Friday, June 25

Well, it's been a hell of a week.

I started work for real this week—that is, as real as a teaching job can be when you don't see any kids. I also only went into school from 9am to 2pm every day, which, if you have to work, are pretty great hours. (Though I still felt braindead and unfocused when I got home, even after showering & meditating, blah blah blah. It reminded me why I prefer afternoon/evening work shifts—I'm much more likely to get creative projects or even boring personal admin stuff done before a work day than after).

The folks at my school are generally all very sweet and well-intentioned, but the communication and organization has been pretty lousy.

I know that a part of this is due to Covid—they haven't had to implement projects like this before, so there is no standard format for how things should be done. But, still. I had very few assignments and they still took all week to work on...and they didn't even get completed by today (Friday). Basically, all I had to do was create a video lesson plan on two subjects (Animal Habitats and the Life Cycle of the Chicken) and create three worksheets for each subject (for the three kindergarten levels).

But this is an example of how pretty much everything went, all week: on Monday, they explained what they wanted for the Animal Habitats lesson plan, and then I spent several hours working on it. But then on Tuesday, they'd had another meeting about this lesson plan (maybe with higher-up members of the Kindergarten department?), and had totally new instructions. So I scrapped the work I'd done Monday, and spent another couple hours working on the lesson plan. Then on Wednesday, five minutes before I was supposed to leave, they asked if I could stay a little late so we could make the video for that lesson plan. I said OK, since I was leaving early on Thursday and, I guess, to be a good sport. We spent an hour recording the videos, and had almost finished, when one of the heads of the Kindergarten came in and noticed that the cards we were using had labels in both English and Thai, and didn't want any labels in Thai. So everything we'd created was now unusable. At least I got to go home, and only an hour later than planned.

But this is how it's gone for every single project. I get instructions on how to create the lessons or the worksheets, I spend hours working on them, and then I get totally different instructions that require me to start over. And then at some point, I get additional (and sometimes contradictory) instructions that require me to redo many of those changes. Ad infinitum.

I know that this stuff is new for them. I get that. But can't they just have one big meeting at the beginning of the week where they figure everything out and then give us instructions??

I reached my limit on Thursday afternoon. I left work early—at noon—to go to the US Embassy (more on that later), but they were giving me more and more feedback on the worksheets until the moment I left. So I told them I could work on stuff when I got home—I didn't want to be stressed out on Friday and, hey, I was leaving early, I figured I could put in another couple hours.

So I got home from the embassy and sat down to work around 2:30. I worked for about two hours and had almost completed everything, when the teacher I've been working with closely (Teacher Noi) texted me, asking if she could call me. We got on the phone and she had several totally new things for me to add to some of the worksheets, and instructions that required me to completely start over on the other three worksheets.

I was polite and agreeable on the phone, but I was pretty upset. It's one thing to have my time wasted when I'm at work—I'm gonna be there from 9am to 2pm anyway, so I don't care that much how they use my time. But to have my private time outside the school wasted was much more frustrating. It was 4:30 and I was also getting hungry, so that didn't help matters.

I got off the phone and decided to finish sending the video files they needed (another thing I'd been struggling to complete all day, but that isn't worth going into) and then I would cry.

Roman came home while I was on my phone, sending the files, and when he came in to say hello, I told him I just needed to finish what I was doing on my phone and then I was gonna cry. And then I did.

I wasn't even feeling sad or mad at the school or myself or hurt, just so incredibly frustrated. And a little hungry.

After Roman and I both did some work, we got some dinner on the street, and I felt a little better. I finished up my assignments the best I could (with the language barrier I'm not always totally clear on Teacher Noi's expectations, especially when they're conveyed over the phone). I don't want to set a precedent, though. I am really going to try not to work outside of school hours, if I can help it. If this were the US, I would ask to have a meeting to ask them to get really clear on expectations before they make assignments and before I put in work on them. But this isn't the US and isn't how things are done.

And one thing I'm always aware of is, if I have to do three times as much work as I should on any give assignment, the Thai teachers always have to do even more work than that. They are always having meetings and they always arrive before us foreign teachers and leave well after us.

In fact, this is probably why I agreed to work longer hours but...I'm not sure that's a good remedy. I think I need to be careful to avoid working from home, when it isn't what we're supposed to be doing. And if I stay late, I need to make it clear I can stay for a specific period of time—like, an hour—and not past that. Apparently, Teacher Noi called Ellen multiple times yesterday when she was home sick (a bad reaction to her first Covid vaccine) and on the final call, Teacher Noi asked Ellen what time she went to bed so that she would know how late she could call! Crikey.

One of the best things about going into school this week was getting to know some of the teachers better—I worked with the Thai teachers Teacher Noi and Teacher Ao the most, and I'll be working with Teacher Kib in the classroom. I also met all the other foreign Kindergarten teachers: Luke (from South Africa), Nick (from the UK), and Ellen (from the US). Nick and Luke have both taught at TCS for two years and so they're a great resources, and Ellen has taught in Thai schools but is new to TCS.

Probably the most reassuring thing I have heard from them is that the vibe of this week is not typical—that this is the hardest and most frustrating this job has ever been for Luke and Nick. It is good for me to always keep in mind that these are unusual circumstances. Also, because I'd worked so much on Thursday (well, and because Teacher Ao didn't get back to me with any edits to my worksheets), I had several hours on Friday morning to screw around and write this blog post. Although, who knows what they're going to throw at me next week.

There have been some funny things though! Like, they have very specific ways of doing thing, which I think is it least partly because of the Montessori method. So in the videos, after I finish the presentation, they want to show me putting all the materials away in a very slow and deliberate manner. Which I get—it's good to show people cleaning up after themselves and all that. But some if it is so specific—like, there is a towel covering the materials I use in the video, and they had very specific ways they wanted me to lay down, smooth out, and fold the towel before setting it aside. One of the teachers demonstrated like three times and I'm still not sure I did it right.

Also, Teacher Noi told me to point to the different objects in the video not with one finger, but two, and to not show my open palm to the camera, because she thinks open palms are ugly (!?)

The Christian stuff is weird for me, though—we prayed once at the beginning of the day, and I have to quote bible verses when I'm talking about animal habitats...but one of my favorite moments of the week was when Teacher Noi was telling me that when I say God created animal habitats on day five, I could open the bible and read a verse from Genesis.

She said, You can say something like, See, we're not lying! We're not lying to you when we say this, see, its here in the Bible.

Like, maybe the way to get kids to believe you is not to say, we're not even lying to you!

Also, the filming of the videos is weirdly dreamy and fun. I just go into a softly lit room and they set everything up and they tell me what to do and what the camera starts I get all animated and talk in my slow enunciated teacher voice and after the take is finished I can relax again it's just...pretty chill.

The visit to the embassy was kind of interesting, though. I arrived early and they had me wait outside the walls of the complex. Then, fifteen minutes before my appointment time, they let me in. My first stop was security: they had me turn off my phone and hand it over to them—I couldn't take it with me into the embassy, maybe because of spy shit?

I offered that I had my computer with me, too (I'd come straight form work), so they took that too, and put my computer and phone in a pouch that they locked with a key, and then gave me a key on a band that I put around my wrist.

Then they ran my bag through the x-ray machine, and examined the image that came up. They came back to me with my bag and said, Is there something else in there? Another computer?

I said, Oh, my computer charger is in there. I took it out and it was added to the pouch.

Then they ran my bag through the x-ray machine again. And again, they came back to me with my bag. They said, Are there airpods in there?

I took my air pods out and they were added to the pouch.

They ran my bag through again. They came back again.

Another pair of headphones?

Oh right, I forgot about those, I said. They went into the pouch.

A water bottle?

Yes, I have a water bottle. Into the pouch.

They ran my bag through again. This time, they came back and said, Maybe you could just take out what you need and leave the bag?

So I grabbed a pen (I had to go back for my wallet later when I realized I'd need it to pay for my form), and then left my whole bag with them. Pretty funny.

And then...I was in America again. But it still felt a lot like Thailand, except I couldn't use my Thai bank card to pay for the notarization, only my US card. I also raised my right hand and swore that what I said in my affidavit was true, and then the notary and I both signed the form and I got it notarized and that was it! And then I went home and did work and then I cried, but you've already read all about that.

But now it's the weekend! Happy day.