As I said in my last post, I was finally called upon to do some more traditional work and do some trainings in conversational English. Only this time, I was given three days to find help and plan for 2 two-day trainings for 200 principals in total. Half of the principals would attend the first two days and the other half would attend the second two days. Seeing as it was Friday when I was informed and the training would start on the following Wednesday (and the trainers be at the hotel on Tuesday) I didn’t have an ideal amount of time.
I called nearly everyone I knew in the surrounding provinces and almost everyone was busy with their own camps. Luckily, my very good friend Jessie was available to come and help out. I honestly don’t know how I would have been able to do this training without her. I could sit and write about how I would have actually liked the training to go, but I think that will just depress me. Instead I will write about how it actually went down.
On Tuesday, Jessie and I arrived at the hotel with my fellow training staff and that night we figured out what we were going to teach the next day and finalized the schedule. We made materials and came up with a loose idea of how things would hopefully run. The schedule included two of the sessions that I had planned for the previous training: Introductions, Filling Out Forms and Small Talk about Weather. We planned new sessions about Talking About My School and My School’s Schedule.
Saw Naw Panya requested that we teach them English that they could use to talk about their school. So we talked about the things the school would have: students, teachers, buildings, classrooms, bathrooms. We practiced sounds like /l/ and /r/ and /s/ and /th/ a lot. Some of it stuck. We also talked about subjects and how to tell time in English (Jessie had just done a camp where she taught about telling time and mentioned that it wasn’t until then that she realized how difficult it is). We touched on the importance of including the /l/ sound in “clock” when saying “o’clock.”
Successes
At the end of the first day, they formed into groups and made posters about one of their schools using all the information they had learned about that day. Then afterwards, they planned and performed a skit in English using what they learned. We saw some pretty good stuff and everyone was smiling and having a good time.
The second day we did filling out forms and talking about the weather. Saw Naw Panya had also planned a Power Point about speaking English correctly, since often times the Thai pronunciation will change the words into something else. The Power Point was full of excellent and funny examples.
Challenges
The first session was rather challenging. In Thailand, as I saw in the other training, it is not uncommon for people to just leave and not come back. Which happened again at this training. There are no repercussions for this. Additionally, we did not have a chance to plan and request a more successful set up for the room. I also believe that Jessie and I were not very successful at communicating our expectations from the very beginning such as trying to listen to us as we spoke in English instead of just talking through our directions and paying attention to the Thai translation.
But I think that we adapted pretty well to the lessons we learned from the first two days and that the second session was much more successful. We still had the problem of people leaving, and I don’t think that is something that will change easily, but I can say that everyone was present at the end of the second day and that on the post survey no one said that they were not at all confident speaking English, which I am proud of.
I think that these two trainings were excellent learning experiences and that I know a lot more about what to expect and plan for in the future. I know that I will be doing a training for matayom teachers (equivalent of 7-12th grades) soon and I have a feeling that one will be even better.