My Honeymoon is over !

After one week of teaching, I have the feeling my honeymoon is over :-(

I realised that I had to handle two levels of students, the ones who can read simple things, and the ones who barely know the alphabet and of course can't read at all. This means that when I gave a task, the formers were finished right away while the latters had not understood yet what they were supposed to do ! This means the formers had nothing to do but fool around while I was striving to have the latters begin the task... At this very moment I had a glimpse of what could be the feeling of the sometimes "exhausted, worne out, overwhelmed" community of teachers!

Furthermore, after a while the kids especially the boys feel more comfortable and test your boundaries ! Yes just as the kids do in our Western countries. So I had to take action and gave three warnings in a row (unhappy smileys) to be displayed on the behaviour chart of the class which had its little effect. I also needed to be much more stuctured in my lesson plans and activities, otherwise  the kids behave just like a leaking ship, they start to feel free and mess around. This was an exhausting week but I felt much better at the end of it, could handle better the activities and had the kids work in two differents groups for certain tasks.

The little Cookie who knew the alphabet but was unable to read a word last week was enjoying reading simple sentences after two weeks which was really nice to see.

Conversely I don't hold much hope concerning the little Ami who doesn't know the alphabet AT ALL and is the only one who NEVER listens, always doing something else. I just can't figure out how to manage her!

My little Japanese boy, Seiji, is my Benchmark since he doesn't speak Lao nor English I monitor him quite closely, if he understands what's going on, the others should also understand!

Well I'm getting there slowly but surely. And I can still say that my students are my little cuties!

My FEP2 class

My FEP2 class with Lao assistant Vickham.

Daily morning exercise at Oscar.

My Lao English class !

What a treat !

The beginning of school was last monday for the students, so I eventually got to know who were going to be my new students. I have a class of 13 kids from 8 to 10 years old. And believe me the Lao kids are so so cute !!! Boys are so lively and enthusiastic and inquisitive when the girls are so shy and introverted. I guess this is a cultural feature. I also have three foreign students, a girl from Vietnam, a boy from Japan, very shy and lost (does not speak Lao) and a little Chinese kid, very ugly, fat, and mean on top of that ! However those kids are such a treat !

My heart was already broken after three days of school. One kid was withdrawn from my class to be sent to the "normal English curriculum" class because his level of English was too high ! He was such a nice smart and lively kid, I was so sad to see him leave! But in the end it's better because he was so far ahead of the others and was thus overshadowing his classmates. The class is more well balanced now. However I have my burden too! A little girl Ami, she does not know the Roman alphabet, she is as slow as a slug, has the attention span of a gold fish and is only interested in drawing princess gowns and crowns !

Of course my concern is to be able to cater to their different needs given that I have different levels to deal with - some can read a litlle bit some others don't even know the Roman alphabet- , and that they don't get bored and have fun while learning.

This is an auspicious start however. I'm so happy to deal with those kids eventhough I have to sometimes raise my voice (but they are so responsive) !

Hereafter a picture of my class the 1st day. One kid (with hat) has left (as said) and three others showed up in the meantime. The young man, Vickham,  is my very nice Lao teacher (assistant).  I'll post an updated picture soon...

A little taste of paradise! August 2015 in Vientiane.

I can't help sending you a few pictures of my garden that is so lovely, a little green paradise!

I have overcome my first apprehensions of the place - I mean the surroundings of my house- I was fearing all sorts of animals, insects, spiders or snakes, and have ultimately concluded they were not that harmful nor ferocious, that micro ants in my cereals were edible, a lezard in my refrigerator had lost its way, and a moth in my shower was just as scared as I was before ! There was a snake yesterday on the cimented path going to the back of my house. The wild black cat, wandering around the house, was staring at him with mewlings of distress, the snake rose his head, threatening the cat, eventually the snake turned back and slithered away... Thank you black cat for taking car of my yard. Now, I feed him!

The beginning of class for teachers was 2 weeks ago. We are a team of 34 teachers, half Lao, half foreigners - another French girl, 2 girls from Switzeland, one from Holland, the others are from England, South Africa, the US and Australia. Nice people overall, nice boss, rather helpful. We've done preparation work for two weeks, classroom decoration,  lesson plans. All this takes actually a lot of time. The beginning of class for the kids is next monday. Can't wait to see the kids. Mine will be 8 to 9 years old with very little English exposure. I also have a little apprehension of course. This will be the next chapter...
 

Sabaïdi from Laos

Some of you might still be wondering what TEA PROJECT stands for ? Well this is the motto that has followed me since I had this Epiphany (precedent post) in March 2014. It simply means "Teaching English in Asia Project". And here I am !

My first English class was at Wat Hai Sok, a buddhist temple quite close to my hotel. My first students were novice monks age 12 to 25. They have barely been exposed to English before, mainly beginners. A couple of them went to college and learnt English there, they help me with clarifications in Lao. They are very nice, quiet and a little shy. You will see them in the pictures below. No there are not detainees from Guantanamo prison with their orange outfit. Believe me each of them has a lovely smile.

Vientiane is the capital of Laos, a country of barely 7 million people. The city has grown a lot for the last twenty years. It was a town of around 200 000 people in 1995 that grew up to 800 000 these days. Be that as it may, I find it still has the charm of a little town, no skyscapers around, low buildings, a lot of temples scattered here and there along with French cafes and all types of quaint restaurants, and eventhough it's not crowded with bicycles any more but with traffic jams (at peak times) full of big Japanese and Korean cars as you can see in the pictures hereafter, it's definitely not the hustle and bustle of most of Asian capitals around. It certainly has the atmosphere of a spread out village.




Downtown mainstreet

Downtown street

One of my daily canteen

My first English class : the novice monks of Wat Hai Sok

My first English class : The novice monks of Wat Hai Sok

Wat Inpeng



The Lao Champs Elysees, the presidential palace at one end



The Lao Champs Elysees, The Patuxai "Lao Triumph Arch" at the other end.




Entrance of Wat Inpeng

My new home, Sweet home - Chapter 2 - July 2015

Here is my new home. Could be really sweet, were it not so hot, with an undersized aircon, and no insulation whatsoever. I've been on the verge of fainting the second day following my moving in! It definitely should be upgraded. It is on its way because my landlady is very nice and comprehensive... Patience. One day at a time!

My house is a one room house, with a separate kitchen - an oven at day time -and a bathroom - a hammam as well as a sieve when it's raining. Apart from those details, the house is lovely and its green environment charming.

 

The village I live in, 10 mns from the center of town is called Sok Paluang - Vientiane is made of the gathering of different villages -.  I have this strange feeling to be back in the village of my childhood - sort of - riding my bicyle along the 200 meter dirt road, hearing the sounds of nature at night, frogs croaking, birds screeching (definitely not chirping!), roosters crowing - those stupid animals always crow before the sun rise, right in the middle of the night-. They are so loud, believe me. And in the morning I can see hens and roosters running across my garden!

 

My new house

The terrace

View of my garden

 

My little "oven" kitchen

The One room with its sleeping, living, and dining space.

My New Home, Sweet Home! 09/27/2014

As some of you suggested I will write in English from now on because I need to practice, and morever after what you are going to read next!

Please, my English native friends or English expert friends, forgive my mistakes and be indulgent with me (you have the right and the duty to correct me).

So let's go back to the SF story:

in French we say: quand les oiseaux chantent, après ils déchantent - after the birds have sung,  they stop singing ! that's what I am going through!

Guess what: my hostess I just met an hour ago is just a young Eastern witch, with a strong sort of Russian accent, she is from Moldavia. She opened the door without a look at me. The two young daughters of her companion are staying with her (10 and 12 years old) because, guess what: the companion is a nurse in a psychiatric hospital 3 hours from SF so he is away 4 days a week. The poor little girls have nothing to do except stay in their bedroom to watch TV on a giant screen in front of their bed. We are in a supposed lovely house with a lovely garden in the near suburb of SF and guess what: they never eat outside because it is too cold! (I just got a sunburn today walking along the street). There is a supposed living room in the house and guess what: there is no couch, sofa or even chairs to sit on! Only a closed piano and a cupboard, with a view of the neighbours'wall, which anyway we do not see because the blinds are lowered and closed. I wanted to have a cigarette in the garden to relax and guess what: it is strictly forbidden to smoke even in the garden because it is not good for the children! So I go back to my room ( because I am not invited to have a drink in the living room which does not exist, and furthermore she seems to be disapointed that I have nothing planned tonight!) and try to get connected to REAL persons! So I ask for the wifi code and guess what : she won't give it to me because you never know what I could do with it, so she told me she would type it herself in my computer. So I wait for her in my room so that she can type the code herself... and guess what: she never came, because she was waiting for me to bring my computer to her!  I think we are going to be very good friend.

The good news is that she hosts two other sudents, and guess what: they are away for the week-end (which I now completely understand).

 

I have to tell you about my house: very neat and clean, in a street that could be compared to Wisteria lane, the famous desperate houswifes' street (a famousTv show for those who might not know).

My wonderful Moldavian Cristina is about 30, tall, thin, blue eyes, long blond air, but she looks like a grey spider.

She prepared diner for the 4 of us last night. It was not the gin & tonic welcome diner party I had expected but well! We had a very good plate of nice vegies+ rice + chinese dish. But no drinks at all (no glasses on the table) and no desert (a fruit would have been welcome).  It was ready at 8. We were finished at 8:15! Because I tried to chat with the two adorable little girls.

After that, I asked if there might be a family television I could watch, to make up for the Russian accent and the lack of English listening. But no, there is none, the only TV is in the girls' bedroom. And there is no living room as I said previously, only a passing room. But I can Watch TV on my computer. Of course!

After that I was given the rules: I shall not go back home after 10 pm at night during the week, because it wakes up the girls (of course, they live in the former living room separated to the corridor by a wood panel!).

And the best of all, I want you to open wide your ears because I am sure you have never lived such a welcoming attitude:

I asked If I could make a cup of tea, anytime. I was told that students are not allowed to use the kitchen utensils, nor are they to open the fridge. So if I want a cup of tea, I should go to the mall (a 15 mns walk) or to the gaz station which is closer!!!

At that point, I fell down and burst into tears... No , I just said "ok I understand ". Period.

 

So this is the bright golden jail I live in! This is not a nightmare, This is my real life!

Well, as you can see I do not know how long I will be able to bear this situation!

I wish you all a wonderfull sunny sunday, mine might be a long long one!

The transformational experience of being taught how to teach

I have done my teacher training and got what I’ve come here to get: the CELTA CERTIFICATE!  Four weeks of intense training. It was such an empowering experience.

We were three in my class (!), Cat, a 28 year old woman from Idaho who already taught in South Korea and is intent on moving to Taipei in Taiwan, and Jenny a 57 year old woman from California who already taught English literature at university in the US, is willing to volunteer in Tibet and seeked effective tools to teach English as a second language. Two great women ! We were in position of teaching the very third day or our course. It was something both highly useful and dreadful - scary to teach in front of a class almost from scratch -  also the best way to learn, by making mistakes which is part of the learning process. Every afternoon we were teaching “free classes” to “real” students of the school. They were approximately 8 to 14, from 20 to 60 years old, from South Korea, Japan, Brasil, Russia, Europe and were elementary to upper intermediate level.

My two classmates: Cat on the right Jenny on the left

My great teachers: Sezgi, 2nd on the right, and Jenny far right

I have entered a new world.

I realized I was not wired correctly with regard to what is required from a teacher. I realized I had to shed all those automatic processes I’ve been used to dealing with for years, to relearn a new way of expressing things. We – company workers - have been used to studying a topic, gain an expertise on it to be able to tell about it extensively to our colleagues and managers. And now we have to reverse the process and ask our audience - our students -  to tell us the good way, to elicit their skills, their mind, their speaking ability, to find the answers by themselves. It is a new philosophy we have to adopt : We enter the dialectic method of enquiry of Socrates . And as our renowned friend Wikipedia says : “the Socratic method remains a commonly used tool in a wide range of discussions, and is a type of pedagogy in which a series of questions is asked not only to draw individual answers, but also to encourage fundamental insight into the issue at hand. This is perhaps Socrates’ most important contribution to Western thought”.

No wonder this training was baffling. The overarching principle of our teaching hinges on this student-centered methodology. I am entering a new world, I need an overall rebooting of my mind.

The paramount concept of our training lies on the CCQ  - Concept Checking Question - and its infamous enemy the TTT - Teacher Talking Time! The CCQ is a clever way to elicit students understanding rather than “spood feeding them” - quote from our teacher Sezgi-. And that might be the most difficult part for us trainee teachers because as previously said we are wired differently. That is when we are required to have a thorough analysis of the grammar point, the vocabulary or the functions we are supposed to teach. And we know we have done a good job when we’ve almost been silent during the class.

The interesting part of this course is that we’ve been taught the way we are supposed to teach our students, with this same discursive process.

Praise is the first tool of class management we’ve been told about. Surprisingly, as far as I can recall, it seems to me that the word praise does not belong to the lexical set of the educational system in France. As a tool of class management it is yet so positively obvious, because our students need confidence to be able to speak a new language! The use of interaction patterns such as working in pairs is also meant to foster confidence and encourages the student to practice the language in a “safe” environment, not being exposed directly to the teacher or the entire class. This is also the spirit of the“check in pairs” stage, in which the student can check their answers whith their classmate and thus be sure of themselves before giving an oral answer to the class.

The very scaffolding of our teaching was the lesson plan frameworks and we’ve internalized - or still are in the process of internalizing -  these while teaching ourselves or observing our peers teach. A good lesson is planned with a clear aim. The lead-in serves as an icebreaker, we then introduce a context to what we’re going to teach, we then set up a “treasure hunt” to make the students guess the rules or the meaning of what they are being taught, then we process to a controlled practice to check their understanding, then we set up a freer practice to give them a free way to practice the new language they ‘ve learnt. That is in a nutshell the guidelines to the Language lessons: vocabulary, grammar, functions. Nothing else but a logical way to get acquainted to a new language.

Observing and being observed by our peers with a time of constructive feedback  was a very empowering process and a time of self awareness thanks to our professional and empathetic teachers. And ultimately establishing a rapport with the students was a wonderful experience.

I feel like a whole new world is opening up for me. I AM so GRATEFUL!