First week of teaching course

Trip Start Aug 17, 2008
1
4
30
Trip End Sep 09, 2009


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Sunday, September 28, 2008

The first week of my teacher training is over and it wasn't to bad. We are learning to teaching methods and how to plan a lesson. We had to plan and deliver our first lesson in pairs to classmates on friday, it went better than I thought and so far seems pretty straight forward. The focus isn't so much on learning lists of individual words and the rules of grammer, more on learning dialogs, and learing sentance structure and vocabulary through 4-6 line conversations. We have had Thai classes, learning Thai in the same manner as we will teach English, so it gives us an idea of the difficulties the children will have when we are trying to teach English.
On Thursday, we had a Thai culture lesson.We learnt that teaching in Thailand is not going to be as easy as teaching anywhere else in Asia. The children here are very spoilt by their parents and are not as willing to just sit and do what their told. You have to be very careful as to how you speak to them and how you ineract with them as they will often go home and exagerate to their parents stairs in my apartment
stairs in my apartment
 . So a bit like working in the UK. Aparently if you can teach in Thailand you can teach anywhere in Asia easily. Wish I knew that before I signed up to come here.
We also found out where we are going to be teaching. However, the school I was meant to be placed, had called on Wednesday afternoon and said that the person who was placed their last semester is going to stay on so they don't need me. So I still don't know where I'm going to be placed. Although it is kind of lucky as for that school the semester didn't start until later, so I would need to find my own accomidation for longer and it didn't finish until the 31st March, which would only give me 8 days to get to Bali, or I would need to change all my flights. I have asked that she find me a placement that ends at the end of Feburary so I have more time to travel. The school looked good thought, teaching P2 not only English but all lessons, which I've found out a lot of people are doing, as many of the schools are bi-lingual.
I also learnt more about getting my visa. There are a couple of us who have to do visa runs. I need to be out the country on the 14 October and come back in on a 60 day tourist visa, I then need to get an official letter from the Ministry of Education, which the school will help me with. If I have 21 days left on my visa I can then go to the Immigrtion office in Bangkok and get my Non-Immigrent B visa Kitchen
Kitchen
 . So I wouldn't have to leave the counrty again. The school will then apply for a Teachers license for me when I have that they then apply for a work permit. As you can only stay in the counrty for 90 days at a time with the Non-Immigrent B visa, those who have it might have to leave as well before they get their work permit.
We finish on the 10th October so there are a few of us going to go to the pre full moon parties on Koh Phangan (full moon is on the 14th) which I've heard are almost better than the full moon party as they are a bit quieter. Then we are going to head to Cambodia and up to Laos.
So the first week has been ok, I feel a lot better about it all now, just need to find out where I'm teaching. Been to the beach every day after class so I'm even getting a bit of colour. :-)

Love and miss you all xxx
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