School Tour: Kasintorn St. Peter's

3/18/2015

My first semester teaching abroad here in Thailand has come to an end, and summer school is about to start. It's a little sad, and in some ways I wish I could stay another semester. If I was staying I could move into the English program and choose which grade I wanted to teach, which all together would make for a much better experience. If you are wondering, hmmm, thought you were over there teaching English...wouldn't that mean you are in an English program? Totally understandable reasoning, but not so at my particular school. Here we have 2 programs, Thai and English. The Thai program classes are taught mainly in Thai and English is taught a couple times a week as almost an elective. Many kids don't really care to learn English and they don't really take it seriously. English program kids are taught almost all courses in English. They have a dedicated English speaking teacher, and their parents pay much higher tuition so they are more motivated in general to learn the language. I was teaching Kindergarten 1, the babies. All K1 classes are part of the Thai program, and then based on skill and whether their parents can afford it, they are placed in either English or Thai program for K2 and up. For this reason, I guess I got the best of the Thai program classes, because at least some of my kids were still motivated in class, if you can call 3-4 year old's motivated. But what is really nice about English program is that you get a class that is your own, that you see every day. You can build relationships with the kids and really get to know them. I taught 11 classes of roughly 36 students each, so a little over 400 students. I found it really hard to make meaningful connections with the kids since I only saw them twice a week, if classes were not cancelled, which they always seemed to be for one reason or another. By the end of the end of the 5 month semester I only knew a handful of their names, which is kinda sad. Let's see, there was Monkey, an adorable little boy who really lived up to his name, Mona, the wild child who loved to give teacher shoulder rubs while I was teaching, Momo, itty-bitty little man who gave every single vocab word a sound (seriously - do you know what sound a Mountain makes? because I do!), Punchee, the rich kid that feels entitled to more Mickey stamps than everyone else, because don't I know who he is?!?, Pat and Bensin, both chubby little love bugs, super shy little Farsi, and super smart Viky from class 1, and the entirety of class 3 with their leader Zindear that drove me absolutely nuts but that the same time were the most affectionate students ever.
Honestly, I have really enjoyed my time teaching here in Thailand. It was certainly challenging at times, but the students were adorable. I remember before I started I said I was happy to have kindergarteners because it would be easy. Ha! They showed me!
I actually have one more month to go, teaching summer classes in April. I will be teaching K1 again in the mornings and Grade 1 conversation in the afternoons. Looking forward to the challenge but also really looking forward to whats next...diving in Koh Tao!
Below is a photo tour of my school, Kasintorn St. Peter's. It is a private Catholic school, though most kids that go here are still Buddhist. In morning assembly they mediate, sing the national anthem and say the Our Father. The look of it is not all that different from schools at home. I am sure there are more rural, government run schools that could have given me a more authentically Thai experience, but this is what I got, and truth is its an authentically Thai private school in the burbs.