My EFL Classroom

When I first came over to Thailand to teach English I imagined myself sitting on the floor playing with a small group of children, or acting out silly restaurant scenarios with teenagers. But with each class of my TEFL certification I realized that there is a lot more to teaching, and a lot more to English than I ever imagined. I never realized how difficult my language is. I still can’t explain half of the grammar concepts I am expected to teach. I’m flabbergasted that a college educated erudite, such as myself, made it through 17 years of school without learning anything but a noun, verb, conjunction, and an adjective. And I truly owe all the credit for that to School House Rock. After having a short two weeks of training, here is a summary of my first attempt at teaching English.

            The first day of class I walked into my assignment and was met with 25 three-year-old faces staring back at me, or rather not paying attention to me at all. I went in with what I thought to be a solid lesson plan. I had learned all the songs on YouTube, and printed all my coloring worksheets. When my lesson was over I looked at the clock, and then did an exacerbated double take. Only twenty minutes had gone by. These children had gone through every activity I had planned in less than half the time it should have taken. I dove into my survival kit and played every game I could tease out of my childhood memory. Kids love to sing songs as fast as they can, so I thought maybe the opposite could work. I attempted to get the kids to sing songs in slow motion. When the first class was over I had to do it two more times. At the end of the day I was exhausted. There is a restaurant down the street from where I am living called Coffee and Beer. Suddenly it made a lot more sense because I was going to need both.

            I quickly learned that teaching children this young takes a lot of energy, creativity and flexibility. Every day is a new adventure, which usually isn't over until some crying and bleeding have taken place: What is up with children picking their scabs? It was a lot of trial and error to see what kept my students engaged, and it really depends on the day still. I learned that all my learning objectives are to be kept covert. The less my lessons seem like learning, and the more they seem like games, the more my children learn. I have to take every lexis and every activity and turn it into something simple, something fun, and something short.

            I have had great success with puppets. The kids will talk to a picture of Princess Elsa, or Spider-man all day long. They will do whatever it takes for a high-five, which only came about because I’m too cheap to buy stickers. Also I have perfected the right level for the worksheets. Some of the quieter kids turned out to be much smarter than I realized when I got to see them in their element, art. Coloring sheets with simple tracing and matching tasks were a good way for me to see that these children really were getting it. Every time I quietly hovered above them and saw that they were actually following my instruction and showing understanding was extremely rewarding. All my ridiculous dancing and silly eliciting had paid off.

            Teaching is a lot more work than I ever imagined. There is a lot to planning a lesson and managing a classroom where I am massively outnumbered. But it is more rewarding than I ever dreamed as well.