(no subject)
Happy October, kids. I spent the weekend swimming in the ocean in the Gulf of Thailand. What did you do?
Today was the first day of my teaching practices here and it was a lot of fun. Starting from the moment we pulled up in a mini-van at this little elementary school in the middle of nowhere, we got total celebrity treatment from the kids. They were 6-10 years old or so, and kept shyly peeking out at us from windows and doorways. Some of the braver ones would shout "Hello!" then tuck their heads back in. The classes all greeted us by standing up and with a "good morn-NING teach-UH" in unison. I taught a 30 minute vocabulary/conversation lesson on the topic of "What are you afraid of?" (What are you afraid of/I'm afraid of elephants/Why is that?/Because they are big, etc.).
The kids are so well behaved and some are so shy that you can barely hear them when they talk. I was taping some vocabulary picture cards to the board, and I guess struggling a little with 1 hand full of the papers and the other holding the big tape dispenser and setting it down to stick things to the board. Without saying anything, I instantly had 2 little boys standing at the front beside me to hold things for me. When one of the pictures taped to the board came unstuck and fell down, one of the kids in the front row instantly got it for me.
We taught in groups of 4, and I was the only female in my group so was the favorite of the girls. During the lessons after mine while the guys were teaching and I was supposed to be filling in a "peer evaluation sheet" for them, the girls sitting in the back of the room nearest me kept smiling at me and asking my name and what country I was from. During the break some of the girls had little Hello Kitty notebooks and wanted me to write my name in it for them, and they made a balloon animal and gave it to me. They were all wearing the matching uniforms and automatically line up boy-girl-boy-girl in some pre-arranged order. We're going back to the same school tomorrow, so I get to do this all over again.
Today was the first day of my teaching practices here and it was a lot of fun. Starting from the moment we pulled up in a mini-van at this little elementary school in the middle of nowhere, we got total celebrity treatment from the kids. They were 6-10 years old or so, and kept shyly peeking out at us from windows and doorways. Some of the braver ones would shout "Hello!" then tuck their heads back in. The classes all greeted us by standing up and with a "good morn-NING teach-UH" in unison. I taught a 30 minute vocabulary/conversation lesson on the topic of "What are you afraid of?" (What are you afraid of/I'm afraid of elephants/Why is that?/Because they are big, etc.).
The kids are so well behaved and some are so shy that you can barely hear them when they talk. I was taping some vocabulary picture cards to the board, and I guess struggling a little with 1 hand full of the papers and the other holding the big tape dispenser and setting it down to stick things to the board. Without saying anything, I instantly had 2 little boys standing at the front beside me to hold things for me. When one of the pictures taped to the board came unstuck and fell down, one of the kids in the front row instantly got it for me.
We taught in groups of 4, and I was the only female in my group so was the favorite of the girls. During the lessons after mine while the guys were teaching and I was supposed to be filling in a "peer evaluation sheet" for them, the girls sitting in the back of the room nearest me kept smiling at me and asking my name and what country I was from. During the break some of the girls had little Hello Kitty notebooks and wanted me to write my name in it for them, and they made a balloon animal and gave it to me. They were all wearing the matching uniforms and automatically line up boy-girl-boy-girl in some pre-arranged order. We're going back to the same school tomorrow, so I get to do this all over again.