First Week Jitters

Well i have safely made it through my first week teaching at Yonok University. Monday was probably the best first day of teaching that i've ever experienced. Maybe this means that i'm finally getting comfortable teaching or maybe it was just that the students were great and enthusiastic. The students actually showed up on the first day which is always a good sign. There have been many hassles this week which are mostly the same things that bothered me last year. I am all for the laid-back lifestyle of Thailand but not when it comes to school. Nothing is organized, books have not yet appeared, schedules keep changing, classrooms keep changing and every class brings a set of new or disappearing faces. I'm not supposed to start teaching from the book until next week so you could imagine that i'm getting pretty sick of "icebreakers" and "getting-to-know-you" exercises.

I have one group of English 101 students. These are the wide-eyed freshmen who have absolutely no idea what's going on and may or may not know any english. I teach 3 days a week and on the other 2 days we work in the computer lab where they do exercises that correspond to the book. Then i'm teaching the sophomores English 201 which is just a more advanced class. These classes are for non-english majors. Every student must take 4 English classes before they can graduate. I'm also teaching 2 classes for english majors. One is Public Speaking which should be fun once i can actually start my class. More than half of the students are finishing their job-training in Bangkok and won't be back until the 18th. So i can't really start my course until all the students are there. Now there are 3 students so we just practice speaking and listening. My other special class is Reading 2 which is going to be a lot of fun. This is the more advanced class so i'm starting out the semester by talking about fables, fairy tales, and folk stories. After the midterm we will read magazines, newspapers and journal articles and hopefully work up to reading abstracts. I had a great time in this class yesterday discussing "The Tortoise and the Hare." Most cultures have their own versions of these stories so it's easy for them to understand and they are genuinely interested.

Next weekend I will start teaching an extra course for MBA students. Most of them are adults who have been working for a few years and want to come back to school for their masters. Many of them are small-business owenrs. Their english is great and I think it will be a good experience for me. The schedule is not bad (Saturday 9-12) and it doesn't hurt that it pays very well!

I'm really enjoying getting to know everyone at Yonok and haven't had too many problems. It's butterfly season now so there are butterflies swarming all over the campus. I still can't get over how beautiful it is out here! Everyday i come to work and i smile because i just feel so lucky to be here!