This week, not matter what our former profession, we all became teachers. We went to the village school and gave our expertise on the English language. Considering the only Thai we know are phrases like, “my name is”, “hello”, and “thank you”, it made for an interesting day. Mike and Brittani teach the kindergarten and 1st grade class, Hannah and I teach 2nd and 3rd grade, and Charles and Sarah teach 4th and 5th. On the first day, we came in without any lesson plans because we didn’t even know the level of their English. Hannah and I began our class with the classic children’s song, “head, shoulders, knees and toes”. This was a winner. We then went on to numbers, ABC’s, emotions, weather and ended with a game of Simon Says. Thankfully, Hannah is a special Ed teacher back in the States and has quite the passion for education. Mix that with my camping ministry background and you’ve got one fun learning environment.
These kids are beautiful and so eager to learn. They will literally repeat whatever you say in an effort to speak English and soak up every minute of class.
When the week came to an end it was incredibly hard to leave that school. Literally, the kids were hanging on me and I could hardly walk! They immediately love you, trust you and want to be just like you. Every word, every action. They even let us come to their morning assembly and asked us to “share our feelings” toward the students. Aka we all stood up and said how much fun we had teaching and that we will miss them when we leave.
This was such a great experience and I loved having the opportunity to serve the village in this way. I will really miss seeing those sweet faces everyday.
