Letting it Slide
I have made many mistakes teaching in Thailand. Some of the more amusing include:
1- "First_______________, then_______________" statements. On the list of possible first and then choices I put "take a shower." Thailand is so hot and humid, a shower can both precede or follow ANYTHING. I got statements like, "First I go to school, then I take a shower." And "First I take a shower, then I play football." And they're all technically correct.
2- Describe your family. I wanted to practice using descriptive vocabulary, so I had students draw pictures of their families, then describe them to their classmates. Good in theory, but what I got was 1200 students saying, "My mother is short and thin with brown eyes and black hair. My father is short and thin with brown eyes and black hair. My brother is..." Duh...silly me.
3- Making students play telephone. They simply shouted it from the front of the line to the back, and then spent a great deal of time trying to explain to me that their way was much more efficient than my method. I maximized inefficiency by spending hours teaching them how to play it correctly.
4- Testing feelings. On a test, I asked students to match a feeling with a thing/event, for example "My friends" matched with "happy," as in "My friends make me happy." It was only after I got the tests back that I realized exactly how subjective feelings were. Some answers I got back: Homework makes me happy (get a life). My friends make me angry (get new friends). When someone dies it makes me excited (get help). All in all, a pretty futile effort.
6- Giving midterms. There were many ways that I saw students progress, or lack thereof, but midterms weren't one of them. I spent a lot of time explaining how to take the test, and preparing them for it, and in the long run I didn't learn anything I didn't already know and neither did they. There's a lesson here for western education, I just know it.
7- Thinking I would eventually get their names right. 5 months later and every time I call roll the students still bust up laughing. I'm pretty sure it's still the most entertaining part of the class for them.
I'm also pretty sure I've made a million other mistakes while teaching here, but its time for me to stop writing and go back to the classroom to make some more now...still 3 classes left to teach today and plenty of mistakes yet to be made.
1- "First_______________, then_______________" statements. On the list of possible first and then choices I put "take a shower." Thailand is so hot and humid, a shower can both precede or follow ANYTHING. I got statements like, "First I go to school, then I take a shower." And "First I take a shower, then I play football." And they're all technically correct.
2- Describe your family. I wanted to practice using descriptive vocabulary, so I had students draw pictures of their families, then describe them to their classmates. Good in theory, but what I got was 1200 students saying, "My mother is short and thin with brown eyes and black hair. My father is short and thin with brown eyes and black hair. My brother is..." Duh...silly me.
3- Making students play telephone. They simply shouted it from the front of the line to the back, and then spent a great deal of time trying to explain to me that their way was much more efficient than my method. I maximized inefficiency by spending hours teaching them how to play it correctly.
4- Testing feelings. On a test, I asked students to match a feeling with a thing/event, for example "My friends" matched with "happy," as in "My friends make me happy." It was only after I got the tests back that I realized exactly how subjective feelings were. Some answers I got back: Homework makes me happy (get a life). My friends make me angry (get new friends). When someone dies it makes me excited (get help). All in all, a pretty futile effort.
6- Giving midterms. There were many ways that I saw students progress, or lack thereof, but midterms weren't one of them. I spent a lot of time explaining how to take the test, and preparing them for it, and in the long run I didn't learn anything I didn't already know and neither did they. There's a lesson here for western education, I just know it.
7- Thinking I would eventually get their names right. 5 months later and every time I call roll the students still bust up laughing. I'm pretty sure it's still the most entertaining part of the class for them.
I'm also pretty sure I've made a million other mistakes while teaching here, but its time for me to stop writing and go back to the classroom to make some more now...still 3 classes left to teach today and plenty of mistakes yet to be made.
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