Last week was hectic. The first part of the week was spent preparing for the EIS (English Integrated Studies) Seminar that we were hosting from Thursday-Saturday. Our school is the EIS headquarters for this area of Thailand (Nan, Phrae, Pua, etc.). So for 3 days we hosted about 160 teachers at our school and a hotel in town. The idea of this seminar was to help the teachers learn English skills for the classroom and practice writing English lesson plans for math/science/computers. There were several Thai EIS teachers from Srinan involved, and Rhea and I did a ton of work on it. One morning we also had Gina (Filipina) and Linda (Canadian) join us--they are 2 English teachers at the school.
Some parts of the seminar were easy and required very little effort, but others were incredibly exhausting. On the first morning we had "stations" to teach the teachers basic English--they would rotate between the stations. We were given material to teach and told to prepare a 35 minute fun/interactive lesson. Which we did. However, speeches went way over time, so our 35 minutes was cut down to 15 minutes per station. Needless to say, the quality suffered. Hopefully my "students" got the gist! Anyway, we will have to give the same presentations for another seminar in a month, so at least I have the materials prepared (assuming we have adequate time).
Another big challenge was helping the teachers with their lesson plans. Some of them have very good English skills, so helping them was just a grammar/spell check. Very nice! Unfortunately others were very weak. This led to situations where they wrote Thai lesson plans and tried to translate to English. Let me just say that this approach really does not work well. I had one guy I struggled with for some time, and even with the help of 2 very proficient English speaking Thais, the best I could understand of his topic was "you can't always trust what your eyes see." Ok. Don't know what to do with that. It had something to do with how you might see double if you hold your hand close to your face, but there really is only 1 object--I decided to call his project "the subjective nature of eyesight." Really the whole thing was a mystery to me. Way too many teachers with weak English skills, not enough Thai teachers to help me and Rhea with the lesson plans. But we did survive.
 |
| Presentations at the hotel |
 |
| Working on the lesson plans |
The last day several of the teachers were asked to give presentations on their lesson plans. There were presentations both from the EIS faculty at our school (prepared ahead of time) and also the "students" at the seminar (the best lesson plans were selected from the day before). These went surprisingly well, and Rhea and I had a rather relaxing day. I, however, did not miss my daily opportunity to humiliate myself. Pee Poi, a chemistry teacher at our school, was doing a presentation on the alkali metals and wanted to demonstrate their reactions with water. So Rhea and I had to go on stage and pretend to be metals dropped into water--they fizz, spark, and burst into flame, depending on the metal. We alternated examples, and the first few were harmless enough--just shake our limbs/jiggle a bit. However Pee Poi specifically requested that I do cesium, the most violent reaction. For this I had to totally spaz out on stage. I mean shake my arks, my head, my body, and shriek like a banshee. Very professional. Apparently they figure that an American is more willing to totally humiliate herself in public than another Asian, and to be honest they are probably correct. But it was sooooo embarrassing, yelling and flailing on stage in front of ~200 teachers. Classy.
To make matters even worse, I don't think I will ever live it down! After the seminar was over, the vice-director wanted to take me, Pee Mam, Rhea, and Ping Pong (English teacher) out to dinner. He speaks no English, but the first thing he did when we arrived was point at me and start flailing his arms. Yeah, as I said, super professional. This happened several more times throughout the meal, accompanied by enthusiastic giggles. Oh well, it's not like I ever have to see these people again or anything. Oh wait...
The one big downside of the seminar is that it fell on Wai Kru Day, or teacher respect. This is the day that students pay respect to the teachers by giving them beautiful handmade flower arrangements. I had really been looking forward to seeing this, but at least I got to see the arrangements in the morning. They were nothing short of spectacular. It is truly amazing what these kids can do! Rhea and I got a small lesson from some of our students the day before in the construction of the flowers. Or rather, I asked to see, and they showed me how to fold the leaves. I was horrible at it, but it was nice that they showed us. I have never seen anything like these arrangements before. On the day itself, the arrangements from each class are judged in a competition. Then they are given to the class advisor by a boy and girl from the class. It would have been nice to observe, but I am lucky to have seen what I did.
 |
| Rhea and one of our students |
 |
| Making the arrangement |
 |
| The collection prepared for judging |
 |
| Just wow |
 |
| One of my favorites |
Linda's (the Canadian) reaction to all this? "The don't even need to know English...they can do this!" I will admit it was very impressive. I wish I had this kind of skill, but I guess doing it every year for your entire life does make you pretty good at it! Anyway, that is all for now. More fun stories to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment