Peaks and Troughs

At the time of writing despondency is my middle name. The first few days here I was on a bit of a high, everything was new and exciting. Earlier today I taught my first class......
Every evening about 30 to 40 Thai people come to the centre for free English classes. They get free lessons, we get to practice on them; it’s a good system. We twelve students are divided into two groups of six. The group of six I am in have about 15 Thai students with which to practice giving lessons. The other group of six also have the same amount of Thai students. There are two classrooms in the centre. There is one upstairs for intermediate students and one downstairs for elementary students. I am in the classroom upstairs. The way it works is as follows...
The Thais come to the centre from 6.00pm to 8.00pm for lessons every evening. Every second evening three of us training teachers have to deliver a class. As it is the first week, the two hour class is broken into three sessions of 40 minutes each. Each of the three training teachers allocated that evening gets 40 minutes each to teach.
The Thais that come for the free lessons range from about 16 years of age to 50 years of age. They are a very pleasant group, very polite but also fun-loving and they like to have a laugh while in class.
Kelly was first to teach for 40 minutes. Kelly is an American girl who has been teaching English in Korea for the past 3 years. The rest of us sat at the back of the class with our instructor who was observing Kelly as she did her teaching. Kelly was really good and had great control over the class as she went through the present simple and present continuous verb forms with them.
Next up was Michael who is South African but has been living and teaching in Taiwan for the past 7 years. Michael continued on from where Kelly left off. He was very comfortable with what he was doing and had the students up out of their seats and moving around to shake things up a bit. Michael timed his forty minutes to perfection.
Next up was Colin. Colin is from Ireland and has had no experience whatsoever of standing in front of a class of people and trying to teach them English. Colin had sweated profusely as he watched the others work their teaching magic. Standing now in front of the class in a soaking wet shirt, Colin ceased to sweat. Apparently fear makes the skin contract.
Okay, I had my lesson plan written out in front of me just like I was instructed. I had my handout exercises ready to go. I had it all timed to perfection. That is if I didn’t run out of time before I got through everything. Basically I had to talk to them about ‘How we use our spare time’. I introduced the topic and then proceeded to elicit responses from them. I asked them to call out examples, such as working, playing, swimming, going out with their friends. I introduced the word ‘socialising’ to them and also the phrase ‘hanging out with friends’. I gave my first hand out to them and asked them to read it. I asked them to think about what was on the handout and then to get into groups of two and discuss what was on the handout.
I thought I was doing quite well. At least twenty minutes must have gone by. I looked up at the clock on the wall to make sure and was horrified to see that only seven minutes had elapsed since I had started. I was half way through my lesson plan but nowhere near half way through the forty minutes I had to spend teaching them.
I started to panic. What else could I do but give them the body of text I had prepared for them to read and answer questions on. ‘Oh fucking great’, I thought, ‘I have just about run through the whole thing in less than twenty minutes’.
Thankfully they found reading the text much harder than I had anticipated and this killed a few of those eternity filled minutes for me. When they completed the task I asked one of them to read out the first answer. I then asked the rest of the class if the answer was correct. When they answered that it was correct I would ask another why they thought it was correct. For me this dragged on forever but looking at the clock I could see there was still fifteen minutes left to go.
Okay I could take no more, it’s a fair cop guv’nor, I have fucked up. I said that this was my first time ever to teach a class and I asked them if maybe I was speaking too fast for them. In unison they nodded and gave a resounding ‘Yes’. They then proceeded to laugh. I know they weren’t laughing at me but rather at the comedy of the situation. I apologised to them, slowly and smiled. Still I couldn’t think of anything else to say and broke the golden rule. I finished the class before the forty minutes was up. I thanked them and walked back to my fellow trainer teachers. The Thais stayed in their chairs. As it was not yet 8.00pm they were expecting more teaching. My tutor explained to them that the class was over for the evening and thanked them for coming. I should have done that.
Standing at the back of the class feeling despondent I was approached by one of the Thais. I think his name is Uie. He put his hand on my shoulder and with a big smile said that he would see me tomorrow. They are a truly lovely race of people.
Later that evening some of my peers were also very nice. They each chose their moments to approach me and offer words of encouragement and to tell me it wasn’t as bad as I thought. While this was very decent and thoughtful of them it didn’t really make me feel any better.
As I write this I feel very low indeed. I feel I am in over my head; that I have taken on too much. Everyone else on the course is vastly more educated than me and most of them have a lot of experience already with teaching. Most of the conversation over the daily meals is about all the different places in the world they have been to or the next teaching job they have lined up in Taiwan or China.
Those of you who know me very well will be wondering if I am going to quit now after only two days. Yes of course I have been thinking about it. It has been running through my head constantly that I have pretty much quitted everything I have tried in the past. I am just fluttering through life going nowhere really, getting nothing accomplished. Right now it feels the same, the urge to run; to give up and get out is my constant companion. To be totally honest I don’t know what to do. I owe it to myself at this stage to hang on as long as I can. I suppose I feel a little better just by simply writing this out and sharing it with my friends and family.
Fuck it, I have another lesson plan to do for Thursday’s lesson and I have to approach one of the Thai students and ask him if I can interview him for a project / report I have to produce by next week. I can’t be wasting my time here whinging to you guys.
Hopefully I will post a blog soon while on a peak.
Love you all and miss you.