My Work
Sunday, July 3rd, 2005Hello Everybody. Thus far, my blog has been mostly dedicated to detailing peripheral events in my Peace Corps experience, so I decided this posting will give some more details about my daily life and my co-teaching project.
Let me first start out by saying that I haven’t quite hit the stride of having a ‘typical day’. For the past two weeks, I haven’t been teaching but have been doing teacher evaluations instead, so whatever routine I had found working at my schools has since been lost. As far as the evaluations, I have to say I felt a little uncomfortable with my role as an evaluator of English teaching methods, since I have minimal experience in classroom education or in teaching English. However, after sitting through one day of sample English lessons given by 25 different primary school teachers, I realized that these people need help, and though I may not be an expert, I can pass on some helpful English teaching tips. I just hope none of these teachers come to observe my classroom–I think everyone is better off if the wizard stays behind his curtain.
A quick side note: On my first day of teacher evaluations, a lesson was interupted by an adolescent cow walking into the room. Sometimes I forget that I work in a developing country, but it’s moments such as these that remind me where I am.
Okay, so my normal weekly schedule is as follows:
Monday and Tuesday: Teach at Anuban Thoeng School with Dr. Suchet
Wednesday: Work at the Educational District Office with Maa Satian
Thursday and Friday: Teach at Banhuaykrai School with Pee Noy
Teaching with Dr. Suchet is like getting the prize in a Crackerjack box: you’re never sure what you’re going to get, but you can pretty much count on being disappointed. I apologize for my cynicism, but basically I have no idea how Dr. Suchet has maintained employment as a teacher, and I certainly do not understand how he was selected as a teaching counterpart for this project. He talks a good game, but he is more lazy than even myself, which is saying a lot. He seems to be more concerned with drinking whiskey and playing cards than he is with teaching.
For example, on my first day of school, after weeks of asking Dr. Suchet to lesson plan and being met with his assurances that we don’t need to plan, we enter the classroom together. He introduces me to the students, and then we stand there in awkward silence for more than a minute. I’m confused because I figure he has the reigns–he was the one who assured me that lesson planning was unnecessary. We stand there in front of a classroom of bewildered 11 year-olds, and I finally decide to start teaching, since Dr. Suchet doesn’t seem to have that on his agenda. And so goes the subsequent four hours: Jamie teaches and Suchet does nothing. Actually, that last sentence is misleading–he does give away answers to students to stifle their thought and learning processes. Good work, Doctor.
Despite the difficulties of teaching with the good doctor, I do love working at Anuban Thoeng school. The teaching staff has been friendly and welcoming to me since the day I arrived in Thoeng, and the kids are a joy. I teach 4th, 5th, and 6th grades, and I love working with students in this age range. When I walk from class to class, I am met with innumerable hellos, handshakes, and smiles.
On Wednesdays, I either catch up on work at the office (A/C!) or end up going to visit schools with my team of district supervisors, which I have reverently dubbed "The Super Group". While I do think there are better uses of my time than to sit in on hours of meetings where I can’t understand a word, I have found these school visits helpful in learning more about the area and getting a general pulse for teaching practices.
At the end of the week, I get to ride 11 kilometers each way to Banhuaykrai school, where I perform my duties as a human tape recorder. At some point, I need to change this arrangement, because it comes nowhere close to accomplishing the goal of developing student-centered English teaching practices. However, my co-teacher, Pee Noy, is one of the younger female teachers on staff at Banhuaykrai, which means that she is constantly kept busy with the crap-work that nobody else wants to do. This circumstance leaves little time for teaching, let alone lesson-planning. On top of her duties at school, Pee Noy and her husband have a growing trucking company and their 20 month old son was recently diagnosed with autism. So the last thing I want to do is create a huff about my role, because the only thing that would accomplish would be to make the principal upset with Pee Noy, who is doing the best she can.
Pee Noy didn’t even want to be an English teacher in the first place and did not want to work with me on this project because it requires more work than teaching alone. However, the principal at the school forced her to teach with me because having a "farang" teacher brings credibility to the school. Also, I think he imagines that I have money spilling out of every oraface and has already openly asked me to raise $1,000 from the United States to buy a new water cooler for the school. He says that if I teach at Banhuaykrai for two years and leave, everyone will forget me, but if I buy them a water cooler, they’ll name a building after me, and I will be remembered forever. Welcome to the Peace Corps.
As frustrating as some aspects of my life here can be, the frustration only fuels my motivation to find meaningful avenues to expend my time and energy. Fortunately, Peace Corps affords me a reasonable amount of flexibility in arranging my schedule, and I make a new schedule every six months. Scaling back my presence at either school can be tricky, but with some tact, I should be able to setup a weekly schedule that gives me more autonomy within the classroom and allows me to pursue secondary projects. So for now, I bide my time and make the most of it, all the while thinking of ways I can actually put my time and presence here to more meaningful use.
