1st month of teaching

I'm back online, it's taken a while but I now have a more permanent internet connection running. My landlord has provided me with a better cable which works fine. So I'm back on the blog.

It has been over a month of teaching now and I couldn't have found a better job for me. I absolutely love teaching. It requires creativity, adaptability and resourcefulness to get on in this job. It also requires patience, organisation and tact. Above all else, you need a sense of humour and a will to teach. I couldn't be happier, unless I had someone to help with the organisation! I have got into a good system now though and the school itself is quite organised. Plus, there are lots of other experienced teachers that love to help out with snippets they have discovered. Overall I have found it to be a very rewarding job. Everyday when a kid wants to speak to me in English about something it makes me smile. It means they are finding a reason to speak English which is that thought that I'm trying to instill in them. When they think about English I want them to think a happy thought, not a slaves thought, "I have to learn English because..." more like, "I choose to learn English because...". It's quite philosophical but these are my initial feelings about teaching and it's application. Subject to change of course! In a few years I'll probably think 'you will learn English you lil b******!' haha

The art classes with the posh kids are a different story to my English classes. Their English is very good already. There isn't a syllabus for art, I'm writing it! Other teachers have mentioned that its unfair but I think this is the best way to do it. Each art teacher has their own take on life, art and it's uses. When I got down to planning each unit I thought about how I was taught and how I would have liked to have been taught. So I decided to test the kids with the 1st unit on illustration, detailed analysis using a pencil of a subject. 4 weeks culminating in a very special lesson which is unique to the school, a life model class! I have made a lot of friends in the school and I sold it to them that all they had to do was sit and read a book for 40 mins - 2 x 20 min positions. And I ended up with 5 willing participants that all did great jobs as life models. Obviously the classes were fun and the kids enjoyed it but I wish I could show you some of these pictures. For their first ever life model class they all did well and some of them did really well. In particular the 10 year olds. They have improved so much since my first lesson with them and now they are really starting to look more with their eyes and less with their imaginations. Not that I'm stifling their imaginations in the slightest, I encourage them to add style to the drawings. Imaginative backgrounds and details that don't exist on the model. Just draw the model accurately first. They seem to enjoy my lessons and I enjoy them as well. The next unit I've planned is on light and shadow, then colour, then painting, then low-relief sculpting, then a sculpture. So, a nice transition from 2D to 3D will allow me to develop their core skills in the arts before I start to set projects that really test these skills.

Bangkok. It's cultural sights, sounds and smells. Coming soon.