Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – Sleepy Thai Girl -Part 4
The agency had set me up with classes in a government school right beside Central Ladprao department store. This was to be my first introduction to teaching in Thailand and it started off badly. I probably would have walked right out after a few minutes if it wasn’t for the fact there was a Thai teacher blocking the exit. I discuss this lesson elsewhere (you can read about it here) so I won’t dwell too much on it now. Suffice to say that my first class convinced me that teaching wasn’t the “piece of piss” that others had led me to believe it to be.
Second Period
After my first class ended the Thai teacher marched me right into another classroom. I tried to make small talk during the walk between classes. I wanted some type of feedback on my performance – he just smiled politely. I had been told that this teacher taught English, but when I asked him questions he showed no signs of understanding. Maybe he just didn’t want to have to tell me how much I sucked as a teacher; pretending to not understand could have been a way to save face.
This second class was slightly easier. I just repeated the exact same thing I’d done in the earlier class – like the first group these students were Matayom 1 (the first year of secondary school). I focused on occupations and had the students tell me what they wanted to work at as adults. This went fairly well for the first twenty minutes, but we managed to get through my meagre lesson plan too fast. I could feel panic setting in again as it became obvious that there was no way that we could continue with just questions and answers about occupations for another half an hour.
I remembered the drunken conversation from the night before. I adapted a suggestion that had been given by one of my drinking buddies. I got the students to play a game called ‘give us a clue’. They had to mime different professions and the rest of the class had to guess their job. I just pointed at pictures in the book and they did some miming. This was going well so I decided to divide the class into two groups and turn this into a competition; given each side a point if they were able to guess the mime. The two teams became quite competitive and the second half of the class passed quickly. I felt good about how things had worked out and left that class on a high. Maybe I did have the makings of a teacher after all.
Mr Confusion has Entered the Classroom
After a break of two hours I came back to teach another class; these were Matayom 3 and a couple of years older than students I’d taught that morning. This time I wasn’t accompanied by a Thai teacher; he obviously heard enough of my occupations lesson to last a lifetime. I actually felt relieved that he wasn’t there because I suspected he had been judging me negatively the whole time. What I didn’t realise then was that it had been this Thai teacher had been providing an important function; his presence had discouraged the students from making the new nervous teacher’s life hell.
I had my schedule on piece of paper and the class rooms were all written on there. I set off to find my students. What I hadn’t been expecting was that the class room numbers were all written in Thai numerals. I couldn’t read Thai then and it all just looked like squiggles. I noticed a Thai teacher further up the corridor. My shoes were too noisy as I jogged to where she stood talking to a group of students – everyone was looking out at me from their classrooms. The teacher smiled though. She looked at my piece of paper and then turned while counting to three with one finger; like she was conducting an invisible orchestra. I took this to mean that my students were in a room three doors up. I gave a grateful smile and hurried along.
I felt flustered by the confusion and the jog and almost fell into the classroom. There was already a teacher there. The students burst into laughter at my clumsy entrance. My face was red as I showed this new teacher my schedule. She pointed to the next classroom; she didn’t smile. All the students burst into laughter again as I left the room.
How a Sleepy Thai Girl Almost Ended My Teaching Career
There was no teacher in the next room so I presumed they were my students. The noise was deafening; this group showed no interest in the fact that their new foreign teacher had arrived. The foreign teachers I’d met had given me one Thai word they claimed was vital and I shouted it now – “Ngiap” or “be quite”. I tried to look serious but my face was still red from the embarrassment a couple of minutes before.
A few of the students looked in my direction and someone at the back shouted, “Please stand up”. There was a shuffling of chairs and about half the students stood up saying, “good morning teacher” – it was afternoon, but I was chuffed with their politeness anyway. When they sat down a lot of the students were still ignoring me, but I decided to battle ahead anyway with the same lesson I’d given the other two classes – I didn’t see any need to change a winning formula.
These older students were not impressed at all by my selected subject material; getting them to respond to my questions was like pulling teeth. I noticed a girl with her head on the desk as if she were asleep. This was obviously taking the piss so I went up and challenged her about it. I told her to wake up. Without lifting her head off the desk she turned and gave me a sleepy confused look. She then turned back face down to the desk. The rest of the class laughed. I pointed at the door and told her to get out; she looked up at me again but this time smiling before returning to her face-down pose. I didn’t know what to do. I’d asked her to not sleep in class and she’d just ignored me. I told her to get out but unless I physically took her out she wasn’t going to budge. What was I meant to do? I decided to just pretend it hadn’t happened and went back to teaching the class. This turned out to be a big mistake; by backing down I’d lost all credibility and the students could now sense my fear.
If this had happened later in my teaching career I would have had many ways to deal with the situation. I certainly wouldn’t have allowed a student to call my bluff only for me to then back down. You never threaten a student unless you are prepared to back it up; there is also hardly ever any need to resort to threats. I hadn’t a clue how to control them and this meant that these students had zero respect for me – why should they have? Two other girls and boy followed the example of the first student and put their heads down on their desks and ignored me.
They next forty minutes were horrible; the students knew that I’d no way to discipline them and they wanted to make sure that I knew that too. At one stage I stopped teaching altogether and just sat at the desk looking at them; most of the class didn’t even notice. I don’t know why I waited until the end of the class; maybe I was trying to hang onto my last bit of pride. I felt physically ill. When the bell did finish I swore that I’d never let myself be in that position again – I was done with teaching.
I continued to feel sick as I walked out of the school that day – it was no longer just due to a hangover. I felt like a complete failure. I’d once begged on the streets of London but this humiliation felt worse than that. How could I ever face a classroom of young kids again?
The Story so Far
Why Does The Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint? – Part 1
Why Does The Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint? – Part 2
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Pepperment? – Part 3
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – Sleepy Thai Girl -Part 4
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – How Dare They Not Like Me – Part 5
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – Beers, Jokes, and Gameboys – Part 6
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint Part 7 –The Thailand Paperwork Nightmare
Why Does the Foreign Teacher Always Smell Like Peppermint – Bad Reputation Part 8
Thanks, Paul for your sharing. I’ve had similar experience teaching adult students who were all rebellious yet tried to cover their actions by being polite.. which is worse than having a group wild monkeys…
Hi Steven, yes adults do bring their own set of challenges. I found that out later.
Hi Paul,
One thing I found about teaching was that if you kept using the same old techniques to discipline them, they got immune to them. So you just have to keep coming up with new ways.
Also early on I found that if you sent kids out of the classroom, you’d end up with a bigger problem. Namely as you would be teaching they’d be making faces and acting up to the other students when your back was turned. You’d then hear the other students laughing and it’d cause a disruption.
Hey, lots of people moan about teachers in Thailand and all, take a look at this. And I swear I didn’t write it! http://www.roadjunky.com/article/2179/teaching-english-in-phnom-penh-cambodia
Nice link Mark. I met some of the Cabondian TEFLers and they made the Thai teachers seem like real pros.
I later found out that sending kids out of the classroom was self-defeating. A lot of them wanted to be sented out. If you wanted to punish them you just made them sit through the lesson 🙂
Paul, That was a tough day in class. I think Any new teacher would have a tough time figuring out how to discipline a Thai class. Keep it coming.
Hi Tim, I think it is something that a lot of people don’t think about enough when planning to teach in Thailand. You hear people ridicule the ex-pat teachers here, but learning to control a classroom takes skill; I would guess that the majority of people will pack the job in after a few months because they just can’t manage the students.
Paul another great read and certainly worth sharing with any budding teachers. Mind you I bet a lot of old hands had a giggle too.
One thing I learned early with teaching UK teenagers is don’t make threats you can’t enforce 😉
Hi Mike, I did learn how mistaken it was to make weak threats. I did do it another couple of times in my teaching career, but that horrible lesson was never really forgotten.
Ooof. I feel your pain. My juniors and I have been on a war path. A constant struggle of “who’s the boss”. It’s tough. People think Thai students will be easier because there is this respect teachers have but – teenagers are still teenagers. And once you lose your credibility it’s hard to get it back.
My class locked me out of my room last night. Sigh. Today is the last day. Thank Buddha.
Aren’t you glad not to be teaching anymore? 😛
I think in some ways teaching is great for personal development. We can all kid ourselves about how mature we are, but when you are on the losing end of a battle of wills with a twelve year old you know you still have a long way go. What made it worse for me was that I’d belonged to the disruptive element in school. I wanted to tell these students, “hey, I’m just like you”, but I know they would never have believed me. I was just the stupid foreign guy in between them and their lunch break.
Ouch, this made me wince. I’ve definitely had experiences like this! My first day of teaching middle schoolers in the U.S. I ended up sobbing at the end of the day, and a couple of months into the year I made one kid cry and then started crying myself. In the middle of the day.
I really do love teaching, but it is so draining…and those kids can smell fear! They know if you’re not prepared and they will go for the jugular!
Hi Megan, my only experience of teaching children had been the movie ‘ Dead Poets Society’. I had hoped that I’d be an inspirational teacher too. I thought the fact that I’d been a bad boy in school would mean the students would really like me – they would see me as just one of them. It didn’t work out like that at all.
Paul I really am enjoying the Peppermint series. You’ve come from getting hammered on booze on a beautiful Koh Chang beach to a battle of wills against unruly Thai youngsters. Personally that’s the kind of mental battle I could do without, especially in the work place.
I used to think Thai kids were so respectful but your ‘Peppermint’series has now got me thinking otherwise.
I look forward to the showdown which is surely coming in Part Five.
Hi Martyn, I was surprised with what went on in the classroom. I think that generally Thai kids are a lot more respectful than other parts of the world, but they don’t suffer fools gladly. I’d imagine that if it had been a school in the UK or Ireland things would have been a lot worse.
Paul if it had been the UK or Ireland I think your series would be named Why Does The Foreign Teacher Always Smell Of Extra Strong Mints.
I wonder if Extra Strong Mints would survive if alcohol went out of fashion
Paul, after reading your Peppermint series, you reminded me that I made the right decision…not to teach. A year ago I was all for it, until one day I visualised myself getting up every morning, making my way to a school in a foreign country and trying to contain a group of children, while actually trying to teach them in a foreign language. Something I wouldn’t contemplate doing in my own country, so definitely not fair on anyone to try it here.
After raising two daughters (who, by the way, are lovely now) I can see how classes could turn into a nightmare, were they to be multiplied by 30 or so. I’d be needing some sort of mints too!
Hi Snap, I never had any idea how stressful teaching could be; I respect anyone that can do it. The foreign teachers in Thailand get a very bad press sometimes, but most of them do earn their money. Teaching is a real rollercoaster of emotions. I’ve had classes where I left felt like I was the best teacher in the universe only to walk out of another class fifty minutes later determined to quit teaching forever – this happened a lot.
Hello; This is going on 2 1/2 years that I am teaching at the high school here outside of Bangkok. I really love teaching here. matter of fact, Every term they ask me to come back to teach the kids. I work 16 to 18 hours every week and teach about 900 kids per week. The kids I teach are from 11 to 17 years old. This year I will teach 1.7, 2.7, 4.2, 4.3, 5.2, 6.2 and I also teach 6 very slow learners. I teach English to them all. Im retired and am 68 years old, in good health. All of the Thia teachers like me and many times ask me to help them with many things. I would say about 1400 kids go to this school. Out of that number I would say about 8% do not like me, but they make problems in the class and I take or send them to the office. The school let’s me set up the way I teach, because of he books that are used, I see many things that are wrong wih the books they use, and I made this statemen to the boss at the school and showed him in the books he things that are wrong. So he told me to set up my class lessons any way I wish. Some of the other thia teachers use my way of teaching the kids. I am very happy with the school, also I had many other schools ask me to teach at other schools, but I tell them Im happy at this school. I did not go to the school looking for a teaching job, they came to my house looking for me, asking me to teach at the school. I also was at the ime before I started to teach at the high school, I was teaching at home 5 nights a week and on Sat. I would teach 5 to 7 at the number one university here in Bangkok. So I really did not need the money from the high school. I told them I will give it one term to see if I would stay on. They said okay. So I am now at this school 2 1/2 years and may even stay longer.
Well done Richard. It is good that you enjoy teaching so much. I believe it is working at things we love that keep us young.