Teaching

I finally got my teaching assignment. I will be teaching four classes which adds up to 17 hours a week. My youngest students are LVT1 so they are about 15-16 years old. The LVT3's will be 18-19 and IEP2's are 20-21. These are just different levels of intensive english classes. I will also be teaching a class about PR for students who are majoring in marketing. There's no book for this class so I will have to design it from units and exercises from various books. I think I'll probably learn a lot from this class since I barely know anything about public relations. So far the students have been really fun though rather chatty. Some of the other teachers warned me that Thai students are very playful and talkative. Unlike in the US, if a student is talking during class, it's not out of disrespect for the teacher. It's been weird getting used to this because things like being late and interrupting class aren't that big of a deal here. Of course, the first day all of this really upset me and I thought the students had no desire to learn English. Then I learned that this is just the way it is. It's really important also that teachers don't raise their voices because people rarely express anger in this country. This is not to say that people don't feel anger but they just don't share it with others. I can't wait to see what my classes are like next week. We stay pretty close to the book so there's not too much lesson planning involved. I'll try to find some fun activities to supplement the books of course.