My job.

I am a kindergarten teacher (K3) at an international school in the heart of Bangkok. My job is to mold the minds of impressionable children from age 4-6…kind of scary, haha! I am enjoying my job a little more each week. I had no teaching experience prior to coming here and now I have my own classroom of 19 kids. Some of the kids speak little-to-no English, so it has been a challenge, especially since I had no idea what I was doing at first. Apparently I am the first teacher this school has hired with no experience; most of the teachers who work at the school have lived in Bangkok for years. There is a suprising amount of pressure teaching at this school. The parents treat kindergarten like western parents treat high school, because it is really uncommon for children in Thailand to advance far in school. Plus, my school is expensive and we operate very closely with the parents. I am expected to keep close communication with them and I usually write messages to them 3 times a week talking about what we are doing in class and how their child is doing. Waaaayyy more intense than I pictured kindergarten to be; plus I have to lesson plan every day and teach all subjects. I am much busier in Thailand than I expected to be!

I really like my coworkers; they are from all over the world (England, New Zealand, Bangkok, India, and Iran). They have really helped me with advice of new teaching games and methods to keep the kids attentive and somewhat well-behaved. Likewise, my students are from all over the globe: India, Thailand, Japan, Korea. As big of a pain as they can be at times, I love my kids, they make my day so much better and make me laugh all the time.

The hardest thing for me to do is be a good diciplinarian; it was really tough for me to get stern with them because they are so cute and usually mean well. I have found a better method though, I made a “safari” board in the front of the class with a little jeep and I made cutouts using each child’s headshot picture. If they are good students, they get smiley faces next to their name . Whoever has the most at the end of the day get to “go on safari” and they usually go nuts over that. If they are bad, they get the dreaded “boo-boo face” next to their name, which means trouble. We had parent-teacher conferences last week and they went really well. I was so nervous but all the parents seemed to really like me and I got a bunch of cool gifts and stuff. I also coach soccer after school-funny since I haven’t played since middle school-but I am actually getting to be pretty lethal on the pitch as they say. I am coaching the tiny kids-K3s and the older kids-grade 1 through 3. Its really fun coaching the older kids because we usually scrimmage the whole time and I get to showcase my skills and feel good about myself as I dribble around 10-year-olds. I have to write a lesson plan now and get to bed early but upcoming posts will be about the Bangkok protests, my daily commute, and some random funny stories I need to tell.