Life at School

The day to day life in Thailand has quickly fallen into a predictable pattern and things are starting to feel much more normal. School has become a lot easier as I'm slowly discovering news ways to teach my classes and I'm finding it less of a struggle to get my point across. I've accepted that I won't be teaching my kindergarten kids very much throughout the year, instead most of my energy goes towards keeping them inside the classroom and stopping them from beating each other up (a very common occurrence). I've taught them "duck duck goose" using the words "shoulder" and "head" instead, so they at least use a little bit of their vocab. Each kindergarten class provides the kids with their own ball of clay so we spend a lot of our time making letters and singing the alphabet. They're also a huge fan of "head, shoulders, knees and toes" although I've learned that they think their toes are called "and". They also think it's a letter of the alphabet, singing " w, x, y and z." I've found I have to eliminate every single unnecessary word when I'm talking to them, or else we all end up confused.
I noticed right away that Thai kids are so much more violent that American kids. I've seen a 4 year old girl punch another girl in the face for presumably no reason at all. The boys are a huge fan of 'boxing' where they basically just take turns jabbing each other in the stomach for fun. Kids at school are kept in line by the teachers through violence. Each teacher carries around a ruler or a stick that they smack the kids with whenever they're misbehaving. During morning prayer the boys who aren't kneeling properly get smacked in the head with no warning at all, they only know they're wrong because they got hit. When I'm teaching a particularly troubling class one of the good kids will hand me a ruler and motion to hit the bad kids. I once struggled with a class misbehaving and in the end I had to go get their homeroom teacher to come in and bring order to the room. As soon as she stepped foot into the classroom she grabbed a ruler and every single bad kid stuck their hands out, palms up, knowing what was coming for them. I find it extremely frustrating that this is the most successful way to make the kids behave because it's not something I'm willing to do. No matter how annoying or disrespectful a kid is being there's no way I can take a ruler and slap them. It's also frustrating because these kids are seeing violence on a daily basis and often find it amusing. Most students laugh if their friend is being hit, finding the pain funny. This then carries into their daily life both when they're playing and when they're angry. I'm doing my best to encourage good behavior through positive reinforcement, focusing my energy on the kids who are doing well as opposed to the ones who are misbehaving, but the violence is definitely something that is already engrained in them.
I'm two days into my fifth week of teaching and so far every single weekend the other Thai teachers have had some sort of weekend commitment to the school. It's amazing how much time the teachers put into their jobs especially for how little money they're earning. School hours are 8am-3:30pm and that's exactly when I've been told to arrive and when I can go home, however the rules aren't the same for the other teachers. The earliest come around 6am because some students get dropped off by working parents, and most teachers stay until at least 4:30, but many don't leave until 6pm. On top of that every single weekend there are always some teachers that have to come into school. So far they've had to come in for parent teacher conferences, sports day (which Emily and I also participated in), some sort of clay sculpting competition for kindergarteners, and training days. On top of that, some teachers have to come in this coming Monday even though it's a holiday. Apparently teachers are used as 'security' on holidays because there have been issues of theft in previous years. I'm not 100% sure on how much the teachers are making but based on some comments I would guess on average they make around $500 a month. Keep in mind that the cost of living is extremely low here, with rent in a one bedroom apartment being around $100/month, but that's still not much money to live off of, especially for those who want to travel or indulge a little.
While we're on the subject of money: Thais love to talk about money. So many teachers have been extremely forward with me straight up asking how much money I'm making, what my rent is, how much I paid for my plane ticket here, how much my outfit is and the list goes on and on. Whenever I come back from a weekend of shopping or time on an island they ask how much I spent. We were warned from the beginning that we make more than the Thai teachers and that most of them already know this fact, but I was still hesitant to truthfully answer their questions. I make more than double some of the low key teachers such as the gym teacher and librarian. I spend my weekends free from school commitment, usually lounging on an island or going out to the bars in Pattaya, and when I come back to school on Monday many of the teachers are curious about what I did in my free time and when I ask about theirs in response it's usually followed with "I was at school all weekend." It's an awkward situation that sets me apart from the other teachers.
Although teaching is becoming much more enjoyable and less stressful I still absolutely hate the language barrier. I had these images of myself befriending both the kids and teachers and being a role model for the classes I was teaching. This cannot happen unless I magically learn the complicated language of Thai. It's so frustrating when a girl comes up to me crying and all I can say is "kerd arai kheun" (what happened?) and then I have to pass her off to someone else because I can't understand her Thai rambling. I'm constantly depending on the other teachers or older students to help me out in the classroom. It would be absolutely impossible to get through a kindergarten class without the help of their homeroom teacher. I'm also finding it extremely frustrating that I use more Thai with the younger kids as opposed to English. I've even had a few teachers suggest that the kids would listen to me better if I learned how to speak more in Thai. Well obviously they'll listen to me better if I'm speaking their language, but I didn't fly half way around the world to speak Thai in the classroom. I've spent long periods of time explaining that "sit down" means "nang" but ten minutes later I'll repeat "sit down" countless times with zero results, and then I'll utter "nang" and all of a sudden every student is sitting. At times it's been fun because my Thai vocabulary is constantly increasing but there are days where I feel that I've learned more Thai than the students have learned English.
This experience is much more frustrating and different than I ever would have imagined, but knowing all of this I would still do it again. Each day I'm learning something new and am finding better ways to teach my classes. I will probably never build strong relationships with any of my students, but we still greet each other with excitement each morning and exchange the usual conversation of "how are you today", which is often followed by blank stares or giggles.