Friday, July 23

I started teaching for real this week. Well, teaching for real online—I teach three classes over Zoom every afternoon, Monday through Thursday. I teach the oldest kids first (5-6 year olds, or K3), then the middle-age kids (4-5 year olds, or K2), and then the youngest (3-4 year olds, or K1).

My first two classes on Monday went...not as well as I hoped. The whole point of these lessons is to get the kids speaking in English, and I knew I'd have to do a lot of repeat after me, and that I'd have to call on them individually to make sure they all had a chance to practice speaking. There are only five to ten students per class, so taking time to call on every one of them wouldn't be an issue—and would probably nicely fill up the thirty minutes, I figured.

But in my first class, everything went a little haywire with the rollcall. I had a list of all the students' full names, but not the nicknames they use with their foreign (and Thai?) teachers. But that wasn't a big deal—I figured I'd just go through the list of names and they'd tell me their nicknames, right? Except when I slowly read through the list of names, no one responded. Even as I repeated the names many times. I don't know if was just my terrible pronunciation or what...but no one responded to any of the names I read. And there were no parents in-frame to help.

So I decided to try calling out the names that came up on the Zoom screens, which mostly worked. One girl didn't respond but her father was there and told me her nickname...but two of the boys never responded to the names on their screens, no matter how many times I tried, and I still don't know if those were their correct nicknames or not (and I asked the Thai teacher afterwards but never heard back).

That first class was a little unfocused overall, and it was difficult in that class—and the one that came after it—to get the kids to talk when I called on them. Which was totally understandable! I just felt a little awkward at times.

I was super amped between those first classes on Monday and did nothing but drive Roman crazy and wait for the next class to begin. When my last class started, I was a little nervous that there were only three kids there (my other classes had between six and nine students). But they had come in one by one and I had greeted them individually, so I was already having better communication with them. And then I just, like, hardcore engaged them. I used their names a bunch. I asked them individually to turn on their mics when they were talking so I could hear them (why didn't I do this in the earlier classes??) and I was super super encouraging every single time they said something right!

I had gotten some great advice from Michelle on getting students' attention, and I did a little call and response she taught me. When I called waterfall, waterfall, the kids would reply with a sssshhhhhhhhhh sound, while they make a waterfall motion with their hands. I think the kids in the earlier classes didn't 100% understand when I wanted them to do, so for the last class, I showed them a bunch of times and we did it over and over and by the end of class everyone was actually doing it!!!

I think the thing is, I get self-conscious when things I try don't work and I have a tendency to gloss over it, when it's way more effective to work through the moment and try and really guide the kids through whatever I'm asking them to do.

So, I feel both dumb that I didn't do these rather obvious things for my first two classes, and also relieved I had one class that worked, and that I know why it worked. I am also trying to remember everything I heard teacher friends say about teaching online in 2020, and that this isn't just some easy thing I should expect to know how to do after one try.

Also, the school was very encouraging afterwards, and said we did a good job. The head of the kindergarten said I was very professional, which at this point I've heard a lot (it came up a lot when I was doing the videos). I guess because I have a very clear, very enunciated Teacher Voice?

Or maybe it's my super cool teacher faces?

But also? The head of the Kindergarten also sent us all this message afterwards: For K1 it's no need to force them na ka. if you want to throw your lesson plan and just play w them. i agree :-)

I think some of the teachers struggled with the K1 group the most, since they're the youngest and they speak the least English. But throw away my lesson plan!!??? I don't think so!

Anyway, that message indicates I may be overthinking this a little bit. Not like I'm going to stop.

So, those were my notes from Monday...things just better as the week went on. I didn't aim for 100% focus and quiet from the kids—they just have wandering minds & eyeballs & bodies and that's fine. I am mostly just trying to get them to have fun and feel encouraged and practice some English along the way.

I was also super worn out by the end of the week! Employing that Teacher Voice and being super energetic and encouraging and engaging is TIRING—All us teachers ended up with sore throats!

What else? I'm continuing to cook a lot of meals at home. I usually take one of two approaches—I'll make a vaguely Thai-inspired stir-fry with local vegetables (mustard greens/gai lan/mushrooms) and some kind of protein (pork/chicken/tofu), cooked with some combination of soy sauce/oyster sauce/chilies/garlic/vinegar and serve it withr sticky rice or regular white rice. Sometimes I put fried shallots or a fried egg on top.

My other thing is to use mostly local ingredients to make a non-Thai (more Western-style) meal. Herbs are cheap and plentiful here, as is a lot of meat, and we usually have sliced bread in the freezer because of our love affair with the Bangkok Baking Company, so this week I made pan-fried pork sandwiches with sautéed red peppers and basil garlic aioli on rye bread, and a cucumber yogurt dill salad. I also made pan-fried duck breast with potatoes cooked in duck fat and an arugula basil salad.

We also hired someone to come and clean the apartment this week—her name is Khun Nang. This has been a long and somewhat uncomfortable process for me, because I want to have someone come clean our house, but I also don't want to hire someone to come clean our house. I am a little freaked out by the power dynamic, especially in a country like Thailand, where we're already carrying around a certain economic/class privilege.

Also, we don't want to spend too much money, but we also don't want to, you know, look for a way to pay a person the least amount possible. And we want the money we do pay to go directly to the person cleaning the apartment, not some cleaning service or building management.

And also, I kept getting flummoxed over how we'd let someone into our apartment when we're not here, when entry into the building requires a key card and actual keys (which is less of an issue now that we're working from home).

Anyway, I went to this Bangkok Women's Collective Facebook group that's been a pretty good resource, and checked out responses to a post where someone asked for recommendations for a cleaning person. I sent a several messages to people who had replied to the thread, but (I think because of how FB hides messages from non-friends) I only got replies to like two of the messages. But those folks responded with high recommendations, and passed on the contact info for their cleaning people. I sent messages to them—but one woman wasn't looking for any more work, and the other charged a lot more than what seems like the norm.

At that point, I was feeling a little overwhelmed and anxious about the whole thing, so we went ahead and contacted our point person at our apartment building, and asked him to arrange for the in-house cleaners to come clean our place. I'd been reluctant to do this because it was a little expensive, and because I didn't know if there was a service taking money off the top, but, I don't know, I just wanted to choose an easy option.

But then those cleaners didn't do a great job...so I went back to the FB group and reached out to a few more people. Through this, I got the contact info for Khun Nang, and sent her a message, and we set up an appointment for her to come by the house Monday afternoon so we could meet and talk through what the job. Since we're not looking for someone to do our laundry or the dishes, she said she thought the cleaning would only take two hours, which was good news. We also arranged to have her to come in every two weeks, rather than once a week—another way we could lessen the costs without trying to pay a lower hourly wage. And then she came and cleaned on Tuesday and did a great job and I still feel weird about it but there you go.

Oh my God, I just wrote a whole thing about hiring a maid kill me now. Would I be a better Marxist if I just scrubbed my own toilets, or is that false equivalence?

Can you tell I have these weird periods of time before classes where my brain is humming but I don't know to do so I add to my blog posts??? Maybe I should take up knitting?

Anyway, I also went to the dentist this week—I was feeling discomfort in one of my teeth and I was afraid I had a cavity. I told them all about it and before the cleaning, they took x-rays of my teeth, with additional x-rays of the sensitive area.

When the x-rays came up on the screen, they gathered in front of the images, blocking my view of the screen. Would they see a cavity, I wondered. Would they gasp and then tell me there was a huge hole in my tooth? Would they gasp and then tell me there was a huge hole in my tooth and that a family of gnomes was living inside it?

I don't even have a cavity, it turns out, just some recession on that tooth that's making it more sensitive.

At least I have my mind to keep my occupied!

And...here are some a few pictures of us with our meals...

With an omelet from an omelet cart

Roman with Hainanese poached chicken/fried chicken combo; I got egg noodle soup

Vegetable stir-fry from the cart outside our apartment (we now eat here for about four meals a week.
I just point at the vegetables I want and they make me a stir fry and this makes me happy)