BRE 21: End of the Semester

BRE 21: End of the Semester
My first semester of teaching is drawing to a close. I tested my first and second graders by buying animal crackers and making them identify each animal in English before they could eat them. I am pleased to say they passed. Teaching is a trade, a craft, a profession that like a fine wine, cheese, or anyone of the other things I am deprived of (I don’t miss them at all, really), improves with age, up until a certain point. But there is a point when it goes bad. Perhaps I should ditch the tantalizing metaphor. Teaching is hard. The week of practice teaching I received during training was not adequate to prepare me for life as a full-time teacher. I knew nothing of curriculum building, lesson planning, classroom management, or student assessment before I set foot on Thai soil. Granted I have many other areas of expertise (interpreting abstract paintings, to name one), but surprisingly that has helped me very little in the classroom. Semester one was a crash course in teaching. There were definitely highs. My little ones know their alphabet cold, and watching them prance around the room with one hand on their head yelling “U- Unicorn” never fails to make me smile. I watched my six graders become more extroverted, motivated about learning, and curious about the world around them before my very eyes. There were a few slight mistakes. I accidentally taught that people from Norway are Nordish, gave Thai English teachers the wrong definition for “auxiliary verb”, and my first graders thinks vegetables are animals, but I figure there is plenty of time to remedy all errors. At this point, I feel vastly more anchored and confident in my abilities as an educator, and am far more comfortable in the classroom. I learned how to strike an appropriate balance between lesson planning and improvisation, and how to conduct a two hour class that does not leave me drained of all life force by the end.
English teaching aside, my geography class and art club were well-received, and enabled me to educate students and teachers alike where Africa is and that South America is a continent. With the help of my co-teachers, I started projects I believe will be meaningful at both schools. We successfully made hand soap from scratch at one, and I got approval to begin an anti-smoking campaign at my other one, as well as interest from the hospital in expanding the project community wide. I also feel as firmly established in my community as I could be at this point. At a retirement party earlier this week, I knew just as many people as my co-teacher, including the members of the band. I finally broke down and agreed to sing karaoke at a school-closing dinner, which resulted in me and Pii Som performing Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On” as a duet. I read the entirety of War and Peace and brought s’mores to Thailand. I celebrated a friend’s birthday by having a beatnik-inspired weekend where we assumed false identities and unwittingly ended up at a House of Ill-Repute at 5:30 in the morning, ultimately watching the sunrise from our hotel roof. I lost over 10 pounds and survived on 2000 baht ($60) for a whole month-including a trip to expensive Bangkok- after having my wallet stolen. I lived alone for the first time and filled two journals with thoughts, inspirations, and dreams.
But all is not milk and honey. Thai is a collectivist culture, and this means that Thai people have no problem walking uninvited into my kitchen, looking through my refrigerator without permission, and lecturing me on not eating enough rice. Whenever I leave my house, they ask where I am going, and whenever I go to a store, strangers ask me what I am buying. To them this is normal, but to me it can feel intrusive and nosy. I get stared at constantly and told regularly I would be much better looking if I had longer hair and my face was not so red…5 minutes after a bike ride in 100 degree heat. Another element of Thai culture is that criticizing ones appearance publicly is acceptable and common. It is not seen as insulting to call someone fat to their face. To Thai people, it is an obvious fact, so why keep it silent? This means when I get a pimple, it is pointed at and inquired after all day long. When I got my arm rash, I had people of all shapes and sizes grabbing my arm, examining it closely, and telling me it was unattractive. This cultural foible was sharply manifested when teaching about adjectives. We taught physical description words, and Pii Som selected students to demonstrate each word. For vocabulary like tall and short, this was no problem. For the words “fat”, “weak” and “ugly”, I found her selection of volunteers somewhat awkward, but I was the only one. The students pointed out as fat and ugly stood up just like the ones picked for being beautiful and thin.
While physical things can be openly discussed, feelings are not. Thai people rarely get upset and when they do, you cannot tell. Their faces do not express emotion, unlike my very evocative, American face. When I am annoyed or upset, I have to hold it in with all my might, so as not to offend or alienate anyone. The usual response when someone dies roughly translates to “no worries”. Making a scene or acknowledging a problem is inappropriate here. My cultural understanding on this front was put to the test recently. It is ordinary in Thai schools for teachers to hit the students. Corporal punishment is an accepted and common form of discipline. Pii Som and I teach two large classes of rowdy 7th graders, who are very difficult to control. Due to my lack of experience, I am beyond my abilities in this particular area. I tried basic methods like staring the kids down or waiting silently until they stop talking, but these tricks only go so far. Som’s reaction was usually to pinch the ears of the misbehaving students. This does not hurt them, and served more to embarrass, but it still it made me uncomfortable and was clearly ineffective. I talked to Pii Som about it, and asked her not to physically assault the students. She told me it was the “law in Thailand” that teachers have to hit the students. Uh-huh. I said it was important to me and she agreed to try not to. The next week, I returned from printing out a worksheet to find her whacking half of our class on their backsides with a bamboo stick. I felt tears and anger welling up inside me. It was incredibly upsetting for me to see, as well as a betrayal of her promise. After the initial shock, I calmly set the worksheets on the desk and walked out of the classroom. I sat outside at a table under a tree for the rest of the day, writing and practicing my Thai reading skills. After school, I told Som as sweetly as I could that if she did that again, I would not teach with her. Since then, we have had no problems.
When I first arrived at site, I was so concerned with being culturally appropriate and living up to my high status as a teacher in the community that I was borderline up-tight. This is partly due to our training, where our “cross-cultural” teacher freaked us all out about Thai cultural norms and I went into site terrified that if I let my knees show, wore a silver bracelet, or displayed irritation, I would alienate people and be perceived as loose, rich, or mean. By now, I have learned for myself what is ok and what is not. I am more comfortable being me. I’ve started wearing my sunglasses and my peace necklace around my village. I can make jokes, albeit lame ones, in Thai. When I get frustrated, I express it nicely, rather than keeping it in. I know it is ok for me to wear shorts that show my knees on weekends, but not ok to leave a collar button open when I am at school. I thought in the beginning that my young, American self and my site-self had to be kept separate, and the first, hidden. Since I am more comfortable now, and since people are more comfortable with me, the two selves are integrating more than they were before.