Welcome khun Barry

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OK.
Teaching again today. please see 3 piccies attached to get you in the mood.
pic 1 : roughly translated means "welcome khun Barry, you're a great guy, we love you and thank you for being here" :)
pic 2: end of morning assembly
pic 3: my schools' name (its a longie..)
some tips below for teaching in Thailand (well this school anyway which i really like)


be confident even if you havent taught before. the reason i say this is because the kids will be pleased to see you and if you talk confidently in English to them they will listen

be patient with the admin side of things. you may find that you have no schedule or that it is changed at very short notice (today i taught in the morning and in the PM was meant to do some more according to the schedule only to find all the teachers were pre-occupied with a hospital visit) never got to the bottom of that?

be prepared to find it difficult to converse with some of the ENGLISH teachers in English as their grasp of the language isnt very good - having said that i think it may be a confidence thing. once they get to know you they open up more and the English speaking comes easier.
still.. planning lessons is awkward sometimes as they cannot tell you what they want you to do..
be prepared to "wing it" - it adds to the fun!

i brought with me questionnaires for the kids (off the web), music lyrics and the music on ipod - we blank out words of the song give them a copy and then play the song - they fill in the blanks - they love it.

bring a map of your country - its easy to talk about "home" and they're interested. sport and music as topics go down well........

bring anything relating to your home life 1. because you'll feel good talking about it and 2. they will be interested..

be prepared for celebrity status and be prepared to say good morning about 600 times a day as all the pupils want to talk to you...........

be prepared to be flippin' hot in most of the classrooms and take plenty of water with you. be prepared for having to almost shout in lessons when its raining as its very noisy.

be prepared for a bird to fly into the classroom to its nest behind the TV above the white board (all classrooms without A/C have one.

they will laugh at you sometimes dunno why, probably you're pronunciation of thai words, maybe someone has made a wisecrack about you, maybe because you're sweating profusely... anyways dont worry about it - they're very good natured...

be prepared to question your knowledge of the English language and its grammar (its funny how we communicate grammatically erroneously everyday probably but we dont realise (apart from Robin and Olly P maybe).