"I can’t stand to fly, I’m not that naive"

So I'm a teacher now. First week down, and I have every Friday off because they don't have enough students for fourth class this year. Oh ya, and I don't start before 12:30 any day.

The school is about 8km from where I'm staying so I don't get changed into my teaching gear (socks and shirt) until I get to near the school. Kind of like Superman, except I change from mild mannered farang into Crewl Mike (Teacher Mike) behind a coconut tree. I practice my 'wai' then I'm rolling on into school.

First day I was very nervous but tried to act confident...I was waiting for one of the Thai teachers to shout 'fraud' and scarily would have been relieved if someone had asked me an IT question. But no, Crewl Quan just pointed to a classroom and said "Class one ready!" .

To say the Thai classroom is different from an Irish classroom would be an understatement. The school is in a remote island village and is totally relaxed. There where 9 kids in Class one. I think I had them all seated only once in 50 mins. I had learned how to say "Stop" and "Listen" in Thai for emergencies but used them both repeatedly in the first 20 minutes. There english is very basic and they can't write their names in english yet. Then came the time to sing a song. "If your happy and you know clap your hands". "If your happy and you know it /thump the living daylights out of the lad next to you/wander off to the jacks/have a quick nap/cover your eyes with your hands". The finish to the lesson was playing a game...get in circle throw the ball to someone and say "My name is ". After 5 minutes I had to change it to sitting on the ground and roll cause the lads in the class seemed determined to take an eye out. Honestly the lesson didn't go as bad as the above would suggest, but these are the things I remember.

Next, kindergarden/nursery. They were wary of me at first. Some looked like they were no more then 3 while others looked bigger then Class one. We played drums(drum to crescendo and do shhhhhhh). I sang "Twinkle Twinkle Little star" and put some silver stars on their hands. By the end of the class the kids where doing star jumps off the table onto my back, and baying "Mike! Mike!" looking for my attention. I then juggled 3 balls and couldn't stop laughing at all the open mouthed gaping. Once they saw me laughing they started rolling around on the ground laughing themselves. They're adorable.

I had the same 2 classes the following day, nursery went mostly the same way but I got stricter with Class one and managed to teach them the names of 6 fruit. Although it did take me over 20 minutes to get them all to write down the 6 words; they have a tedancy to write small 'b's and 'd's in mirror image (like in Thai writing). The lads decided half way through to make a human pyramid, but soon tired and returned to coloring their fruit printouts.

Tomorrow I have 2nd and 3rd for the first time. I spent all evening preparing lesson plans but mostly I will trying to assess there level and identify the "pyramid builders" in the Classes.

Thanks for all the emails; I promise to respond as soon as I get time,
M.

Humor is the affectionate communication of insight. Leo Rosten