Volunteer teaching experience - Teaching in Thailand in Bang Bao School

though no Internet or photocopier, and a very temperamental printer. The computers, have word, excel and paint, though it is difficult to persuade the teachers to use the computers for teaching anything other than computing. The school has paper, colouring pencils, English textbooks, and a few English dictionaries.
The teachers were polite and friendly, the head teacher and two other teachers could speak good English, though none were fluent. The usual English teacher at the school Kru Ay, did not teach English while I was there. I worked with Kru Klaw who was very keen to improve his English, and tried very hard to speak English as much as possible.

On the first day I was dumped in front of P6 first thing in the morning with little introduction. The teacher left me alone in the room with the children for an hour, I had little planned so did basic games sitting in a circle. I spun a pen in the centre and asked the student that the pen pointed at a question. This was a good way of gauging the level of English understood. They understood the following questions:
• What is your name?
• How old are you?
• Where are you from?
• Where do you live?
• What colour is this?

They struggled with questions like whether they had brothers and sisters. I also asked them to go through the alphabet thinking of a word for each letter, which they managed quite well. I taught the same lesson for P5, they struggled a little more, and responded to questions with single words instead of sentences. For P4 I tried the same lesson but they really struggled with it so I went over numbers colours and as many animals as they could remember.
P3 knew very little English, they could not read and struggled with the question “hello how are you?”, which I had to translate into Thai. I then taught them the song “heads shoulders knees and toes” which they enjoyed but did not understand. P6 could read English and translate short passages when they have been told the difficult words. P5 could barely read English so it had to be spoken to them and they would rewrite the pronunciation in Thai, though they understood the meanings of the words.
In the evening I persuaded the teacher that I was supposed to be teaching with to plan lessons for the next day. I left most of the planning to him, so that he would hopefully stay in the classroom. The lesson was therefore planned as quickly and easily as possible from the text book, though even this took a long time. It was often quite difficult to understand the English that Klaw spoke, and he found it very difficult to understand the English that I spoke. The lessons however the next day hardly followed these plans. The teacher often didn’t understand when I wanted him to translate, and kept on leaving the classroom, either for phone calls or because I was doing something with the children and he thought he could get away with it.
I slowly tried to introduce ideas of my own into his lesson plans. This sometimes worked, but most of the time was very confusing as the teacher pretended to understand what I was talking about, but when it came down to teaching didn’t have a clue e.g. word searches. As Klaw was not the normal English teacher, he did not know the level of English the students had, this made planning even more difficult. It was very hard to persuade Kru Klaw to plan until about 9 at night, by this time we were both tired. He never wrote the lesson plans down so had often forgotten it by the next day. I introduced the use and fruit, vegetable, and occupation flash cards. The children were given a flash card each which they had to memorise, the write, spell and read out loud on the blackboard. This was backed up by playing hangman with the words on the flash card. I also played, word, number and clock bingo with the students. Introducing games helped the children to enjoy the lessons, though the teacher always left the classroom.
In the third week, one of the teachers was ill I was therefore given her job, so I taught alone. This made things simpler for me, as I could plan to work alone and do what I wanted to do. I worked on directions and times with P6 and questions and answering for P3, 4 and 5. I also made worksheets on the manual copier with drawings of a word with the word with letters missing underneath. It was a very good idea to have these worksheets ready for days when I was told to do unexpected lessons e.g. when the teacher was tired or hung over. I did worksheets on body parts, verbs, and adjectives describing the body.
I really enjoyed volunteering in Bangbao though there were ups and downs. I found the language difference very difficult and it did make me quite lonely as there was no-one who could understand what I was saying. The culture was also a problem at parts, as I found it frustrating to be treated differently as a woman. I spent most of my spare time with the teachers trying to encourage them to improve their English. The children were generally well behaved, and the small classes made teaching easy, though if the students got bored they would start talking or playing games of their own. I found working with the children very rewarding, and really felt I had achieved something when Kru Klaw told me that I had made him realise that “farrangs” (foreigners) aren’t always bad people.

Written by Thaweesilp L.
Thursday, 15 November 2007
Teaching in Thailand in Bang Bao School by Joanna Brookfield I spent 4 weeks in Bangbao teaching English to P3-6. Bangbao is a small primary school with only 80 children and 6 teachers (including the head teacher). The children are used to westerners as the town is a tourist resort, though speak little English. The school has fairly good resources, though no Internet or photocopier, and a very temperamental printer. The computers, have word, excel and paint, though it is difficult to persuade the teachers to use the computers for teaching anything other than computing. The school has paper, colouring pencils, English textbooks, and a few English dictionaries. The teachers were polite and friendly, the head teacher and two other teachers could speak good English, though none were fluent. The usual English teacher at the school Kru Ay, did not teach English while I was there. I worked with Kru Klaw who was very keen to improve his English, and tried very hard to speak English as much as possible. On the first day I was dumped in front of P6 first thing in the morning with little introduction. The teacher left me alone in the room with the children for an hour, I had little planned so did basic games sitting in a circle. I spun a pen in the centre and asked the student that the pen pointed at a question. This was a good way of gauging the level of English understood. They understood the following questions: • What is your name? • How old are you? • Where are you from? • Where do you live? • What colour is this? They struggled with questions like whether they had brothers and sisters. I also asked them to go through the alphabet thinking of a word for each letter, which they managed quite well. I taught the same lesson for P5, they struggled a little more, and responded to questions with single words instead of sentences. For P4 I tried the same lesson but they really struggled with it so I went over numbers colours and as many animals as they could remember. P3 knew very little English, they could not read and struggled with the question “hello how are you?”, which I had to translate into Thai. I then taught them the song “heads shoulders knees and toes” which they enjoyed but did not understand. P6 could read English and translate short passages when they have been told the difficult words. P5 could barely read English so it had to be spoken to them and they would rewrite the pronunciation in Thai, though they understood the meanings of the words. In the evening I persuaded the teacher that I was supposed to be teaching with to plan lessons for the next day. I left most of the planning to him, so that he would hopefully stay in the classroom. The lesson was therefore planned as quickly and easily as possible from the text book, though even this took a long time. It was often quite difficult to understand the English that Klaw spoke, and he found it very difficult to understand the English that I spoke. The lessons however the next day hardly followed these plans. The teacher often didn’t understand when I wanted him to translate, and kept on leaving the classroom, either for phone calls or because I was doing something with the children and he thought he could get away with it. I slowly tried to introduce ideas of my own into his lesson plans. This sometimes worked, but most of the time was very confusing as the teacher pretended to understand what I was talking about, but when it came down to teaching didn’t have a clue e.g. word searches. As Klaw was not the normal English teacher, he did not know the level of English the students had, this made planning even more difficult. It was very hard to persuade Kru Klaw to plan until about 9 at night, by this time we were both tired. He never wrote the lesson plans down so had often forgotten it by the next day. I introduced the use and fruit, vegetable, and occupation flash cards. The children were given a flash card each which they had to memorise, the write, spell and read out loud on the blackboard. This was backed up by playing hangman with the words on the flash card. I also played, word, number and clock bingo with the students. Introducing games helped the children to enjoy the lessons, though the teacher always left the classroom. In the third week, one of the teachers was ill I was therefore given her job, so I taught alone. This made things simpler for me, as I could plan to work alone and do what I wanted to do. I worked on directions and times with P6 and questions and answering for P3, 4 and 5. I also made worksheets on the manual copier with drawings of a word with the word with letters missing underneath. It was a very good idea to have these worksheets ready for days when I was told to do unexpected lessons e.g. when the teacher was tired or hung over. I did worksheets on body parts, verbs, and adjectives describing the body. I really enjoyed volunteering in Bangbao though there were ups and downs. I found the language difference very difficult and it did make me quite lonely as there was no-one who could understand what I was saying. The culture was also a problem at parts, as I found it frustrating to be treated differently as a woman. I spent most of my spare time with the teachers trying to encourage them to improve their English. The children were generally well behaved, and the small classes made teaching easy, though if the students got bored they would start talking or playing games of their own. I found working with the children very rewarding, and really felt I had achieved something when Kru Klaw told me that I had made him realise that “farrangs” (foreigners) aren’t always bad people. Set as favorite Bookmark Email This Hits: 123 Trackback(0) TrackBack URI for this entry 0 Comments Show/Hide comments Write comment Show/Hide comment form You must be logged in to a comment. Please register if you do not have an account yet.
Last Updated ( Tuesday, 25 March 2008 )