I'm never going to top this summer break (Part 1)

Summer vacation started for me exactly 2 weeks ago.  In the past 2 weeks Kevin and I have been to a Thai wedding in Hat Yai, an island called Koh Ngai, Angkor Wat in Cambodia, and Chiang Mai!  And we got to reunite with Chris & Julie for a while!  We leave Chiang Mai tomorrow for Chiang Rai and Luang Prabang in Laos.  Then to Bangkok for a few days and hopefully to Myanmar for about a week.  After that it's Bangkok again and back to Chicago!

Prepare for a couple weeks of photo-dumps :)
I'll post more to Facebook - but these are my favorites so far.

Koh Ngai:

Cambodia:
Angkor Wat at sunrise!

Stay tuned for the Chiang Mai & Chiang Rai photos!  You MUST see our ziplining photos and videos!!

Life of a (foreign) teacher

SCHOOL'S OUT COUNTDOWN: 7 school days

I seriously cannot believe that my teaching time in Thailand is almost over.  I also realized earlier today that other than posting about how terrible my first week was and how weird the Christmas celebration was, I haven't said much else about school!

So here's an update:
I still head home each day feeling defeated and discouraged . . . but I remind myself again and again and again that it is actually just a small group of students in each class that make my job so difficult.  And it is developmentally normal for them to "challenge authority" and be brats.  They're still fighting with brooms/fists, spraying/spitting water at each other, yelling and/or singing at the tops of their lungs, stealing and using an entire roll of masking tape (which they stole out of my bag) to wrap around their knuckles, running in and out of the room, etc.  The first few weeks of this I really did not know what to do with myself.  It has gotten MUCH better, but even in my best classes there are still a few crazy kids.  That's the life of a teacher, right? 

On a positive note, I am proud to report that none of my things have gone flying out the windows in the last few weeks . . . except for the giant die that we use for games, but I'm pretty sure it was an accident, and someone jumped out after it and then climbed back in to return it to me.  Improvement!

Thanks for showing up, boys.  (None of the girls came to class.)

Some of my favorites

On a typical day, the majority of the students are either playing language games with me or not paying any attention at all.  I can't force everyone to learn English, but I do appreciate the ones that at least sit still and stay relatively quiet so that the rest of them can learn something.  Our games have gone from 'read this word' to 'put it into a sentence' to 'give me a sentence with more than four words', (and if your team does it correctly, then roll the giant die or throw a ball at the targets.)  Also, they can now handle practicing dialogue by tossing around the 'Question Ball' and 'Answer Ball' without sending them flying out of the classroom.  (They do still peg each other in the head hard enough to bust the stitches on the ball, but at least they're forcing each other to speak English?)
AND they're sort of able to read and answer questions in writing!  Truly, I'm proud of how much most of them have learned.  And the ones who spend their time running around?  They had to ask to see my roster because they didn't know how to spell their own nicknames.  

My best (and biggest) 6th grade class

One thing that has made me feel much better about the chaos is the Thai teachers complaining about their classes as well.  The students generally behave better for the Thai teachers so they don't get beat with a bamboo stick, but there are still a few select classes that are notorious for their bad behavior.  Some of the teachers have asked me about these specific classes "because when I teach them they so naughty and running and not ever listen."  So at least it's not just me.  Plus, unlike the Thai teachers, I'm counting down to the end of this.  I don't know how they do what they do.  Not to mention that they have to do all the "normal" teacher tasks outside of the classroom that I'm exempt from as the foreign teacher. 

The rest of that 6th grade class

Although this job as a foreign teacher is tough, I still think teaching back home is more stressful. It's hard to compare because it's really a completely different job.  But other than preparing games/lessons, grading tests, and writing monthly reports, I don't have much to do outside of the classroom.  There are no parents to deal with, no conferences, no staff meetings, no admin. e-mails to respond to, no morning/recess duty, no providing materials/jackets/food for students who don't have enough,  no stressing about the lives of the students who don't have those things, no differentiating for small groups, no time spent looking for read-alouds/flipcharts/guided reading books, no translating newsletters/homework, no IEP meetings, not even a classroom environment to worry about!

But, somehow, I still miss real teaching.

And I'm sure, once I'm back in a classroom in the states,  I'll miss whatever kind of teaching this is.