Teaching Nightmare!

[Jim's_a_Thai_Fox]

Hi,

As I'm sure many of you have experienced, your school can get the occasional request from other schools in the area for one of the foreign teachers to come and do a conversation/listening & speaking course etc.... usually lasting about 2 hours per lesson spread over 30 hours or so. Normally good news as it's extra cash and I don't think it's bad to get experience with other schools and make new contacts.

I have done this many times, and always enjoyed it. But today.... oh dear.

Yesterday, my boss asked if I could go to a Wittayalai school about 15 km out of town to teach a 2 hour listening/speaking/conversation/introduce yourself etc. course. There would be 4 lessons in total. I already had a course done, so thought that there would be no problems. The Thai teacher from the school came to meet me this morning to pick up my course (to photocopy for his students) and explain about the conditions. I knew there would be 60-70 kids (conversation? really?), aged 18-20 studying a variety of things, including the dreaded 'dead head technical students' and that they wanted a foreigner to help them in their conversation - just your usual. OK, ok, no problem...

I got there at 3pm and was whisked in to meet the director - checked shirt, black jacket, amulet, big ruby ring, black trousers.... oh-so typical boss man. He told me he wanted me to break them into groups and teach them about 5 sentences each - nothing too much. I was happy to hear this - reasonable expectations from the Thai boss are generally a rarity!

Anyways, I was led to the classroom - I was expecting some sort of lecture hall/big classroom. First surprise: 80 kids sitting on the floor in the huge canteen totally open on three sides, no computer/projector, no desk (for me or the kids)... nada. Just a mic. It was like teaching outdoors - the place was huge and not suited at all for such a lesson.

I was completely stumped! All the kids were sat in rows, tucked in behind their buddies, all the guys separate from the girls, just like there were in assembly or waiting to do PE. There was a mix of technical students and business students. To compound my misery, there were about 10 Thai teachers all sitting around the periphery, not contributing, but also making the kids doubly anxious about speaking. It turned out the kids were worse than bad at English and had no desire to speak to me in front of so many people. All my questions went unanswered, my lesson was a disaster and I hated every second of it!

I started by splitting them into 8 groups, hoping to get them in smaller, more relaxed numbers. There was your basic 'where do you come from? what is your name?' questions and answers... total waste of time - hardly any student ventured an answer with me, either through embarrassment or lack of ability. I drew a total blank when encouraging them to speak to each other with me listening. I slowly toured the groups, using the mic sometimes to give examples... there was such a lack of energy/interest it was almost enough to make me say '<deleted> it, let's call it a day!'

Now, I have to go back this Friday and do it all over again with another 70 kids, then back next week for a 'new lesson' with each group.

Put quite simply - HELP!!!!

This time around, I was totally unprepared for the environment and ability of the students... I don't ever ever ever want to be in such a position where I know I am crashing and burning, that the students don't care/don't understand and it is all just a total disaster!

Any ideas???

Cheers and I hope that reading my drivel either brought a smile to your face and has let you know that you are not alone in your teaching hel_l! I thought after 6 years here that I wouldn't be caught out again! How wrong I was!

At the very least it has made me appreciate me normal teaching position :-)

Regards

James

[Firelily]

Is it an option to run / cancel? I would fake dengue or anything to get out of this nightmare. Sorry I cannot offer any helpful insights, just my condolences.

[wolf5370]

I don't teach anymore, but I had a class like this (60 students - 17-19 y/o) once for a term. What I found was best was to repy on the old model/drill - I divided them into two sides of the room and we used a two person narrative (from a cartoon from an English book that had the content I was trying to teach). There are always some more brave than other, so what I did was got them to compete for loudness in chanting the lines - one side of 30 againstb the other side of 30. Then I swapped sides, so that they each got to say both sets of lines. I pointed to each side of the room (each group) for their line each time and chanted it - loads of energy - at first a few muffled voices followed me, but perseverance won through - after a while I could just point to each side and the would say the line. It worked well and both sides knew the phrases - the cartoon helped them understand the context and meaning - and the required response.

One thing I have noticed is that the katoeys are the loudest and bravest (they want to be the centre of attention) and playing to them can help get the group started especially if you can get a laugh out of them (or a sassy comment from them that makes everyone else laugh). In this class I had several and a little dance wioth the chant or a snap of a well know song or anything funny (teacer is silly/funny) etc breaks the ice and warms to you - next time, the braver ones (the katoeys and the braver other kids) will reconnect very quickly. Keep the energy up and keep the smile and playfulness and things shouldn't be so bad.

Having said thayt I had a class about the same size, once a week last lesson (2 hours) on a Wednesday, where anything I tried never worked - now I hated that lesson and it still amkes me shiver. The course was business English with given text books and the kids had very low English abaility - it was way over their heads and all they wanted to do was sleep and go home early. This was a college not a school.

[Tropicalevo]

I don't know, but this is sad. No criticism of the farang teachers honestly, but most Thais that I know really want to learn stuff. How come the Thai education system seems to stop this?

My wife is a teacher at an International school. Kids are spoilt - yes, but they still respond to learning. How can we make this better?

[liveinlos]

A Teachers job is to teach

To find ways to relate to the class so that they participate and learn

You are the one failing because you are not relating to the students

As a teacher first and foremost, you should understand how to research on the internet

Fear of public speaking is a concern shared by 90% of the students in the whole world

Are you aware of this?

Are you aware of the shame and humiliation that speaking and failing in front of so many students causes?

Try relating to the students with things they relate to

Like an old game of show and tell

Show something they are interested in and have them tell you what it is in English

Iphone, blackberry, Nokia, Man U shirt, whatever,

Hold up an object, ask them to tell you what it is

Throw in some funny object like a roll of toilet paper or something to make them laugh

This will break the ice because they are starting off with something they know and not have a fear of the unknown

I am sure you can put 10 objects together and get them talking about them in no time

Good luck

Edited August 25, 2010 by liveinlos

[chuckacinco]

I was in the same spot quite a few years ago when I had to do the same thing. It was at Matayom Wat That Thong on Sukhumvit 65 (the big funeral temple and the associated school). I had 80 students sitting on the floor in one of the unused funeral halls. It was an hour and a half three times a week “conversation.” The students were the whole range of Matayom from 1 to 6. What a disaster! I tried small groups with small modeled conversations and then visiting each of the small groups to check. Didn't work.

What I did do instead was a series of cloze exercises that ended up working well. Actually working better because of the open space and the large number of students. Basically it involves taping some information on the backs of students (have a female student tape the information on the female students) and giving them time to fill in the cloze spaces or answer questions. They need to read quickly off each others backs like a game and I was surprised and pleased how much English they used. That they had different questions or different clozes stopped them from copying. I would get 20 or 30 minutes. These information gap activities can be as complex or as difficult as you see fit. This can be ANYTHING but for example you could copy the Wikipedia bio of Lady Gaga and other popular stars and tape them on the backs of the students. The students would have to read and copy information like "When was Lady Gaga born?" Where is Lady Gaga from?" Like that. I would guess you have enough experience to see how you could really mix this up with more and more bio (or whatever) and more difficult questions. Keep the fun going and sit back and watch the chaos.

So that's one way. The second way was using a giant boom box radio (the acoustics were terrible) and playing a simple song like Phil Collins' “Groovy Kind of Love” where they had copies of the song and filled in the clozes (clozes?). The bad acoustic will make them guess the words which is the best part of the lesson. We check the answers, reward the winners and then we sing. All of them. Some English there too.

From these initial classes, eventually I could do more standard English stuff but given the circumstances I thought this worked.

Good Luck

chuckacinco

[Somtamnication]

Run to the hills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[canuck1941]

Run to the hills!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I had a similar situation in a Thai high school in Mae Sot, 45 minutes of conversation once a week to 19 classes, about 700 students. What I found useful was to prepare small cards, each with a different identity that covered five or six basic introductory questions. After ten minutes or so of this, have them exchange cards, then again, and again. They're all on their feet of course, mingling, laughing, having fun, and, most importantly, practicing practical English. Chook dee.