First week of teaching

I've been so focused on just surviving in Thailand that I forgot why I'm actually here: to teach. Orientation went through a lot of useful lesson plans, games and ideas to keep our class entertained and out of trouble. However; all of these games and worksheets only work if your class actually has an understanding of English, and mine do not. I will be spending the next five months teaching 3-8 year olds how to speak English, and week one has shown me that this is not an easy task. Most kids have a general understanding of the alphabet and colors, but getting to the next step is harder than I imagined. I was advised by many teachers to not teach more than 3-4 words in a day but I have an entire hour with each class. So I teach them "chair" and they repeat "chair" and then we do it two more times. Okay good, they know chair. 30 seconds have passed, at most a minute. Now what? I walk around the room and point at things and they tell me the name. Quickly the class is losing interest, I went from having 40 kids paying attention to maybe 10 or 15. The other 25-30 are just goofing off in their seats or running around. There are two forms of relief in my day, the first and most obvious is when I'm done teaching and I get to go sit in the teacher's room with my book. The second is when a kind Thai teacher pops into my room to get the kids to quiet down, which buys me about 30-45 seconds of quiet. I'm at a loss. Keeping the attention of 40 kids at one time would be a struggle even if they spoke English, but add in the language barrier and it's 1000x worse. I'm working on some worksheets and coloring activities, but I'm not quite sure if I have access to a printer/copier and it's unclear if the kids have markers or anything with them.

I'm only teaching 3-4 classes a day but I have never been so drained. I spend the majority of my day making tangled small talk with the Thai teachers and then screaming at the top of my lungs during class. To keep the kids quiet and gain respect the teachers use whips and sticks on the children. When I'm having a particularly rough moment a child will run up to me with the stick and start motioning to hit the kids, but that's not something I'm willing to do, so I have to figure out another way to get either respect or fear from my students.
This job is stressful. I've tried playing a few games in the classroom but the kids can't understand my instructions, and they start talking to each other instead of attempting to understand me. They have another english teacher who speaks Thai to them to teach english grammar, spelling and vocabulary, so my job is basically to just speak with them and make sure they're pronouncing their words properly. This is a challenging thing to do with 40 kids at a time. My smaller classes (25-30 kids) are going better but even then it's still something that I was never expecting.
Some of the kids are amazing and adorable, I have children who run up to me yelling "hi teacher!" as soon as I walk into school. The little ones just want to play and be hugged and some of the older kids just like using their english to ask questions or tell me abut their day. I can tell that many of the students are excited to have Emily and I in their school, and I'm hoping that soon enough we'll find our groove and become a little more successful in the classroom.

Our school has around 1,000 students and somewhere around 30 teachers. Many of the other teachers don't speak a word of English, so we haven't gotten to know a huge clump of them, but the ones that do speak a little English have been kind and welcoming. On our first day of teaching one of the teachers took us out to dinner in Pattaya (20 minutes south) and showed us around the area, which was extremely friendly and helpful of her. There is a bit of awkwardness with some of the teachers though. It's known information that foreign English teachers usually make more money than the regular teachers in Thailand. On top of that, they're very forward when it comes to money and I've gotten numerous questions about my rent and salary. Many of the teachers are at school for 12 hours a day, whereas Emily and I are only there for around 8 hours, and only teach half of our time there. It's understandable that there would be some resentment towards us, and I'm doing my best to just smile at the teachers who seem unhappy with our presence. Besides that small glitch everyone else has been extremely welcoming. Parents say hello and smile as they pick up their kids at the end of the day, and people all over town acknowledge us when we enter shops or stroll down the street. 

We had been warned that everyone in town would recognize our presence, but it's startling how true that is. Basically every time I leave the apartment I am approached by a student or parent who want to say hello. It's exhausting to constantly be on guard with a poker face, even when it's raining and I'm hungry just trying to get home, I still have to smile and pretend that everything is dandy because the people walking past me are students or parents. We get stares for buying beers at the corner market on a Tuesday night and get pointed at when we're standing near the road waiting for a song taew. Emily and I are the only two white people in our town and it often feels that we are on display for everybody walking past. It's been a huge adjustment but has also been kind of cool. Tourists don't come to this area of Thailand so even if they don't know us personally, most already know that we're teachers here and often thank us for coming.
It's only been a week but I already know this is going to be an extremely challenging and humbling experience. This week I hope to gain access to the copier in our school so I can make some worksheets that'll allow the students time to talk during class while staying on task. I'm also hoping to be a little less exhausted at the end of our day so we can use the afternoons and evenings to explore some of the streets near our school and apartment.