Because I hadn't posted
in a while and because one of my classes got cancelled today, I'll do
back-to-back posts. This topic actually occurred to me on the bus on the
way to work this morning, but there are two separate and completely unrelated
prongs to it.
First, the more serious angle on how Thais handle discipline in school. When I first got here I was a bit shocked by it, but now I'm kind of used to it. These kids are trained to be hard from the get-go. When my three year-olds are talking or not sitting in the right spot or rolling around on the floor, the teachers (sometimes) snap to. Sometimes I have to raise my voice or gently move them myself, but when the Thai teacher gets involved, things stop being polite and start getting real. They use corporal punishment here, in a BIG way. Any time a student is even slightly out of line, the Thai teacher will come over and smack them, hard enough to make a loud “thump” sound and usually jolt the student forward or backward a bit. They usually hit them on the back, shoulder, or legs. Sometimes the teachers will walk around carrying a ruler and smacking it on their palm menacingly. If a student gets out of line or isn’t sitting nicely, they slap their shins HARD with the flat side of the ruler. From the sound it makes, even I can feel the sting. The thing is, it gets the kids in line, and sometimes it's hard to argue with results. I've never seen it make the kids cry or seen any of the children get very upset by it. I think it's sort of the norm here, so no one really rocks the boat about it and kids are so accustomed to it that they aren't bothered. At first it was hard to watch, but now I've gotten pretty used to it, and can always tell when it's coming. I still haven't hit any kids (obviously, I don't think I could), but I have been more physical in moving them around. When they get out of line and try to cut to the front to get their work checked, they don't understand "Go to the back of the line, please" or even "back!" so they just stand there and keep staring at me. I usually end up pushing them back away from me a bit and saying "Go. To. The. Back." very slowly so hopefully they will start to understand what that means soon. With 24 kids in the class and me having to put a check mark at the top of every page (and usually have them identify the thing they were coloring or tracing for that day), it takes a while to check work and the kids all swarming, clumping, and cutting pisses me off after about the first 10 seconds.
On a lighter note, there have been a few funny and borderline ridiculous interactions and occurrences since I've been here.
All of my students confuse Molly with me, and think that she is me whenever they see her, in spite of the five inch height difference and difference in hair and eye color. She teaches all the fifth and sixth graders, so they don’t know her at all, but still can’t tell her apart from me.
Most of my students can't really say my name properly (they're getting better) but a lot of the time I end up being "Teacher Cow" or just "Cow," which is sweet of them. Although they don't know what "cow" means so it's not really an insult.
First, the more serious angle on how Thais handle discipline in school. When I first got here I was a bit shocked by it, but now I'm kind of used to it. These kids are trained to be hard from the get-go. When my three year-olds are talking or not sitting in the right spot or rolling around on the floor, the teachers (sometimes) snap to. Sometimes I have to raise my voice or gently move them myself, but when the Thai teacher gets involved, things stop being polite and start getting real. They use corporal punishment here, in a BIG way. Any time a student is even slightly out of line, the Thai teacher will come over and smack them, hard enough to make a loud “thump” sound and usually jolt the student forward or backward a bit. They usually hit them on the back, shoulder, or legs. Sometimes the teachers will walk around carrying a ruler and smacking it on their palm menacingly. If a student gets out of line or isn’t sitting nicely, they slap their shins HARD with the flat side of the ruler. From the sound it makes, even I can feel the sting. The thing is, it gets the kids in line, and sometimes it's hard to argue with results. I've never seen it make the kids cry or seen any of the children get very upset by it. I think it's sort of the norm here, so no one really rocks the boat about it and kids are so accustomed to it that they aren't bothered. At first it was hard to watch, but now I've gotten pretty used to it, and can always tell when it's coming. I still haven't hit any kids (obviously, I don't think I could), but I have been more physical in moving them around. When they get out of line and try to cut to the front to get their work checked, they don't understand "Go to the back of the line, please" or even "back!" so they just stand there and keep staring at me. I usually end up pushing them back away from me a bit and saying "Go. To. The. Back." very slowly so hopefully they will start to understand what that means soon. With 24 kids in the class and me having to put a check mark at the top of every page (and usually have them identify the thing they were coloring or tracing for that day), it takes a while to check work and the kids all swarming, clumping, and cutting pisses me off after about the first 10 seconds.
On a lighter note, there have been a few funny and borderline ridiculous interactions and occurrences since I've been here.
All of my students confuse Molly with me, and think that she is me whenever they see her, in spite of the five inch height difference and difference in hair and eye color. She teaches all the fifth and sixth graders, so they don’t know her at all, but still can’t tell her apart from me.
Most of my students can't really say my name properly (they're getting better) but a lot of the time I end up being "Teacher Cow" or just "Cow," which is sweet of them. Although they don't know what "cow" means so it's not really an insult.
There is a monk who lives somewhere near where we catch a taxi in the morning. He is very old, maybe in his late 70s or 80s. He gets around in an electric wheelchair. Which he doesn't drive on the sidewalk, but in the street, going the wrong direction. So there are all these cars headed east up the road, going about 50 mph, and then in one lane there is a monk, doing 5 mph in a wheelchair headed west. That is the best illustration I've ever seen of a complete lack of fucks to give. It's easy to tell without ever having had an exchange with him that he is just stubborn and curmudgeonly.
Exchanges:
Me: (ordering food) A cheeseburger and fries please.
Waiter: Okay, in fifteen years. (turns out he just meant minutes)
(ordering meat skewers, I just pointed at one. The woman looked concerned)
Woman: Leder.
Me: Leader?
Woman: Lemer
Me: Lemur?!?
Woman: LI-BER.
(I figured out she was saying Liver, which was honestly my bad as that was clearly far more likely than the idea that I was eating lemur or, god forbid, the leader of something)
Molly's student: Teacher Molly, do you speak Thai?
Molly: Yes, I speak it perfectly.
Molly's student: (goes off in Thai then looks at her expectantly)
Molly: English only.
Molly assigned homework of reading a mystery story and figuring out who stole the candy (in the story).
Molly: Who stole the candy?
(a bunch of wrong answers)
Student: Marie! (the right answer)
Molly: (excited) Why do you think that?
Student: Because she's a woman!
I'm sure there have been other funny things I have seen and/or heard, but this is just off the top of my head, so they'll have to wait for later.
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