My first semester of working in Thai schools in now on the books and completed. Last Thursday the students had their second of two days of testing and the school shut down for the semester after that. Officially, by the government, school was supposed to go until October 10, but I’m not complaining. We’re supposed to go back on November 1. It is officially bpit term, literally meaning “closed term.”
I’ve got a solo vacation to Laos for two weeks planned and I’m going to leave on Thursday. But before I get ahead of myself, I want to take this as a chance to reflect on my first semester.
What Material was Covered
First, I would say that by US standards I did not teach a lot. I mean that both in frequency of being in the classroom and the amount of material covered. I would say that we got through about one unit; we covered classroom objects, colors, numbers, describing the objects using colors and numbers, possessives using names, possessives using “my” and “your” and six prepositions to be used in the sentence frame “The (object) is (preposition) the (object).” I was able to teach the letter sounds for the entire alphabet and in a couple of classes introduced sounding out words.
Final Test
I did not do any writing or reading exercises this semester, but the test was mostly written. Before the test, we reviewed with them and had them write down everything, including example sentences and along with the test they were given a word bank that included all of the words they would use on the test. It was up to them to choose the correct word and put them in the correct order. I also tested each student individually on the letter sounds
Class Results
Both of the fourth grade classes did not get a lot of practice with possessives and did not get the lessons on prepositions, so they did not take that part of the test. One fourth grade class was particularly difficult to motivate and get to participate. Most days they did not get to play the “game” because they refused to learn the words. I offered to teach them different topics, and created four different lesson plans for them, which all yielded the same results. My co-teacher I decided to go back to teaching them the same as everyone else. They received the same test as the other students. The other fourth grade class that was engaged with all of the lessons only did marginally better on the test anyway.
Both sixth grade classes performed extremely well on the tests, with a pretty regular bell curve distribution of test scores. I would say the same of the fifth grade classes as well, though their averages were about 10% lower.
Because of the lack of participation on my second co-teacher’s part and the fact that I only actually taught two letters to grades 1-3, I chose not to test them. They may have been tested otherwise, but I don’t know what it would have been on and I probably don’t want to know the scores.
Looking Ahead
More seasoned Peace Corps volunteers tell me that there will be less teaching happening next semester because of sports weeks and scout weeks and other things that in the States would be considered extracurriculars, and technically are here too, but because of the importance of appearance and ceremony take over curricular time.
This all may seem kind of glum and down, but really, I feel extremely excited about what did happen. My main co-teacher has been stellar. She makes herself available to lesson plan and follows through with what we planned. She participates in the planning, coming up with ideas on her own. When it comes to executing the lesson plans, I show her how to do it in maybe two or three classes and then she takes over the rest of the classes for the week. As far as the goal of my position being here, with her, I feel like I am well on my way to achieving that goal. Which feels really good.
But just like in the States, when Winter Break rolled around, I was ready for it. And I am definitely ready for this bpit term.