Right…. Light….

Have you ever psycho-analyzed the English language? 

Okay. It’s not psycho to analyze it, and honestly I have a new respect for people who do this all the time! It is quite the challenge to teach English as a second language, especially when you don’t know the first language of the people you are teaching! 

Progress report from the classroom:  

We have had 3 days of classes, and it has been VERY interesting to say the least! We have 4 women in our morning class, which all 5 of us teach together. Our evening class is split into two groups: Will and Brad have the more advanced group of 2-4, and Jess, Erika and I have 8 in our beginner’s class. 

The first night we were under the impression that ‘they,’ being our contacts at the church, had a test to see how well the students knew English already, so we assumed we would not be teaching much the first day. WRONG! We were sitting around at the table, about 15 minutes before class began, and our translator looked at us and said something to the effect of, “okay, so what are you doing for the test?” Our team slowly made eye contact across the table… and unsure grins infected our faces. 

Seriously: What would you have done?  I kept thinking of the catch phrase, “keep it simple, stupid.”

 HELLO. MY NAME IS ________.  

Needless to say, the first day was a little chaotic. We’re slowly figuring out where we best fit in the classroom, and the lessons have slowly come together. Praise God for google and the wonderful people who have posted tips and lessons for ESL (English Second Language) Classes online! 

I also want to thank Mr. Martinez, my high school Spanish teacher that I haven’t seen since 2002, because I am constantly thinking back to the lessons he taught! I LOVED his class, and the way he put different ideas and topics together made learning Spanish really easy for me.  It has definitely helped me organize our English lesson plans. 

Jess and Will have done a great job of jumping in to lead the classes. They are GREAT teachers! Erika is a fantastic Vana White at the Whiteboard; she has the most perfect handwriting ever! Brad’s “ASIONICS” (Asian Ebonics Phonics…) has helped the Thai people understand what we are trying to say, and then we can teach them the correct way to say it! His overall encouragement for all of us has been awesome, too. I am the “secretary” of sorts, and typing out everything we’ve taught so we can keep record of what we did, what was assigned, what they need more help with, etc.   These are not our only roles, but probably the ones we fall into the most. Things get mixed around quite a lot!

We also spend a lot of time in one-on-one conversation with them, so we can build better relationships and meet them where they are at with their English skill.

We’re slowly seeing ways for us to introduce the gospel in the classroom. We were given some really good resources for teaching Bible Stories in English from a guy named Bobby. Bobby is originally from Chicago, and is now a full time teacher at the University here in Chiang Rai.

Good stuff is happening. Pray for bigger things! Pray for heaven to invade earth during these classes!