of our job of advertising, screening, interviewing, and selecting new teachers for the second year of our English Program to start in May, we discuss our past 5 months of teaching and how far the students have come. All eight of our students are at different levels of speaking, reading, and writing ability, and yet they have all improved in their English skills so much! Even the most quiet and reserved ones speak English everyday, and are becoming such bilingual individuals. Both Christy and I use a lot of songs in our teaching, and the students just absolutely love them! Plus, they actually understand the concepts better and know what they are talking about when they sing them. Their current favorites: "Little Planets" (to the tune of "Ten Little Indians") as they are learning about the solar system in Science, "If You Love Our World, Clap Your Hands" (to the tune of "If You're Happy And You Know It") as they learn about recycling and protecting our Earth, and "BINGO", which they are learning in English. We are now at a point where the students are in guided reading groups and are doing literacy centers, plus we do an hour of varied subject centers after school where they practice the content they are learning. The students mimic the teachers (and with three teachers, they hear a lot of different things) as all students do, and their favorite phrases include: "Are you listening?", "Sit down, right now!", and "That's not okay." There's Mon, our precocious leader of the class who would flourish in an American classroom because of his ability to speak, read, write, and understand both English and Thai fluently; he constantly keeps the teachers in check and corrects us when our Thai pronunciation is wrong by spelling it phonetically in English and sounding the word out. Mint is as hyperactive as always (in our Open House video, he was constantly bouncing around and usually can be seen with a popsicle for breakfast) but loves to do incredible number equations in his head, going from numbers in the thousands to a million, to make today's number in math. Then, there's Phu who has less tantrums and crying fits because he can understand more English, and Ploy, who just joined us a few months ago, but is coming out of her shell and speaking more and more English daily. It has been a joy to teach a group of kids who share their snacks with each other (and me!), play together without cliques, and are becoming more exposed to thinking and solving problems on their own in both English and Thai. I'll miss seeing them grow over the years.