teaching at Dipangkorn

No pictures for this blog, as you've seen the school.

Teaching is settling into a quite pleasing structure. I've taught each class 4 lessons so far (the final Lesson 4 curriculum goes to my Friday class tomorrow). By the end of each week, I've figured out what works and what doesn't, so I'm pretty confident and comfortable for my Thursday and Friday students.

I teach 2 classes on Monday (my "guinea pigs"; good sports), 2 on Tuesday, 3 on Wednesday, 4 each on Thursday and Friday. I continue to teach the same concepts to all levels (grade 7 through 12, called levels 1 through 6 in Thailand). So far I've introduced "courage", which they are finally taking to a next level. I've found they are eager and attentive if I go around the class and talk with 4 students at a time, at their desks. They help each other, which I think is fine; I don't leave that bunch of students til I'm pretty satisfied that they understand the concepts.

The concepts (building through the lessons 2-3-4) are pretty straightforward storytelling. I wrote a simple story in present tense. Week 2 I introduced the characters: girl, cat, dog, boy. The students were able to answer: who is an animal?, who is a person? and describe who has long hair, who has short hair (new concept, that in English a cat and dog also have hair), what does the girl wear, what does the boy wear. Some answered easily; other classes took the whole hour to clarify animal/animals, person/people, skirt/shirt, short hair/long tail, etc. No correlation that I can see between the quick-to-perceive and the level in school.

The next week I had groups of 15 students at a time come to the front of the class, each to read a line of the story, (three groups for most classes; if there were an uneven number, I had them come up anyway, asked them questions.) The story: The girl sits with the cat. The boy walks with the dog. The girl sees the boy. The boy sees the girl. The boy smiles at the girl. The girl smiles at the boy. The cat sees the dog. The cat sits very still. The dog sees the cat. The dog barks! The dog chases the cat. The cats runs away. The dog runs after the cat. The boy runs after the dog. The girl sits alone.