On Saturday morning, Lies and I woke up early enough that we could both do some meditation and yoga on our individual bungalow porches, have a leisurely breakfast, order some lunch to take with us, and get on our private boat (30,000kip/$3.50USd) to get to the pier in time to meet Mr. Kamsai and the Translator 10:30am for our first English class that was to start at 1pm. The plan was to get to the classroom 2 hours early in order to look through the materials, and come up with a lesson plan to teach two sequential classes together between 1-4pm. It is a good thing that we had taken the time for meditation and yoga that morning, because as with the committee meeting two days earlier, things were not what we had expected at all.
Mr. Kamsai and the Translator were there and waiting for us as planned, but when we arrived at the school 20 or so minutes later with the expectation to do two hours of lesson-planning before class, as well as eating a take-away lunch we had specially ordered, we quickly discovered that instead, there were about 16 Lao students sitting inside the classroom waiting for us already!!! Not only that, but the 16 students included the two DIFFERENT groups that we had been planning on teaching together at two separate times (one from 1-2:30pm, and one from 2:30-4pm).
As it turned out, this was not the understanding of the Lao Committee- it seemed that their understanding was that we wanted them to pick us up at 10:30 to teach class at 11am to all of the students, each of us teaching our own class, and apparently they thought we were going to teach somehow for 5 hours, because the other part of the plan is that they were going to take us back to the pier at 4pm. It didn't seem to make sense at all, and in the moment our hearts and minds were struggling to figure out how this was going to work.
I could feel a distinct urge to freak out going on within me, but somehow, I managed to bypass this urge and instead step into ''Okay let's make this work" mode. I turned to Lies and said "I do not feel prepared to teach a class on my own, as I don't even know what our material consists of, etc! We'll have to teach the two groups all at once, or, request that one group come back in an hour or two" (though this second idea seemed unfair and unrealistic to ask of the kids that were already sitting there waiting). She agreed, and we turned to the committee and told them that we needed to teach together, so we would teach both groups at the same time.
We also said that now, since we were starting earlier (we tried our best to explain the confusion of this whole situation as well, but it all seemed quite lost on the translator and the rest of the group, so, we had to just make do with what was the current situation) that instead of picking us up at 4pm to return to the pier, they should pick us up at 2pm. The funny/ironic part about this, is, the translator said ''What? You are changing the plan now? You said 4pm but now you say 2pm."
One can only imagine how this conversation continued in its confusion, and all the while I could feel myself sweating like crazy, the reality of the students waiting for us just inside while we had a twenty minute conference about what the heck was going on just outside the classroom doors was starting to get to me. Enough was enough- "Alright, let's just go in and do it!"
So, Lies and I introduced ourselves to a classroom of kids that ranged from 6 years old to 20 years old, and decided to just figure out what everyone knew. We started with the alphabet. When they were all able to recite the alphabet quickly and easily with no hesitation at the first try, we realized they already knew a fair amount, as well as all being able to write their names in English on the board. Some of the older students began speaking in English in response to some of our questions, and I quickly realized that it was going to be immensely boring for the more experienced and older students to sit there while we taught the most basic of word to the younger kids.
After a short exercise of having the kids come up to the board to write out and spell out loud their names to the class, I turned to Lies and said 'Okay- I feel ready now. Give me the materials you have, and I'll take on the teenagers, and you can teach the younger girls.' And so, we split, after 15 minutes of awkward sussing out of our classroom of students.
The following 2-3 hours is a complete blur to me, but suddenly I became a teacher. I asked my ten or so students aged 14-20 to move to a small section of desks instead of being spread across the whole classroom to get a more informal and intimate feel, and began teaching. I showed them pictures and asked them to say the english words. I ran back and forth between them and the blackboard, writing words and phrases, asking them to repeat after me, sometimes correcting their pronunciation and asking them to repeat words, and other times laughing and commending their excellent pronunciation.
I gave them vocabulary for articles of clothing, parts of the body, and did a whole section on present-tense verb conjugation. I did a section where I talked about feelings, and how to express being happy, sad, tired, and hungry. I was gesticulating wildly, with chalk on my hands and soon on my black dress, and using exaggerated facial expressions to communicate what particular emotions the words were describing, and the kids were responding with laughter of appreciation, as well as understanding. When I told them the word 'bicycle' and they thought I meant 'motorbike,' I ran to the board and drew a shoddy picture of a bicycle, and laughed and shook my head at my own poor rendition of the two-wheeled vehicle, and they laughed as well, and I could tell that they were really enjoying the class.
About an hour and a half into this mayhem of teaching, I called a break, as I could feel my hunger surging after the exertion it was taking to teach completely on the spot. I was thoroughly enjoying myself though, and Lies and I had a mini-conference outside of the classroom while stuffing our faces with our take-away lunches of chicken with cashew nuts cooked by our loyal and sweet Santiphab Guesthouse ladies, all the while being watched by our new students, as well as some of our Lao Committee members who were also observing the class (as well as participating as students after a while). We confirmed to each o ther that all was going well, and that while feeling slightly insane, we were both doing a great job on the fly, or as good as a person could do under the circumstances of little to no preparation. That said- thank goodness Lies had done so much preparation of materials in Belgium, so we at least had something to work with.
So, after eating, fifteen minutes later we went back in for a final hour. The entirety of this first class wound up being about a 3.5 hour ordeal, plus another half an hour of discussion with the committee after the class, but we knew that the next day it would be much simpler, calmer, and shorter since we now knew what we were dealing with. After dismissing our classes, to which we were greeted with ''Thank you very much Sir we will see you again tomorrow" by the students... (Sir??? Oh dear, we had much work ahead of us...) we were taken back to the pier by Mr. Kamsai and the Translator, feeling exhausted and excited after a successful first English class, and looking forward to lounging in our bungalow porch-hammocks to recover from this whirlwind, before we had to go back again the next day for class number two!!!
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