The Daily TEFL Grind

This and That

2008-07-24T04:29:00.001+07:00

Well sorry for taking so long but I had forgotten how to get into this blasted thing!

They have now made it extremely difficult to log back in without a googlemail account and so i finally gave in and created one to get back into this rambling rant of a blog.

At the moment I am extremely busy moving house ( or at least trying to! ) so dont expect to many updates in the next couple of weeks but

I shall return
I'll be back

etc

Oh yes, they have also changed the template design and in a moment of madness I clicked the yes button to upgrade. Umm. Time needed to play around with it and put all the stuff back I have lost.

Oh dear :( I will really need to learn some self control.

Dont Look Back In Anger part whatever (8)

2006-11-01T03:45:00.000+07:00

Just in case those of you who think i am bleating a little hard about my poor victimised life and that its all me me me me me and exaggerating it, I will now copy the Wikipedia entry about it.

By the way, this is actually the polite version of it. Whoever the person in charge ( and despite the claim that the wiki is a peoples encyclopedia, there are people in charge ) is, they keep on watering it down!

In fact, the last set of edits now has the school song, which by the way sounds as bad as every other school song in Thailand!

"Employment

BCC is noted as an excellent institution of learning and one of the top private schools in Bangkok. Unfortunately, its reputation with many foreign teachers is less than golden. In fact, despite its high salaries, it was singled out by TEFLWatch, a TEFL watchdog group, as a school to watch out for. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bangkok_Christian_College

By the way, if you are thinking the layout looks weird, its fine IN FIREFOX v2.0

Its just you LUDDITES that insist on using Internet Explorer!!!!

Coming Soon!

2006-10-25T03:57:00.000+07:00

Dont worry, I havent forgotten about you all.

Coming soon, tales of incompetance, internal politics, bitching, threats of arrest and deportation.

ps, it does help if I hit the post button and not "draft". DOH!

Another Piccy

2006-09-30T21:20:00.000+07:00

Sorry, for the delay but I am turning into a right lazy bugger and I have other stuff thats taking up a fair bit of time just now.

So in the meantime, here is another picture, this time its from Loy Krathong.

Dont look back at the pictures continued

2006-08-31T18:36:00.000+07:00

Ok, as you can probably tell I have found better things to do with my life than rant about the past. Do not worry, the tale of Assumption it is still to continue!

And even more juicy is the tale of the mob on the other side of Sathorn who have just been in the news.

In the meantime here is a picture of the sports day with the boys in their wonderful manly colours of green and pink!

Dont look back in anger part 6

2006-07-28T16:16:00.000+07:00

And here we go again for the next instalment.

After John & Tony as bosses, the next willing victim was a guy called Wayne. I had heard a few stories about him before but sort of dismissed them. Then I read the novella / short story ( I cant be bothered finding out which is actually the correct term but I am sure someone out there will know ) and oh dear. It was either quite funny or deeply troubling. If he wrote it seriously and that was his attempt at deep literature, we were in trouble. If it was a light piece of fluff, it might be ok. Lets put it this way it was the sort of story someone from 6^th year would write and shove in all the long and obscure words they knew to make it sound intellectual and deep. The trouble it, most people who read it thought WTF?? I am sure you know what the initials are. It just came over as a lot of pretentious attention seeking. And he was being serious. Oh dear.

Again, I have to say that when you are the farang boss in a school, you cant win. Especially if you are the boss employed by an agency working in a school. You are in an even worse situation. You have the teachers on one side, the agency boss on another and the school on another. Definitely a case of surrounded on all sides.

To a certain extent, how you fill the role is up to you. You can piss off the agency and the school by taking the teachers side, piss off the teachers and school by taking the agencies side and so on. The problem we found quite early on and proved to be the case from then on was that no one was ever on our side. Even if they appeared to be. From a period where a lot of effort seemed to go into doing resources, planning, materials for the teachers, it went one way from here on in. Now the question is, who made that decision? Was there one actually made or did it just start to fall apart from its own entropy?

In many ways the first full year was the happiest for me. I was actually enjoying my job – it was pre blog ! – and overall it was a pretty good bunch of folk. There weren’t too many hassles in the staffroom and most of us socialised together to one level or another. It got to be a little club so to speak. Of course if you were looking from outside it probably was described as a clique. But that’s the point of about groups, there is always the looking in and looking out point of view. Was the group I was in perfect? No, not by a long way but it takes allsorts as they say and more importantly, if you are on your own in a foreign country – especially if you are new – it can be a very lonely depressing experience.

A couple of after school bars quickly became favourites and fell out of favour and back in and so on but probably during this period the one that stood out, sometimes by default later on, but initially by choice was Bobbys Arms. I wish I had taken some photographs of the place but I never quite got round to it. I think it was the age old don’t worry it will be around for ever as will I attitude. So, if anyone has some photos of that golden age, please let me know! Others that became honourable mentions or just mentions were The Exchange, O’Reillys, Bar Dog,

There is a great stereotype and reputation about English teachers that we are all sub human because – in no particular order – we are

Sexpats / whoremongers

alcoholics

socially inadequate – ranging from not being able to get laid in our own country, to being marginally or not so marginally looney tunes

poor

scruffily dressed

etc etc

Now I have to admit that some of the people who I met and worked with did indeed play up to those stereotypes. Of course the question is now, did they come to Thailand because they were those types or did they become those types because they came to Thailand. Of the two camps, I would say that they were either those types before or were destined to become those types.

The poor bit is a bit unfair because the poorest English teacher still earns more ( say 30K all in ) than a lot of Thais but we just prefer to spend differently. And most of the people of who go on about poor English teachers are those on true expat packages at 100K a month plus expenses plus plus Which will bring me onto another rant in a while if I remember.

Anyway, in this group we had quite a range of people, some who had married Thai women and had kids, some who were married and hadn’t had kids, some who were living and were going to get married, some who had no intention to get married and were playing the field, some who wanted to get a nice girl somewhere, some who just wanted to have fun in their gap year, some fully qualified teachers – as in qualified to teach in their own country, some Thailand qualified – as in degree plus TEFL certificate, some with degree and some with errr certificates from that well known university of Khao San – allegedly.

On the whole, the agency appeared to care about standards but on a practical level it came down more to pragmatism and getting bodies in the classrooms that mattered. I don’t really remember too much discussion or division about who had what in the staffroom. There was never any great oh look at him we cant talk to him he hasn’t got a degree or he isn’t a fully qualified teacher like us, we cant talk to him. Of course, if it came out that so and so had a fake, it was talked about or more accurately gossiped about but that was the extent of it if the person was decent. If they were a prat then of course bets were off and a few comments were made or information held for future use as a bargaining tool.

That first year was a bit of a blur in some ways as many people came and went. Someone worked out that we had a turnover rate of about 40% give or take. The problem was the usual story of people being hired and not turning up, turning up and staying a day, a week, a month as they didn’t like the job, didn’t like the school, got a better job, their boyfriend / girlfriend moved home so they had to follow, didn’t want to live in Bangkok, couldn’t get up in the morning, couldn’t be arsed or whatever.

Part of the problem of this little retrospective is that the memories are now fading of some details and the bigger situations and rants have already been written about in the early part of the blog. So if you were one of those fools who have been reading this from the start then sorry, here are some repeats.

In various ways we all have our buttons that others can press and from the mild mannered Bruce Banner we are suddenly shouting “Don’t make me angry, you wouldn’t like me when I am angry” and from there it is but a little trip down Straws Lane along Camels Backs and the world is suddenly green. On the whole I think I got on pretty well with the vast majority of people I worked with. Yes, some things annoyed me and I have no doubt some things I did annoyed others but mostly they were quickly forgotten about or written about and forgotten about. But, but, but, there are two people that I graded beyond annoying, beyond being a prat into that area of actual dislike.

One is, well, actually they both are American as it happens. Da Daa daa da DAAAAA!

Eric. He is not to be confused with Canadian Eric, who just happens to be even larger – as in both well over six foot and big. This is basically fat yank Eric. If you imagine the worst sort of ambassador for you country abroad and he would be pretty much up there.

Despite having no experience at all, within about a week of arriving he was the expert in everything, he knew how to change things, to make them better. Even when things were explained to him again he didn’t like it. My main beef with him arose when we started doing the exams. The previous year myself, Simon, Blake and John ( in other words all the P1 teachers ) all agreed to test our kids together. Two people would look after the Speaking test, one the listening and the other the Reading and Writing and whoever did the test did the marking. If you did the Listening test, you did the Listening marking and so on. It worked very well in practice as the workload was evenly spread out and was far better than doing it individually. This time I outlined how it would work to the group and suggested we all do the same. Everyone agreed. I said I would do the speaking test with someone else which meant we would do the marking for that. In some ways it was the easiest in that you were doing the marking as you went along and there was nothing to do after the exam. But, it meant you HAD to complete all the tests during the allotted time. You couldn’t suddenly say ok, times up, oh dear we haven’t tested 5 kids so they get zero.

Great, so we start the exams and its going fine then fat boy comes up and says it isn’t fair. What isn’t fair? I say. The marking he says. ? Its not fair. You aren’t sharing all the work. You wont have any marking to do after and I have spoken to the others and they agree.

In other words fuckwit had realised that he had a cushy number during the exams but would have to work afterwards and thought it wasn’t fair. When again the differing amounts of work was pointed out to him again he still didn’t get it. We all had the same amount of marking as each other, we all had the same amount of work as each other, it was just in a different time slot. If those doing the Speaking test started marking the other tests, they would end up doing more work than the others. He still didn’t get it. He said everyone else felt the same and that basically I had bullied them into accepting this arrangement. Now for those that know me, that is a farcical suggestion, I couldn’t bully a paper bag!

When I spoke to the others, it turns out that they weren’t that bothered. It was just fat boy. I stood my ground and that was basically that, we never got on again. He also tried to pull a fast one in the next batch of tests ( that him and Scrappydoo did together ) and mark his kids with a Bell Curve instead of a flat score. Nice one, make his scores look good and better than the rest of his. Not to tell tales, but I soon put a stop to that :)

Oh yes, another reason is that he brought his little university girlfriend in at the end of term time and she actually helped him do some of his work – I think the marking!! Because of this old Wayne boy was persuaded by Eric that it would be ok for the gf to have on her CV that she worked in the school!!! Unbelievable.

And I havent yet started about his teaching techniques which mostly consisted of showing videos almost every lesson. It got so bad that our corridor was showing more movies in a week than SFX! ( a cinema chain in Thailand )

He was the sort of guy who when asked to wait a minute he would be stamping up and down demanding to see the manager for the perceived slight to his americanhood. Although we never got much into political discussions, I would imagine his foreign policy would be basically carry a big gun, do what you want and screw the rest of the world if they want something different – like say, free choice. He was the sort of a guy who would shout loudly in a shop if he wasn’t getting his own way and be proud afterwards that he managed to “talk” them round into giving in. Of course, the local thai populace would be smiling as they were secretly pleased that he did this as he only did what they wanted to do, but were too scared to do it. Yeh right. More like, its too hot to get all bothered, why is that big fat farang shouting and making everyone nervous?

The most amazing thing is, that every time you spoke to him it was very clear that he didn’t like Thailand. He was only there for as long as it took to get his girlfriend back to America where they would marry and live happily every after in a decent country i.e. America. Just about every time someone spoke to him about Thais and Thailand he would always be running them and it down. Every so often we had cultural seminars to cope with during the school downtime but agency up time. On one occasion, we were asked why we came to Thailand etc and he replied to come get my girlfriend to marry me and get the hell out. Well you can imagine the faces of those attending – especially the Thais!

He said he had a background in IT and basically had his own company. But the thing was that when he was going back, he was going back to be a long distance truck driver. I don’t know about you but that seems a bizarre choice and indeed change of careers. Anyhoo, at the end of the contract, they duly departed to the land of the free to set his plan in motion. I believe it was only 4 months or so later than they were back in Bangkok and he was back teaching. I am not really sure how or why, I mean surely its not that difficult to learn to drive one of those big trucks. Is it?

Dont look back at the pictures - again!

2006-07-13T16:44:00.000+07:00

Well, another picture for you to peruse and discuss since I am still trying to sumon the right amount of energy, sarcasm, disgust, fondness and so on to type up the next section.

This unlikely trio are folk I used to work with, they might recognise themselves, they might not. Hopefully you lot wont!

Dont Look Back At The Pictures

2006-06-26T21:16:00.000+07:00

To break the monotony, here is a picture of a couple of my good Prathom 3 kids at Assumption. They still talked too much but at least they listened some of the time, had a few thoughts of their own and used a few brain cells in class.

Dont Look Back At Corporates

2006-06-14T04:21:00.000+07:00

For the first year and a half I basically needed to make more money.

For teachers this basically means doing privates, more hours in the original job ( only really applies if you are in a language school ), working for a second language school or doing corporate work.

Normally corporate work is done through an agency as it is a real pain to sort out a corporate job for yourself. This does have advantages and disadvantages. The advantages being you dont need to find work, you might be able to choose the general locations you work in and the levels. This is of course dependent on the agency having more than one course running at one time and has lots of work available. The downside being they get a cut and sometimes a large cut of the fee the company takes. Tales tell of 2000Baht an hour being charged and only 450B being paid to the teachers. But some agencies have narrower margins than others.

Doing corporate opens you to all sorts of places that you are expected to teach in. Again tales out of school have people teaching in canteens, storage areas up to purpose built conference areas, boardrooms and everything in between. It also means that unless you are lucky the lessons will be early in the morning or in the evening, there are very few morning or afternoon lessons simply because the employer wants their workers working and not "skiving off" learning english. Unfortunately, this attitude also applies the the morning and evening slots. So basically if the boss has a rush on you might have one person turning up!

Because of the official work permit regulations being so open to interpretation, almost every official says that the address you work must be stated on the work permit. In a sense that makes 99% of all corporate teachers illegal as corporates are almost always the second job! There are a few folk I have heard about that have "various" on the location or are classed as consultants which again lets them to work in multiple locations but they are few and far between.

During my spell I ended up working for only three corporate agencies. Elite, British School of Bangkok and BiTS.

Elite, for all their faults on the school side were fair on the corporate side. I think this had a lot to do with Brendon who is in charge of that side of things. I alsways found him a straightforward guy who called a spade a spade and at least tried to tell you the full story . They never could be accused of being the highest paid for corporate work ( the most I got was 450B an hour ) but at least they paid on time and if something was wrong it was corrected fairly quickly. Another drawback was that they witheld 100B an hour whill you were working and then gave it to you at the end of teh course as a "bonus". A bit of a cheeky description I have to say. They did have lots of work available during the time I was there and basically could have continued up to the end working for them if I had wanted to. But, I didnt, so I didnt.

British School of Bangkok
This shower was one of the worst organised places I have ever worked for and indeed looking the likes of ajarn.com read about. The rate of pay was reasonable - 500B an hour and the location was to be a mere 15 minutes away. Sorted. I should have realised however that it might not have been so good at the interview. Their office was basically about 30msq and piles of paperwork and stuff everywhere. The directions to the office were not that good either and took a few more phone calls to sort out. Then came the lessons. Despite promises no books appeared for the first 5 weeks for the students and no teachers book for me. You can teach out of the student book but its not ideal at all. The teachers book gives you ideas, structures and so on.... Basically it lets you plan the lesson properly. No timetable of lessons was given out which basically meant I turned up on days the company didnt want lessons!

The first pay check cleared ok, the second was a few days late and then the problems began. Oh the accountant is sorting out the check now, the accountant isnt here, the two partners suddenly became difficult to contact. Not answering their phones, not being in their office. Of course once you start working you always get paid in arrears. You have the option of quitting and hoping they will pay you the money owed or carrying on to work and hope that because you are still working they will pay you before those who have quit.

It ended up I was paid all the money I was owed but up to two months late. And it wasnt just me, it seemed to be almost everyone except the partners who got paid late. Obviously they made sure they paid themselves first. It seems to have been that they were not very good at business. As soon as a new course came in, they paid money owed to old teachers. They didnt put any money back into the business as reserves. Hardly surprising when they didnt have the company set up properly, they were still on the wrong visas themselves and had to go on visa runs!

It wasnt just me, they had been doing it to almost everyone and for a long time. I think it closed down about 18 months ago but it seems that all they did was change the name and carried on.

The last one was BiTS
This was a bit weird as it was my first corporate job and not long after I started at Wat Plabachai. In other words I was a green teacher! I had to give a demo lesson to the head man and he seemed quite impressed with it. So off I went to the class in the office and I thought got on ok with the class. I was actually enjoying it as I had a book to work from which was a great change from Plabachai where I was flying by the seat of my pants. I could actually plan! However, I was warned that I was going in halfway through the set of lessons and that the previous teacher was very popular. OK, no problem I thought.

Part of was BiTS does ( or at least did ) is about 3 weeks into the course, they send someone to do a survey to see how the class is getting on. The day after the survey I was called in and fired. Well, ok, removed. The official story was that the class wanted the old teacher back and I would be given another class. But I never was. I never found out if that was the real story or that I was actually rubbish. At least I got one of their black document folders to keep as a souvenir. :)

Dont Look Back In Anger Part 5

2006-06-06T04:57:00.000+07:00

And here we go for the next instalment.

At the time I was working everyday apart from Sundays and I was starting to wear myself out which was one of the reasons I had left my job in the UK.

So basically I was on the lookout for a new job. The agency I had been doing corporate work for - Elite - had actually offered me a job not long after starting with them, about the middle of June I think. But they offered me about 25k, although that would have increased my income, it meant working more hours. Nah.

About 6 weeks later, I was chatting with the head man and the subject came up again and this time the offer was 28k. More interesting but still not enough to tempt me. Another 6 weeks or so and the offer was upped to 32k. Well, ok I though, that’s a bit better I might as well give it a go and see what happens.

So, off I trot to have the interview with the DOS – Raymond Kerr - at Assumption and he comes across as very competent, very clued up and a fellow countryman. Sorted. The only problem was, this was now October and I wouldn’t start working there until the end of the holidays.

My first day brought a shock as I discovered the DOS had moved on. The story is that it was one of these “mutual decisions” or at least it was mutual from the sense of both parties realised that they couldnt work with each other. The DOS was too outspoken, too knowledgable, too ready to fight the corner of his staff against the agency. In other words the sort of guy you want on the teachers side, your side against the agency.

The set up was a little bit odd in the sense that the agency had a contract to provide all staff to the school. So we were all teachers in a school but employed by the agency. We had in effect two bosses, the agency and the school, this as you can imagine led to some strange situations where communications broke down, were interrupted and in some cases invented!

It has to be said that I learnt a lot from my first six months there. The TEFL course gave me an idea, Wat Plabachai school taught me a lot about self preservation, if not teaching, but Assumption taught me a lot about teaching. Or at least the teachers in my year group did. In a way I was quite fortunate in that I had a “real” teacher in the group PGCE – UK teacher - qualified and all that. That group Simon, Blake, me and John ( or was that the group in my first full year? I cant quite remember ), anyway we all got on pretty well, we co-operated on lesson plans, ideas and it was really good for a new teacher. Something else that was pretty good was that we were all teaching in rooms beside each other, so that if we set tasks for our class and they were quiet we could pop into someone elses’ room for a few minutes or more drastically call for reinforcements.

One of the consequences of the boss leaving was that they had to promote someone to replace him. The choices were to be honest not that successful. One was a decent teacher but the man management skills were definitely lacking, a point which he readily acknowledged himself. The other appointee was a very nice chap who was the other extreme, who took ages to make a decision and didn’t want to upset anyone. Step forward John and Tony. Admittedly they did have the awkward position of being between the good, the bad, the ugly and the downright stupid. You can decide yourself who are the teachers, the school, the management and the agency. Having seen what goes on in all schools over the last four years, it would take a lot more than 60k a month to make me take that sort of job. Moaning from one side, moaning from the other sid, moaning from both sides and all the bitching and none of the credit.

Out of school John was a fairly decent person ( if he brought money for his drinks ) and Tony was a quiet soul who largely kept himself to himself and his wife who then came in as a curriculum development consultant or a similar title.

The other teachers were the usual mix of folk in either Thailand or the school for a year, people with too much alcohol in their blood stream or too much blood in their alcohol stream, people who had been there for years, people there for a week, a day or be the invisible man and not turn up at all.

Just to show my naievity at that point, at the end of the year I had to go home. I needed a new visa and my original ticket was going to expire, so I asked if I could use the sick days that I hadn’t used instead of taking unpaid leave. And the answer was no I couldn’t. Instead of being like everyone else and taking a sickie I was the berk who tried to be honest. I learned that lesson.

The new school year started and a new boss appeared. At first we thought OK it should be an improvement. Ah, the dreams of the forlorn! No it wasn’t. In the end it proved to be the start of the decline of the Roman Empire. Well, ok that’s a bit of an exaggeration but it was the beginning of the end of the beginning etc etc

Dont Look Back in Anger - The Pictures

2006-05-22T03:52:00.000+07:00

While I am still typing up the next installment, here is another photo of the next school. Or is that an assumption?

Dont Look Back In Anger Part 4

2006-05-11T06:25:00.000+07:00

Whoops a little longer time has passed than originally intended but what the hell, I just couldnt be arsed to type it all up.

But I am now back scribbling away, so in the meantime, here is a picture of some of my kids from the first school. These were my P1s. Cute aint they in their Scout uniforms?

As it is unlikely this blog will continue on for much longer, I am offering the chance for you dear reader to participate in this activity, this glorious nonsense, this murderation of the english language etc etc. You can send me little tidbits of information, especially if its about the purple soul eaters, little articles and let me link them up a la Stickman or indeed you could have your own byeline. The offer is open to anyone doing a TEFL course, teaching or just bored.

Dont Look Back In Anger Part 3

2006-04-10T08:09:00.000+07:00

Like a lot of people who turn up on these shores each year green, naïve and lets face it, stupid, I had a few encounters before I got street wise – well ok, street wiser.

Among the jobs I went to interview for were jobs down on Sukhimwit 101. Which from where I was staying would men a minimum of 60 minutes travel – that was in ideal conditions – up to maybe 3 hours if it happened during a downpour. Part of the problem at that time was that I didn’t have a good idea geographically where everything was in Bangkok and around the country.

Another job I went to interview for was a Sarasas school up near the new airport. Basically turn left at Sukhimwit 71 and keep going for 15 miles. That was a day trip and a half to say the least. In the end it was about the fifth taxi I flagged down who took me as all the other drivers turned me down. The fare was just short of 200 baht, which takes some doing and that tells you just how far out of town it was. The guy who did the interview laughingly described it as 15 minutes from Bangkok on the phone and I believed him! I suppose that if you got the road empty and a fast car it would be 15 minutes, otherwise you could be looking at a minimum of 40 minutes up to maybe two hours. The area itself could either be described as quiet and local or boring and dull. Add into the mix that the accommodation that they were offering was a building that was owned by the school and that you were bussed to and from the school in a minibus each day with all the other teachers. So if you lost the job you lost the apartment, he reluctantly said they would give a housing allowance if I didn’t stay there but he said the staff building was great and really friendly etc etc. Even as a newbie, it was a situation that I didn’t really want to be in. Just as well I suppose they didn’t offer me the job.

On another interview - down towards hua Hin - I got on the train assuming the school name was the name of the town and station – they had said the school was 5 minutes walk from the towns station, but they would meet me there and pick me up. I arrived at the train station and waited and waited until one of the station staff said there was a phone call for me. Turns out I had gone one station too far and that I had overshot by 15 miles. Now back in the west that would not be too much of a problem, just get the next train back up the line, oops only three trains a day on this line so I had to be rescued by a teacher who was sent to get me. In the end I didn’t get the job, I don’t know why as it wasn’t a Geography teacher they wanted!

Those two instances did make me realise that to turn up relatively on time I had to start looking at maps to check where the school was when arranging the interview and if possible do a dry run and find out exactly how long it takes to get there.

During the first few weeks of interviews I was actually staying in a hotel as I didn’t want to commit myself to a flat in one area then find a job that took me two hours to get to and from every day, I had enough of that back home.

Other jobs within 2 minutes of the phone interview starting I got bad feelings about, no details being given, vague assurances and so on and so on, others it was a case of sitting through an interview thinking “What am I doing here? I don’t want to be here.” And yet at some point I had to commit, take the plunge and get a job as I was burning through my savings. Granted if I had wanted to, I could have taken three months to live off savings but that was something I didn’t want to do in case I had to buy something big or go into hospital, give up Thailand and move to Korea or…………….

In the end I got the job through someone who was completing the Diploma stage of the TESOL. One lesson each week for 45 minutes. The rate of pay was 400 Baht an hour which I thought was pretty good, teaching 16 hours a week and I didn’t have to be there unless I was teaching. Pretty good package overall I thought.

In the end it was not. As there were only two other farang teachers at the school and we had different timetables I rarely saw them. Between us we covered from Kindy up to Prathom 6. We saw the kids once a week for 1 lesson, which as I was soon to discover was basically a waste of time. We taught the entire Thai class which means I had between 38 and 52 kids in the class. In theory I also had a Thai assistant but if they were there all they did was sit at the back of the class and do their own work. In other words I was on my own.

I very quickly realised that what I was doing wasn’t teaching but crowd control – sometimes riot control. I had a zone of silence about 4 feet round me and outside of that it would be noise at best chaos at worst. One class in particular was just totally mental. I would throw a kid out of class and lock the door to keep him out, as soon as my back was turned one of his friends would sneak up and unlock the door and either let him in or go out himself. The girls weren’t that much better if they were naughty but generally they were nicer to teach as they did at least pretend to pay a bit more attention.

There were only a couple of Thai teachers there who could speak English and the head of the department could hardly speak it all which meant some interesting conversations – or not.

One Monday I walked in and she said today you teach lab. Lab, I thought, what is lab? She lead me up the stairs to a language lab and unlocked the doors and walked off. How the fuck do I use this? I didn’t even know the school had one never mind that I was going to use one. It was truly a case of the blind leading the blind as I didn’t know how to use one, the kids didn’t really know how to use one but we muddled along somehow. I have no idea how much money was spent getting this lab with all the desks, speakers, headsets etc etc kitted out, but it would have been better spent in reducing the class size and getting more native speakers in to teach.

Another problem I had was trying to get legal. I started on a 60 day tourist visa but I wanted to do things properly. However, it was virtually impossible to get straight answers from the school about whether they would pay for my visa and they would provide all the letters needed. In the end I took the plunge and virtually bullied them into giving me all the letters.

The other main problem was trying to persuade them to give me time off to get the visa. No way, so it was all at my own expense, sheesh. Like many others I made my way up to Vientienne in Laos to get my Non Imm B. In theory it’s a simple process, arrive, give the documents to the consulate in the morning and get the visa the next afternoon.

I arrived with few problems to find that my school wasn’t listed in the consulates folder. ??? If it wasn’t in the folder I needed to get more documents from the school. If I got more documents I would get the B, otherwise they would give me another tourist visa. At the time I hadn’t yet got a mobile phone which meant I had to use the ( comparatively ) expensive international phone services there. The only person who I knew the number of was the Greek girl who got me the job. I tried to phone her a couple of times and ask her to speak to the head of department and explain the situation. I figured that as it was difficult to speak to the head face to face and understand the replies it would be impossible to do it over the phone. Given that this was now Thursday afternoon I was getting more and more frantic, a few hours delay would mean I would have to either stay a whole weekend in Laos or return with just a tourist visa. She promised she would speak to the head and sort it out.

This was one of my first lessons in don’t rely on anyone but yourself. After a second phone call to my colleague she turned round and said she couldn’t speak to the head as she was too busy and didn’t want to be involved. Why the fuck didn’t she say that an hour ago when I explained the situation? Bitch. So I tried without success to phone the head myself and I spent the night worried and stressed out.

The next morning I was ready to throw myself on the mercy of the consulate to get my B visa only to discover they had given it to me anyway! After all the song and dance they gave yesterday about needing this and that they gave me the visa. Aw for fecks sake, knowing that would have saved me a lot of grief and worry.

So I duly got back to Bangkok an tried to get the work permit and teachers licence to discover….. the school wasn’t registered with the Ministry of Education so I wouldn’t be able to get either. How a school attached to a Wat could not be registered is one of these mysteries that only Thailand can generate. So basically I needed to do visa runs or move schools. In the end I did both.

A large problem I quickly discovered was that although the hourly rate was good, any holidays or activities meant my teaching hours were cut and of course my pay as well. The first month wasn’t bad but the 2nd month with the trip to Laos and holidays meant I got less than 20k for the month. Yikes. The consequence of that was that I started doing corporate work in the evenings and language school classes on Saturdays. I ended up working Mon - Fri evenings, Mon – Thursdays and Saturday morning to get enough money to have a basic lifestyle. Things had to change, so they did.

Onto the next job.

Dont Look Back In Anger Part 2

2006-03-29T20:34:00.000+07:00

Well, it seems that there have been various rumours being circulated around the school about me. Its great to have secret sources :) A top white house aide said today.... :)

The way in which I left probably gave a good launch point certainly. But, unfortunately again I am not going to comment, just yet, to give the school another chance to write back to me and reply to the fax and letters that have been sent about the money they owe me.

So to quote Laurie Anderson

"just pay me what you owe me"

Dont Look Back In Anger Part 1

2006-03-16T19:56:00.000+07:00

I suppose as the time draws near for returning home a little retrospective is called for.

Why did I choose to come here and teach? Well, basically I wanted to work abroad somewhere before I got too tied down, too old, too scared, too trapped. For a lot of people the thought of moving job is scary. It is ranked as one of the most stressful things a person can do in their life. Add in moving – which is also one of the most stressful add in moving halfway round the world and you can see why a lot of people wont do it.

Why did I start writing the blog? Basically I just needed an outlet to get rid of some frustrations. It wasn’t intended to be for a mass audience, it wasn’t intended to please others, it was just a way for me to keep calm. I already was writing on my web site about work but wanted another site where I could say what I wanted and use sweary words without folks at home getting too upset.

Does this tale have a happy ending or did I just steal the Oasis song for the hell of it? You will need to wait and see, as will I, because it may or may not depending on certain people. Cryptic? You bet. Maybe I will tell all, maybe I wont.

Four and a bit years ago, I was looking to see which course I wanted to do I looked around and basically came down to two choices. One was the CELTA which meant Bangkok and the TEFL International TESOL down in Ban Phe opposite Ko Samet. At the time my thinking was that if I was going to do this thing, give up my good job at home and move away from my friends and family, I was going to do it properly. I was going to do the course in Thailand and see what it was like – the country, the work and living there.

I had been to Thailand before on holiday and had an idea of what it would be like, but of course, living somewhere and being on holiday are two different things. So, I did all the research, looked at all the internet pages – just how on earth people research this sort of stuff before the internet? – and got scared. This was the time of the TEFL flame wars on ajarn.com, Daves eslcafe.com and a few other sites. The wars were brutal, I mean no holds barred downright brutal between the two main protagonists, Bruce from TEFL International on one side and Leigh and James from Text n Talk on the other. I ended up asking Bruce to cut out some of this and for both sides to calm down and have intelligent discussion and was basically told to piss off to another web site that was more civilised!

Surprisingly after that, I still went ahead and booked a place in Bruces course. I figured as much as the CELTA name was well known it was based in Bangkok and had and still has a reputation of being a serious, driven course with not much fun. You learn a lot but it’s a slog. The TEFL Int course seemed to be a course that although hard and needed serious attention was still fun to do. Add in the thought that if I stayed in Bangkok the possibilities of distractions at night- ok, yes that sort but I was also thinking of cinemas, pubs, shopping etc etc could deflect my attention from the course. I figured that in a small place like Ban Phe I would be there and concentrate only on the course. Oh how innocent I was. It turns out that there could be just as many distractions in that small town as Bangkok. Oh well.

The course itself was really good and I learnt a lot. The course obviously covered all the main areas like class management, teaching techniques, phonology, grammar etc etc The size of the course was twelve people including me which I think is about the right size. Its big enough to get a decent group dynamic, get lively discussions, allow everyone a chance to take art in activities, a mix of partners ( which if you don’t like someone is very important! ) yet small enough to feel you are a group without splintering into cliques. A big group could mean you never get to really talk to a lot of people, some activities take far longer allowing boredom to creep in and of course there is less attention from the trainer. So twelve was about right.

Of the original twelve, I think I am the last one to actually work as an English teacher. There is still one person working in Bangkok, but they are in a non teaching job. Four went home after a year, one went to New Zealand to do EFL ( yes really ), one went back to Japan and the others I lost touch with directly but every now and again bumped into people that knew what was happening and said they had gone home or moved to another country to work.

The job hunting support wasn’t as big as they advertised – it mostly consisted of a folder in the common area with cut outs of the Bangkok Post and a few faxes from schools looking for people - but it was still enough for me and a couple of others to organise a job while we were still there.

So onto my first job….

So Long And Thanks For All The Fish

2006-02-28T00:10:00.000+07:00

And thats it. The final week has gone and finished.

In the end all I did was play games and a little bit of a prize giving to the good kids. But to the bad ones all that happened was the Activity Book!

I had decided in my heart, maybe as long ago as November last year, that I would be going home after this year and wouldnt stay for another year.

In some ways, I will be sad to leave Thailand and in others I will be glad. I wouldnt say there is one particular thing that made up my mind but just a gradual increment of various issues. The lack of respect from students, from Thai teachers, from administration, the no fail policy, the everyday hassles of living, family issues at home, personal timing ( sounds a bit strange I know, but a lot of what I decide to do is when something feels right - buying a flat of my own, moving jobs, changing habits, whatever. It just felt the right time to move back.

As much as I moaned about the various kids, I will miss Beer, Oil, Boss, Benz, Jame, James, Big, Ken, Jack, Golf, Pong, Bill, Fond, Ice, Big, Ford, Babe and all the others.

Whether I made as much of an impression on them as they did on me, I have no idea. Hopefully, I have made a difference. Hopefully, I have made them think I was a fair teacher and applied all the rules equally. Hopefully, I have made some kids reach their potential. Hopefully, I have made the kids stretch themselves and start to actually think instead of being spoonfed. Hopefully, they learnt something.

And that is all you can hope for out here.

Counting Down The Moments

2006-02-20T18:31:00.000+07:00

Jjust like a tropical sunset, the sun is dipping to the horizon and the sands of time slip by faster and faster to the end of term.

The exams have now passed and we are moving into the spare week where we are supposed to be doing "farewell activities" and other exciting things to keep the kids occupied.

Although I have got lessons planned, the reality will probably be that I will mostly play games with them or whatever they and Ii am in the mood for. If they are good they will get team games - english language based and if they are bad, the dreaded Activity Books and worksheets - the original lesson plan.

The exam week was reasonably uneventfull was remarkably little cheating going on. They seemed to have learnt their lesson and became a bit more sophisticated. There was no getting up out of their seats, no trying to open their books in their bags and so on. Of course there was some looking at others answers and quietly asking each other questions but even that was seemingly restrained.

Had I finally got though to them? Where they finally beginning to realise that they could use their brains to think and do it for themselves? Heaven knows. If I could leave them with just one impression, one thing they have learned in their year with me I would choose that.

Now that I have got the marking started, a few patterns are emerging. The smarter ones have noticed that some of the questions were answered by some displays and posters around the room and the err others didnt. Even though the marking scheme is quite relaxed I have quite pleased with the general results and of a couple of kids in particular that have in the last few weeks started taking the smart pills insted of the stupid ones.

Quite why they only started doing it in the last few weeks I am not sure. Maybe they learn a little like I do, sit, observe, think then understand. No matter, from being in the 30% range these two kids suddenly reached up into the 60%s. Good on ya kiddos!

The last week or so has seen a flurry of memos about how to have our end of year partys, how to enter the scores in the worksheets and this that and the other. But basically we now know the timetable for remaining few weeks of term time Unfortunately it seems that its there is a bit of work involved, by that I mean a few of the deadlines are quite tight. By the end of this week we have to mark all the exams and enter them into the spreadsheets and then by the end of next week type out all the reports and then a few days later proof read and correct and then sign. Ah, not that bad I hear you cry but at the same time, we are supposed to be invigilating the Thai exams and then help doing summer camps. So, its going to be a bit tight and more rushed than the end of the first semester for example.

It seems on this occasion I have come out a bit ahead of the game - at least me and my learning group. This week we only have a couple of tests to do fr those kids who were off sick or whatever. But another group have got two full weeks of the normal tests and the exams. It seems that someone somewhere miscalculated or was told the wrong information. Whatever, the end result is the two solid weeks of testing and more importantly - from the teachers point of view - marking and then entering the marks into the spreadsheet.

One of the more interesting memos was about the payments, as usual everything will get back to us at the end of the contract. The final salary, the remaining bonus ( half of which we got In december ), our flight/travel bonus and our runner deposit. All in all a tidy sum assuming we get it all. As well as this, any deductions will be taken off. By this they seem to be indicating the days taken off sick over our allocation, the times we were late, went homm early and so on. The cynical are pointing out that of course by paying it at the end by which time many people would be away or travelling etc any mistakes in the schools favour wouldnt be corrected!

This was one memo that wasnt put on everyones desk surprisingly. After all thats why we work - for the money. Some might love to do the job but if we aint got no money we dont eat! Another reason why it was suprising that it wasnt given out to everyone was that it was talking about the contracts for next year and when they would be issued! A few people have apparently been talked to about coming back but a lot havent.

What is strange is that they seem to be giving everyone a letter about "the invitation" to come back next year. Seems a bit strange. Why give an invitation to someone who is not going to come back? I would have thought that a little chat first of all would have done the trick better. Some already know 100% that they are not. Why bother sending them a letter? ( Of course, this assumes that all the letters include an invitation to return and not one to go forth and never darken our door again! ) Ah well. Whatever. Just another case of TIT and resource management in thailand.

Whats that light...........

2006-02-09T22:11:00.000+07:00

at the end of the tunnel?

Knowing my luck its the light of an oncoming train wreck. This week is a review week for the kids to ahem review and revise for the exams next week. Of course in most cases its just the opportunity for me to remind myself of the differing levels in the classes from the finished in 5 minutes and 100% right good kids right down to the end of the lesson and they have managed to write their name at the top of the practice test.

I have absolutely no doubt about who will get the good scores and who wont. I reckon after 2 weeks at the start of term I had got 95% of the classes pegged. There are some who drift in and out, up and down but you tend to know who are the smart kids and who are the waste of fried pork very soon.

One of the constant battles you have is trying to keep the kids just below the middle level doing the work you give them - hopefully on their own - without you standing over their shoulder the whole time. Some teachers like to stand the whole class, some like to sit, some floorwalk the whole time, some dont let the kids out of the chairs and go to the kids to correct, some have them lined up at the teachers' desk. There is no right way as no matter what works one day for one class their is no guarantee it will work for the next class in the next lesson.

Today I was doing a bit of a mix, hand out the practice test, wander at the start to see they were doing it right and then sit when they start to finish and mark / correct and give them new work. Of course, the disdvantage is that the kids sitting think my mind is distracted and start to muck around or the ones on the queue start to push and shove each other and so on. Anyway, in this class is the kid who is beyond redemption as far as learning goes. He just doesnt want to be there and do anything that the rest of the class do, he has been disruptive, unresponsive etc etc. ( this is the kid, I was warned about for being like this at the start of the year so wasnt too worried or surprised ) I looked over at one point and he was asleep, good. I dont mind that in the least because that way he doesnt distract anyone else.

Unfortunately I noticed another kid hadnt yet been up and his head was in a bit of a strange angle. I got up - leaving the queue of kids going "TEACHER FINISHED ,TEACHER FINISHED" sixteen times in my ear and all waving their bit of paper in front of my face in case I hadnt heard them - and walked over. Aha, thats why he was so quiet as well. He was asleep. Sound asleep. I dont see why if I cant sleep, he should be allowed to get away with it. I gave him a little prod in the ribs and nothing. Another prod and he slowly stirs, he rubs his eyes and looks at me and then puts his head back down on the desk to sleep some more! WTF??? One of the other kids actually came over and shook him until he woke up and paying attention again.

If I had done that at my school, I am not sure if my feet would have touched the ground on the way to the headmasters office and from school all the way home. Oh what it is to be a respected teacher in Bangkok. I reckon last year at this time I would have slapped the kid a good one round the back of the head and bawled him out. Today, I just couldnt be arsed. One week of exams and one week of doing something to keep them occupied until we dont see them again. Anyway, what would happen if I did something? At this time of year, nothing in all probability, so why bother.

By the way the little sods are doing not bad, only a couple more dead. So as so many people asked, I have put a picture of them on for you :)

The Grassy Knoll

2006-02-01T18:42:00.000+07:00

Well, its that time of semester were we are obviously nearing some bigwigs visit or a football tournament.

Why do I know that? Well, they are relaying the turf on the pitch. Again. At the start of the year, it was in pretty good nick but of course with all the games and functions on it, it started to go bare down the middle. Would they returf or reseed the whole pitch? But of course not.

The solution was to returf the middle bit. So, afterwards you had this green strip of grass down the middle of the pitch and then the semi bare wing areas. The trouble was the sods they were laying looked as though they had been stolen from a public park a lot of the sods were dead before they had been laid, the actual sods were maybe about 3 feet by 2 feet big, the depth of the sod was barely an inch. This meant holes started to appear when they were being transfered. As well as that you had the usual high tech approach of the workers, instead of putting the sods as closely togther as possible like a jigsaw puzzle they left quite big gaps. The end result was that after only a month or so - which in itself is far too short a time for the grass to lay proper roots - they were playing on it and pulling the grass out. Not only that they had only lightweight rollers which gave the nominally flat surface the same gradients as Nepal.

Within 3 months the effect was that the newly turfed pitch was bare and the original side area still had grass! DOH!!

So they are now returfing it again. Watching the process, you can see why the grass cant hold, the underlying soil is not soil, it looks like either hard compacted earth or an earthy clay combination. I would imagine that to get the pitch right, you would need to import proper soil to get decent drainage and then look after it properly etc etc. Which means obviously it will never happen.

As you can guess, not a lot else is happening just the same old same old.

We are starting to get the papers ready for the final end of year exams that we wont let the kids fail and doing finishing off the weekly tests. One of the kids got my special attention today as I discovered what he did with his test paper. After the class he scrunched it up and left it in the desk. Wow, big deal you think.

Left at that I wouldnt even have blinked but combined with the fact that he had scored out my corrections, marks, and awarded himself full marks just pushed the wrong button. Its bad enough that we have to let them pass - which we think the kids know - but when they display such a total lack of respect in rolling up a test into a paper ball, changing a teachers comments and test score then it just goes beyond the pale, actually beyond the trough and small lake as well.

As time goes by.......

2006-01-27T16:11:00.000+07:00

Another week goes by and another week nearer the end of term.

Just 4 weeks to go before we dont see our little ahem angels again until next year or forever. One week of teaching, one week of revision, one week of exams and then one week that is described in the book as "Carnival". Whoop de friggin whoop, what does that mean to kids here? NOTHING! The end result will probably be a combination of giving the kids colouring in, worksheets and videos.

True to form, the mattayom lot stop 2 weeks before we do and they teach less through the year because of camps, trips, cheerleading rehearsal.................... jammy ******.

And then its marking, report writing and down time for some and summer camps for others. After that on March 20, we say goodbye for the last time.

The atmosphere in the office is beginning to reflect that as well with people making plans to go on holiday, go home, get new jobs in Thailand or Korea or Japan, starting to push limits on what they are doing in the office and so on.

This week has been pretty average with a mix of good classes and bad classes. As usual my first and last class of the week ( the same mob ) were among the worst with the Spider Monkey being hit repeatedly by my mental baseball bat. How that kid has survived so far I dont know, he is so fecking annoying.

One of the strangest kids I have is, at times a smart kid, at times totally unresponsive moody little shite and at others totally psycho. He managed to pull a real moody today because I caught him throwing a worksheet he found onto the floor. I asked him to pick it up and put it back in the desk or in the bin, not unreasonable I would have thought but no, totally unreasonable for him. It took about about four tries to get him to pick it up and then he slammed it down on the desk and put the hood of his jacket over his head and crossed his arms. Ooohh boy, now was that the wrong thing to do with me! Three times I took the hood off and he put it on again, a fourth time I took it off I had to physically stop him putting it back up. You should have seen this guys face, talk about a face like thunder! Anyway, finally he seemed to admit defeat and because we were doing a test, I passed the papers out and everyone completedly them ( apart from a couple of wasters who shouldnt be in the program ) except sulky boy. No amount of prodding or reminding or encouragement or whatever you like to call it worked. He just sat there sulking and didnt get past writing his name - even that took 15 minutes.

Ah well, sod him. I tried but i cant force him to do it and after all he is still going to get a pass mark no matter if he did that through the entire year.

Gosh thats a good use of a teachers time, get a kid in your class who will do nothing all year - apart from play games, disrupt the class, annoy others who are trying to learn ............... and then pass him anyway. Why cant they just put all these kids into one class and give them colouring in or videos to watch and do away with all the pretence that we are actually teaching them something?

From the realms of Hmmm thats a bit strange. For a long time we had been complaining that no one was coming into our rooms to clean them and finally after months, we got cleaners in at least once a week to sweep the place. Not as good as a proper clean but at least a start. Now the thing is that I have normally had a bottle of water in the class - for the usual reasons - and then kept on refilling it as needs be from the various water fountains in the school. And then a few weeks ago, my bottles started disappearing. Ok, I thought, I had left them out on my desk at the end of the week and the cleaner thought they were for the bin. Then I put it on my shelf and same thing - gone. Then I put it in a box and left it on my desk, gone. Then
I put them in a box and put some paper over them and it still disappeared. What has she got? A magic bottle detector!!?? This is costing my 6 baht a week buying a new one!!!!!! I wonder if she will find it if I take it back to the staffroom :)

Yup

2006-01-19T21:18:00.000+07:00

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2006-01-18T17:48:00.000+07:00

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Another week crawls by

2006-01-17T17:46:00.000+07:00

And so another week starts. Its been the usual start after a holiday, the kids were all hyper and chatty and not wanting to listen. So it was the usual quiet! Quiet! QUIet! routine until they settled down somewhat. We've started doing a unit about the home and things in the home. I had quietly steeled myself for all the laughs and comments about the toilet but surprisingly only a couple. Maybe they were growing up? Of course not. For some reason they focused on the kitchen - especially one class in particular. The kitchen became chicken which became chicken room which became chicken little room. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!

What does chicken little have to do with houses and rooms!!!!!!!!????? Add in the random shouts - you know the ones, the ones where the kids just shouts out an english word at random. Sometimes its because they dont know the right word and think if they shout out something its better than nothing, sometimes of course they do it deliberately just to see the reaction of others as a joke and maybe even to wind up the teacher. Of course sometimes you just cant help yourself and bite the bait. Even when you know its bait, you bite. So some of the lessons were frustrating to say the least and others went smoothly.

I just wish if they werent interested they would shut up and let the ones who are interested get on with it. It must be so frustrating for the kids who want to learn - as well as for me of course. If only we could put all the trouble makers into one class. Then again, there is no way in hell I would like to teach that class!

Continuing on from the Childrens Day activities, all the kids got special t shirts to commemorate the day. Unfortunately they dished some of them out before lunch. Pristine in colour quickly turned to grubby and in need of a good wash with various ketchup, ice cream, saliva, dirt stains...! You would think that with the amount of practice these kids have eating, that they would have perfected the art of putting the food actually into the mouth rather than the shirt or hair or whatever! But obviusly not.

To quickly reply to some of the comments.

Yes, it sometimes feels like a factory swiping in and out but all the staff do it and we had to sign in and out in my old school so no real biggie. At least for me, I know some get really upset about it but different strokes and all that. Yeh, it would be nice to go home after the last class or when you have a big break to bog off somewhere for a few hours. On the other hand it does mean I get up to date with all the necessary paperwork and lesson planning. And as for grassing folk up to the bosses, nahhh, its just not worth it.

Onward ever onward

2006-01-13T13:17:00.000+07:00

One of the things that we were told at the start of the year were virtual sacking offences was swiping in a time card for someone else. ( this of course is done so people ‘appear” to be working when they are tucked up in bed sleeping or whatever)

But of course, its happening. This week I saw someone swipe in 3 ( in addition to their own ) cards, now that’s what I call totally taking the piss. Ive seen someone swipe 2 before but 4???? Ive even seen Head of Years do it. One rule for them and one rule for us.

Sometimes you really have to wonder about the level of respect these kids offer the outside world. Of course, its different if their parents are there but on their own they are little shits. Outside of most classrooms there are displays of student work, to mark special occasions like Xmas, the King & Queens birthdays etc. But you can guarantee that within hours of someone putting it up, parts of it will be hanging down, ripped off or pulled off by these little freaks. It wont matter how it was attached, thumbtacks, staples, glue….. whatever

They just dont think, as they walk buy they run their hands, their rulers and even sometimes their bags over the displays and every time they are amazed that it falls apart. That is if they even notice that they have damaged it. Of course, normally they are so bound up in their own little bubble of existence that they have no clue. Its even got to the stage that some teachers effectively laminate anything that goes on a display board by covering it with sellotape.

It now seems that a few more folk are taking the casual dress approach as the lesser spotted training shoe is becoming less and less rare as well as the total ignoring of the required uniform of black trousers and white shirts on Mondays. It will be interesting to see just how far it goes in the next few weeks as the bosses are still clamping down on some stuff as much as they were at the start of the year.

You would think the point of having a cover teacher is that he will be able to cover the Teachers who are absent. But the guy we have seems to be absent more times that he is here. He was off again this week which meant, yup you guessed it, another cover for me and yet another week where another person received none.

Well, next week is a short week as Monday is a holiday. Someone mentioned that we have only something like 5 more weeks to suffer err........... I mean enjoy the kids company before its over and the decision making over whether we are retained for next year or not. I wonder when that will happen. I know a few folk are definately not coming back, a few are humming and hawing, a few want to and a few are saying they will only teach higher levels and if they don’t get them, they will walk.

New Year New Minds? - Censored

2006-01-06T14:49:00.000+07:00

Naaaa

Course not. They are still as thick as ever. And thats just the teachers :)

The kids? Well, lets be honest, if 6 months of teaching didnt get them to realise the difference between what is the day today and what is the weather today then there is no hope a few days off over Xmas.

It seems that we are finally getting our uniforms to wear for the remaining 6 or so weeks of teaching, which could mean that we get to wear the full rig out twice. By the full rig out I mean the white shirt, the tie, the black trousers - which most people wear anyway - and the horrendous jacket that will be kept in the cupboard somewhere in the dark recesses until he HAS to be worn. Well most people, there is a select number that dont bother with even a white shirt and black trousers. But then, hey they are likeable folk with smiles on their faces so it doesnt matter if they dont follow the rules or dont get many cover lessons.

Its not so much the style of jacket, its the colour. At least the women could wear their uniform outside and mix and match, even with the jacket. But the guy? Nah!!! Maybe about 0.05% of the male population could carry it off and almost all of them would be gay - even if you took the school badge off the jacket.

The saga of the id badges seems to be finally remembered as we are getting the uniforms. Apparently it wasnt enough just to pass probation, we needed the uniforms as well to get the proper school id badge. So again we are getting something that we should have had back in June but will now use for only a couple of months. Why they could have had a couple of stock jackets and ties the guys could borrow and use I dont know. The photo is only 1 inch tall and its a head and shoulders shot anyway!! Same idea for the ladies.

Censored censored censored the censored censored!?! Censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored. Censored censored censored censored proper censored censored censored censored censored censored Friday censored censored censored, censored censored a censored censored censored censored censored, censored censored censored censored the censored (censored censored censored censored censored censored censored censored ) censored censored censored censored. :)

End of a yeara

2006-01-02T16:44:00.000+07:00

Well, the last couple of days at school went by without too much hassle as basically no one was trying too hard. Almost all the teachers were giving the kids Xmas activities or letting them run around in "English focused games" ahem.

Me? Well I was hard at work slogging away at the Xmas section of the book trying to teach them Xmas vocab. Like Santa, christmas tree, presents ( hint hint!) and so on.

Well, sort of. One period out of 4 and the rest was spent letting them choose whether to do a wordsearch or colouring in some cartoon picture off the internet. At least I didnt write up on my whiteboard when to bring presents in.

On that subject, again it seems to be the lower Prathom who are missing out in the present list. The older kids are smart enough to get the hints or know that giving their teacher a present at Xmas is what you do. Until Thursday I hadnt received one! Others were waltzing in with scarfes, ties, biscuits and the rest.

The last "work" day was a doddle as it was a basically a case of going round the individual home rooms and saying hi to the kids then going away. Now, hands up those of you who want McDonalds hamburgers at 9am? Pizza? KFC? crisps, biscuits, cake, ice cream and the like were all on offer. I have to admit I did eat some of it to be polite, after all when you get it shoved into your hand by a parent or kid you at least have to try - just not too hard though. I was tempted to pocket a few things for eating later but my pockets werent big enough :)

Oh yes, I picked up my first presents, a clock ( obviously a freebie from daddies bank ) and a pack of M & S Jaffa Cakes. Oh well, at least the Jaffa Cakes were nice.

The main reason for not eating so much was actually that we were going out for lunch paid for by the bosses. Now to be fair, the meal was nice and we got a Xmas present too - a pen. Whooo. The pen was just stupid, it spoilt the meal as it just reminded us of how high in regard they hold us .

And the hits just keep on rolling in!

It seems like over the holidays that the other program in the school got mentioned heavily on thaischoolwatch. Unfortunately, by the time I got there all the juicy posts had been deleted with a very strange change of opinion by one poster. I wonder if there was any behind the scenes pressure? Without that I couldnt see any reason why he would change his mind 180 degrees.

Melly Cwismass

2005-12-20T11:23:00.000+07:00

As is usual in many schools, ( though not all ) things are winding down as teachers near that special time of year when they are expected to perform like seals in front of other teachers and or parents at Xmas concerts or parties.

Some run for the hills, some approach it head on like an inevitable train wreck and some never get asked. So far I am in the third category YIPPPEEEEE.

Its also the time of year we inevitably end up trying to teach something about Santa and Xmas to a bunch of Thai kids who know nothing about the origins of the story and holiday and whose only thought is holidays and presents and ooops there's dad drunk with his Chivas again. Actually sounds a bit like home really.

The school is increasingly decked out with tinsel, Xmas trees and the like with this years slogan ( well, I assume its different every year ) FINDING CHRISTMAS. Why they dont just look in a diary under December 25 or in Google I dont know. But apparently its lost. So if you see Christmas, please return it to Paddington Station, London.

The usual things have been happening, cover lessons given - me getting them, others not getting them. The feedback from the observations has brought on some furrowed brows " how can they say that" " thats stupid" etc etc. and well probably the whole system is stupid, especially the fact that you have to make an appointment to discuss the observation. To my mind that is always the most important to both parties. To see a person do something is interesting but also to see and then find out WHY they did it is vital. Otherwise you are only pressing your bias , your behaviour etc onto another person and putting that into their "teachers record".

Day of Days

2005-12-07T16:27:00.000+07:00

Ooooh, a nice dramatic title but still the same old same old.

Another week another Baht.

Teaching wise the kids have been more or less acceptable with the odd outburst of dissent but nothing too serious but today was just one of those days where it started wrong and just went downhill. The first lesson was one that basically consisted of my waiting for the kids to be quiet and when they couldnt be quiet for them to STAND still.

Of course, this eventually led to them standing the whole lesson. If it wasnt someone discovering that their shoe lace needed tying or that they wanted to dance or move about in some stupid way or play with their metal pencil case and drop it on the floor or something that.. The original intention had been to keep them quiet for a couple of minutes while I took the attendence, that escalated up to 5 minutes then up to them standing in silence then up and up and up to the full lesson. At every stage I told them why, that he was talking, that he was making noises, that he was playing and so on and giving them another deadline to aim for ( and fail to achieve ).

We then get to the end of the lesson and I think, OK, just one more time, telling them that if I say quiet, that means no talking and if I say stand still that means stand still. In the middle of this, one little git - ironically one of the more intelligent ones - decides to pack up all his things and get ready to leave. Aw for fecks sake! Not listening, not taking in anything that has gone on for the first 7 months of the year or the previous 50 minutes. What are you doing? Did I tell you to get your bag ready? Did I? Did I tell you to pack your bag? I think, he will reply with a yes or no, at that point I dont really care,any response and I would have shoved them out the door ( with a quick correction of course ). But what does he decide to do? Just totally ignore me of course, so I repeat the question again in a different way and again and eventually he looks at me. If looks could kill!

At the same time the rest of the kids were putting pressure on him, as I said when he replies you all can go. So the kids round him were telling him to say no ( or indeed yes ) so they could get out and enjoy the rest of the break.

About ten minutes in, I thought I would defuse the issue as he was starting to threaten to punch the other kids. In some ways it was like watching the old Tom and Jerry cartoons as somebodys head turns gradually red and then a steam whistle blows to let off the excess! He started banging the bag against the desk and going uh! bang uh! BANG UH

It was one of these bizarre situations, on one hand I wanted to push it further and see if he would pop and have a stroke or something but on the other hand I was going, dont do anything stupid, he could flip out and hurt me or another kid or himself. In the end, the sensible thoughts won. DAMM! One of these days towards the end of term I am going to have to push it and see what happens.

Then the next lesson is about making a paper folding book but could they cut along the lines of the design? No, of course not. Could they colour trees green and brown? No, they had to be blue or purple or yellow with red stripes. Feck.

Then of course, they ( Der mangement ) decide to choose today of all days to do the surprise observation and oh dear. First of, I realised when I go into the class I had forgotten to bring my books - I thought I had left them in the class but I had taken them back to the staffroom where they now lay, along with my lesson plan and my attendence sheet. Wonderful. NOT! And of course, that knocked me off and them turning up knocked me off so I was really off for the next 10 - 15 minutes. Add to that, the lesson was an activity based on I have no idea what they made of it. I know it wasnt one of my best. As well as that they did not stay for the full lesson. One left with about 10 minutes to go and the other with 5 minutes to go.

As it was with the last observation, the result will be a written report not a chat to discuss what went right and wrong and talk about areas of improvement. It will be interesting to see what they make of it.

Now from the Department of Only in Thailand.

I was walking back to my class in the afternoon to see a scrum of kids on the football pitch. Aw, well, nothing too unusual. Then I notice a pink old fashioned VW Beatle and then some models and a team of people doing a wedding photoshoot! Of course the kids were loving it and were running round in and out of shot. The photographer was going mental but the models did seem to be enjoying it. Whether that good humour was maintained is another matter though :)

Moving towards Xmas

2005-11-29T16:55:00.000+07:00

More odds and sods from the mad house coming up.

We all thought the rainy season had passed and we were now into the safe period where we could walk in complete safety. Yesterday proved us wrong again. With the late afternoon downpour, if you were wearing the wrong shoes you would be slipping and sliding all over the place as though you were on ice.

Most of the school is that typical shiny stone which turns to ice when wet and you see people walking around like they were 70 years old. Of course what really helps matters is that on the balconies the edge actually goes upwards trapping all the water on the walking area.

Add to that the way they contructed the walkway between the new building and the main section is another area of hazards, we should be getting danger money! They have got it set up so that there are two types of ground tiles. One is rough and provides loads of grip no matter what you wear and one is a lovely smooth one which will send you onto your arse if you dont watch out Now guess which stone they chose to make the floor of the pedestrian bridge Yup the shiny smooth one. So if it is raining, we have the choice of getting wet in between the staffroom andthe classroom or walking very slowly on the ice rink and be dry.

When you ask many people why they are here teaching and not somewhere else they say "its not the money" and yet it seems to be those not here for the money who as soon as they are offered extra work jump at the chance and work evenings and or weekends. Strange that.

As far as teaching goes its been much of a muchness. The same old story of mangement telling we cant do this to the kids and we cant do that. We have now been told we cant issue our yellow cards as often as we have! The original idea was of course one yellow card was a chat with our headie and a red meant a chat with the parents. But of course, that changed when the headie told the kids a red card meant expulsion!! Ho hum.

This week has actually been surprisingly good though. Today I just wasnt up to it so did a quick demo on what I wanted and got the couple of smart kids in the class to "teach". I thought it might be a train wreck but surprise surprise it worked out fine and the kids enjoyed it. Normally I would have thought you could have done it for about p3 maybe p4 up but not for p2. I will continue with the experiment as much as I can and see what happens.

As is common in most of the "better" schools they have a lot of stuff for alumni and we recently had the homecoming dinner. It was really a boring evening with lots of Frank Sinatra songs - doobie doobie doo,do doobi doobie doo...... Why is it he is so popular in these things here? To mark the occasion those who attended got a free tie pin from the alumni. Whoohooo! The dinner itself was the usual thai affair of about 8 dishes all coming seperately and then being shared in the middle of the table. If you had been to one of those before you went to one of the side stalls to load up on the entrees just in case the main meals werent to your liking.

Around the edge of the dining area there were stalls selling various stuff including a Merc dealer. Yup. Oh it must be nice to be connected in Thailand.

Rules & Regulations

2005-11-17T21:13:00.000+07:00

Well, the big meeting today was a damp squib in some ways.

The usual story of making it out to be dramatic when it wasnt. But, they are cracking down on some things - some doesnt change things for me and some do.

The boss was disappointed to see that only a couple of people were wearing the full uniform at the directors ceremony. Glad to see they were only talking about people who had the full uniform from last year but even we poor mortals who havent had it made up yet didnt quite escape as we need to make sure we have as much on as possible black trousers, white shirt - no stripes or spots, school tie.... zzzzz

Its funny how they are cracking down in our section so much but other programs get away with so much. I saw a guy come in today with a casual cotton shirt and jeans with no tie! How come he gets away with it but we dont? Hmm

The other thing is that this week, the teachers who werent teaching disapeared off wherever because the classes were cancelled. Unfortunately, it was very noticable in the matayom room so guess what. They are cracking down on it and every fucker is going to suffer now. Thanks a bunch guys. I had only 1 period in the whole week where i could go home for a couple of hours because of a free period around lunch and now, I cant go.

They have said that unless we are having lunch or doing an occasional 30 minute task, we must be in the staffroom. if we want to work in our classrooms we can but we must inform the head or assistant head beforehand!

WTF?

Also, they dropped the bombshell that we are too have further observations. Now, you may be going observations, big deal. Well, yes, but they are going to do it unannounced. They are just going to turn up and observe you. No notice, they will just be there.

Oh how to make friends and improve moral amongst staff- chapter 3. Like most people, I am nervous at observations but accept them. But unnanounced? Despite them saying its all for our benefit and the school says they have to do it, it stinks of spying and distrust. Even if they gave you an hours notice or something like that it would be better.

And talking about the directors ceremony, it was as boring as something very boring indeed. IT was all in Thai and zzzzzzzzzzzzzz It was quite funny watching our lot against the thai teachers. They all had their heads up watching the ceremony, our lot almost all had heads down playing games on mobile phones, reading books, doing crosswords, marking exams, reading newspapers......

Time Of Our Lives

2005-11-16T20:42:00.000+07:00

Or Not.

For the last three weeks I have been trying to get the little angels to learn how to tell time.

Not an easy job when only about 5% of them have a watch and of that 5% there is only one whose watch is not digital. So this concept of dials and hands and "past" and "to" is usually quite a difficult one for them to pick up. But it seemed to be going reasonable well. But today. Today.. Oh my god, today was just awful.

I was teaching the maximum of 5 lessons today and I came out a zombie. All reason and intelligence had left me. I felt it draining away during the day and there was nothing I could do. I have to finish this unit this week and get a test in, so it was a case of sit down such up and sleep so I could recover or grind my way through it. maybe i should have let them sleep and got some myself.

About which, I caught one of mine sleeping today. Little f***** . He had actually been much improved in this new semester and had been actually seen working - on more than one occasion! But he has now reverted to type this week. I actually let him sleep. i really couldnt be arsed waking him up properly. I just got a bit of paper and dangled it in his ear but that only made him swat away an imaginary mossie and turn over. The other kids thought it was great fun but...

By the way this was in the middle of a practice listening test. A quick 10 minutes at the start of the lesson and then more practice for the test. Quick 10 minutes my arse. 9 examples and it lasted between 30 to 40 minutes in getting them quiet enough to start, for them to get their pencils out, me quickly marking it and completing it. F*** ME!

Now, who invented those self propelling pencils and thought they old be good idea to give them to 8 year olds? Eh? Who was it? Own up! Because if its you, I am going to come round and smack you a few good ones with a basball bat. The amount of time wasted with them in class in unreal. Its funny how they always need to get new lead just at the start of my class. They never seem to do it at the end. I wonder why? Hmm.

And once again, my decision this year to try and get out of P2 have proved correct. Just a shame I wasnt successfull. The end of last week and this week has seen Prathom 4 - 6 and Matayom teach a vastly reduced timetable because of outings trips and whatnot. But, what do we get at the lower levels? Nada, zilch, zero, nothing, nil........... And we were still getting covers, yes, even with teachers not teaching, I still got a cover last week. Unreal.

We got a memo at lunchtime saying that we have a very important meeting first thing tomorrow. Not sure why. In fact it is the talk of the steamie! Is it anything to do with the appearance of the head of the english department in our office today, was it a coincidence? Nobody seems to know. But whatever it is, I doubt it will be good news. And speaking of that, I will need to post tomorrow about the other "good" news we got this week.

Material Boys & Girls

2005-11-09T20:12:00.000+07:00

During the weekend, I went to a few different tailors to find out how much it would cost to make up the school uniform. I think my famous last words were I am not that bothered about the cost.

Well, my view changed. I was quoted anything for 1800B up to 4000B for just the making up of one jacket and one pair of trousers. 4000B !!! YIKES! Fortunately, the school is getting someone in to visit the school and measure everyone up. Apparently he does really good work and best of all he is cheap, around 1000B. Which is ok, thats the price of a pair of trousers out of Robinsons.

Unfortunately tomorrow we have one of our out of hours mandatory attendence ceremonies. This one is for confirmation of the new director. no dount it will be the usual opening prayer and blessing and hymn and then speeches saying how wonderful she is and how lucky the school is to have her ya da ya da ya. I wonder how much will be in english? Whoop de whoop. 90 bloody minutes we will have to endure taking us up to almost 5pm, after which there is going to be a buffet thing. It had better be bloody good after sitting through that.

So far this week I have been teaching my little Somchais all about time. Its been one of those weeks where you are sailing along and then hit a brick wall and think once again that the marker in your hand has an iq bigger than the collective iq of the class.

Three parts to the whiteboard. One is a clock with the hands at 3 o'clock then beside that "3:00" and beside that are the words "three o'clock". So the question goes out, whats the time? ( pointing to the clock) 3 o'clock is the reply. Whats the time? ( pointing to "3:00" ) 3 o'clock is the reply. So far so good. So the next question goes out - are these the same time? Are they the same? ( pointing to all 3 ) Silence. The question goes out again, silence. I try asking some individuals, silence, I try the smartest kid in the class. He pulls a stupid face and shakes his head. Yeesh.

So, another tack. I ask them are they the same,yes / no? Put your hands up if you think no. One puts his hand up. Put your hands up if you think yes. Every hand goes up. Aw for fecks sake. So back to the original question. Are they the same? Silence. DOH!

Why is it every kid is a drama queen when it comes to thunder and lightning? During the storm yesterday every time they saw lightning they all "jumped" out of their seats and of course when the thunder came they all shouted AHHHHH!!! like they were scared. Oh for petes sake, its not like europe where maybe you could see 3 or 4 storms in a year. It more like 4 months worth here. If they are still scared of thinder and lightning at this age, they are living in the wrong country and they will have a miserable lifetime ahead!

And oh yes, I havent had a cover lesson so far this week :)

Confessions of a rambling mind

2005-11-05T15:48:00.000+07:00

Got you there! Bet you thought it would be something exciting, but alas and alack, no its not. Just another update at the madhouse.

Back to my favourite subject - cover lessons. Aw gawd, here we go again you must be thinking, he got a stupid cover and he is going to bitch about it, again! Well, no. Not this time. This was the first week in a long long time when I didnt get one. Amazing! We got a memo about covers basicaly saying the common sense things like follow the lesson plan the teacher missing made, use the materials they set up, dont just give them whats easiest for you etc etc.

We have now got a permanent cover teacher. Except, hes not based at the school. It seems to be the usual TIT way of doing things. He is employed by an agency and will only work at our school but he wont be at the school unless he is working. Eh? So, what happens if someone suddenly goes ill? We will still need to do covers until he arrives. Seems a bit pointless to me. If he is "ours", why not keep him at the school? Oh well.

All the teachers who passed the probationary period got a little present. Material to make up the school uniform. Black material for the trews and a lovely shade of bleuuch for the jacket, as well as a badge to be sewn on the jacket breast pocket, brass buttons and tie pin. We have to find a tailor to make it up, that comment drew a few sharp intakes of breath. Why should we have to pay, its the school uniform so they should pay etc etc. To be honest, I am not that fussed about it - unless of course I find out that it will set me back thousands of baht.

In the category of "What??!!" Part 1

One the guys - the LMY was giving it his usual when he got the material and someone paid a little trick by hiding the buttons when LMY was out of the room. He comes back in and immediately starts off Who stole my buttons, what fuckking idiot stole my buttons, its not funny stealing peoples stuff..... then he goes and gets the program director and the assistant director in !!! And starts the rants again swearing left right centre up down and round the bend! Of course by this time the buttons had been put back but under the material so he finds them. Mean time, everyone else is either telling him to calm down or just staring astonished at the view. Then of course, he cant find his badge so the rant continues. Even when he finds the badge he had folded into the material he still rants on and on.

On a scale of 1 to 10 then I have to put this on a 9.5. Its only a 9.5 as there was no physical violence involved.

Now, later on we found out that LMY had his apartment broken into in the October break, so he was a bit sensitive to things being stolen. But...... it was still an over the top reaction to a little joke and as for getting the Director and the AD in?? Come on!!

In the category of "What??!!" Part 2. One of the new teachers decided to work a bit later in his classroom this week - about 5pm - and returned to find everyone had left and the lights had been switched off and doors locked. Now, the problem was that in the staffroom was his phone, wallet, money, keys, bag etc. basically everything. Now, at this point some people might have gone back the ground floor to an office to get a key or to one of the security guards or gone to the main office or gone to look for another teacher. What this guy did was he walked out the school gates and walked the streets all night. He came in the next day and said he had to go home to sleep and change his clothes.

When people were hearing this story the reaction was pretty much the same. WHAT THE F...? Why didnt he ask a guard or anyone for a key? Why did he just walk out? Does he have no friends he could go to? Is his flat that far away that he couldnt walk there? I mean, he did have 10 hours! Why did he leave his money in the staffroom?? That was the biggest point everybody raised. Although we havent had anything going missing so far this year, it is a sad fact that it does happen occasionally.

I think its fair to say that this guy will be the subject of some fairly constant jokes about this for a long long time.

Now, for those who think that Thailand is the only place that the shit happens to EFL teachers, here is a site that corrects the view. Its from a guy back in the UK who suffers just as much as we do though the usual methods - idiotic students, managers and penny pinching. Its quite a good read, so have a look.

http://tefltrade.blog-city.com

A Game of two halves

2005-10-31T20:45:00.000+07:00

So, the second semester starts last week and what happens?

Well, nothing totally unexpected to be honest. Despite being told that we were fully staffed we had a couple of people leaving and yesterday I overheard someone talking to another school and so might be leaving.

So here were are back to getting covers for people again. And yes you guessed it, I got a cover. The guy who organises them is unreal. I get one, another guy gets two. Now bear in mind this is a 3 day teaching week. Others get none. What is this guy on? Is he just thinking that some people have done him wrong and thats why they are getting covers? God knows.

On our non teaching day we had a little welcome speech from the director of the school and some other high up. Quite why I am not sure as it was just the farang staff from the various programs. The speeches were bordering on bizarre, from the announcement that the director was just back from America - whoop de friggin whoop - to organise another school to twin with and the usual we hope you do well for our students to we want you to work hard but not too hard, we dont want you overworked. Hmm, maybe thats what I should try with the cover man. Hey, the director said I shouldnt be overworked, how about giving covers to other people for a change??

The guy, who I think is also a director, gave an almost surreal performance. He said that the children we teach may be from good homes and wealthy parents but they are empty, they are damaged, they are incomplete and need our love. They need us to touch them and give them love. Imagine a school administrator saying that in USA or UK. That we have to touch our kids!!

It got better. He said that he hoped that we made friends here and that we would not go out alone because since inflation was running at 6% it was a dangerous place. We should not go out alone at night!!! Well, to be fair, if you read the forums at ThaiVisa there has been a few threads about violence to farangs increasing. Even so, I still feel far safer here than I do back in my home city. It was a comment that again raised quite a few eyebrows.

I noticed that the thread about the school has almost died a death on thaischoolwatch. It was only natural.

Oh yes, I noticed this worthy cause browsing about today. Please join up.

Want to help stop the illegal trade of Khmer artifacts?

Sign the petition to encourage the Thai and Singapore governments to sign the 1970 UNESCO convention on heritage protection.

http://www.heritagewatch.org/petition.php

The Summer Of Our Content

2005-10-10T19:11:00.000+07:00

And why is everyone content?

Well, its the holidays of course. Throughout Thailand that sound you hear is the sound of teachers everywhere going "Thank God" Two weeks of not hearing "Teacher! Teacher!" "Teacher Finished!" Oh how I would like to strangle whoever got that habit installed into the kids. Two weeks of peace, relaxation and doing whatever we want.

In Bangkok, people without kids are also thanking their various gods with the traffic decreasing down to zero around schools and probably a good 20% overall.

The drawback is that, if the kids are on holiday then wherever you want to go in Thailand, it will be filled with kids. I tried to book an activity holiday and got told that they were fully booked as they had got a batch of 50 kids coming for the month.

And so it is with buses and trains to popular destinations ie Chiang Mai where sleeper trains become fully booked weeks in advance for the start and end of the holidays.

To mark the end of the semester we had a large staff meeting. Where the usual thank you for all your help statements came out. We are apparently using too much paper and are over budget. So we have to be more careful in requesting the number of copies we need. Also we shouldnt be printing stuff off the internet for personal use - ooooo the horror!

Also - JM. Of course I am bitching about people leaving early or coming late when I cant do it, its my blog and I will bitch if I want! - the boss raised the point about people swiping in and then not being seen again until the swiping out time and that we were not to do it. A bit late conidering it was the last day of the do nothing period. Never mind.

If you werent doing a 4 day summer camp for Prathom during the last week you had to go on a "Profesional Development Seminar" Which had the usual dry tales of this is how you should do it - straight from a book - and not very practical at all. A couple of people tried sneaking out but the boss started sitting at the back to stop that.

The alternative was doing the camp. 4 days of "fun filled activities " It turned out to be more exhausting than normal teaching as the breaks were fewer and you had them all day. There were no free periods - well officially. There was a certain participant who decided that he would create his own free periods by going off somewhere and diappearing or by simply sleeping through the activities and not taking part in anything at all. By the end everybody had noticed and commented about it. I only sleep 4 hours a night he says, well thats all you need if you sleep another 5 durng the day I suppose. At the end everybody got 500B a day for the camp and there was more than one barbed comment about how not everybody had earned it. It was quite funny at the end that we were told the payment was all they could spare. hmm. I heard the kids were charged either 1000b or 2000B, there were about 160 kids. So, on the conservative side thats 160,000 B in income and the teachers got 20,000. The food probably cost 3000 - at most, the prizes and materials maybe another 10,000. Hmmm whatever way you work it out, it sure was a nice "little" profit for the school.

Seems to be that the most profitable business in Thailand is to run a school.

See you all after the holidays.

Oh yes, from now on, if you add a comment you will have to fill in one of these funny password tests to stop comment bots, I been getting a lot of spam comments so sorry about that.

Report Cards and Camps

2005-09-30T14:28:00.000+07:00

Well, we are almost there.

Just one more week before 2 weeks of holidays. For the next semester its broken up quite a lot with Xmas / New Year and so on. With any luck it should be fairly painless - well, in comparison. And then the descision has to be made again. Stay another year or move on ( to another school or country ) or go home but thats another time and another post.

When we got told about the reports it was at first the usual story - we would get guidelines on what we would be able to write. Here we go again I thought Have to be positive blah blah blah. But being honest I was quite surprised at what we were being allowed to write ie we could say that his classroom behaviour was unacceptable and he had to sit in seat to stop distracting others in the lesson.

Thing is to some people, this may not seem like a big deal but its a damm site more honest than in the last place where all comments had to be positive. So the comment would need to be something like he is an active student or some such bs like that to hide the truth.

Even so we were told that a minimum mark had to be given - an E+. Not an E but an E+. Its still rated as unacceptable, so I think maybe that + makes all the difference! Saving face and all that.

Next week we have a couple of summer camps that we have to do, 4 days in total. If we are not doing the camps we are going to a 2 day seminar. Szzzzzzz! But at least it should be a comparatively easy week.

This week just about everyone has been swiping in on time and then staying for an hour and then either going for lunch for 6 hours and coming back in for the last hour and swiping out or not coming back at all and presumably giving the swipe card to someone else to swipe out - a perilous thing to do, in theory you can get sacked for that.

Next week, well wait and see.

But this week we did get a very pleasant surprise. As well as being pay day yesterday, we also got a backdated salary increase because we passed our probation. It seems that this is not just a one off and will be a permanent increase. I and everyone else dont remember reading anything in the contract about this so, as I said, it was a pleasant surprise to get this "bonus" just in time for the holidays. So, dont say everything in this blog is negative!

Now for something a bit different.

Every now and again i look at the counter stats and one of the most interesting is the browser share. I think I last wrote about this a year ago or so. At that time the IE share was about 90 % or so, ( if I can be bothered I will look up the exact figures ) and Firefox was about 8% with others about 2%. Now it seems that Firefox is gaining hold amongst you lot.

Now according to the pie chart above its 66% IE and 21% Firefox.

YEHHH! Good for you guys. Keep it up and lets kill the M$ monster!

Exams & Happenings Part 2

2005-09-26T14:07:00.000+07:00

I am still somehow getting covers that take me up to 5 lessons a day ( the maximum ) from 4 lessons when other people in my year group hardly ever get asked to do that and extremely hardly ever do the people in other years groups who have 2 or 3 lessons get asked. Its really fucking me off big time having to do all these extra lessons while other people get away with a far lighter workload. Unfortunately there is not a lot I can do about it, I have already spoken to management and nothing has really changed.

It seems that every year I am unlucky with the timetables. The first year I had 22 periods a week and was teaching the last period of every day so I never had the chance to get away early. Almost everyone else had a day or two that they could slope away early. One teacher only had about 14 periods – you know who you are you jammy sod. The second year was much the same although the number of periods each teacher had was much the same give or take a couple. The third year was the same and so it continues this year.

Another guy has a full morning off each week. His absence is very noticeable as he always in the staffroom on every other morning so presumably he is getting someone to swipe in for him – which by the way is damm near a sackable offence as far as I can tell for both parties or swiping in and going home.

Out of the 20 weeks teaching so far, off the top of my head, I have had 4 or 5 that I have done the regular hours. Every other week I have had one or two extra lessons to do. By now I reckon I have done 30+ extra lessons – all unpaid ( they sneakily put in the contract that we teach 22 hours, so they can nab you for an extra 2 each week and they don’t need to pay you ) whereas others have only done about 3 or 4. Why? Well, the extra lessons are forced on you, you have no option, you are just told you are doing them. In theory, who gets the cover lesson is logical and fair. Its worked on the number of lessons normally taught in a week - most people have 20 but others have 18 and 16 - then the number of lessons taught that day and whether you are in the same learning group.

Unfortunately it seems that this is mostly ignored so people who teach less hours than me get fewer cover lessons, when others teach the same hours I tend to get picked. I even got picked once because they couldn’t find the person who was supposed to do it, he had buggered off for a smoke and because I was in the staffroom I got nabbed. See me, see lucky white heather, pah!

The headie is always saying that he will not give anyone with four lessons an extra cover – yeh right, its happened to me 4 times now. But this has the effect of the guys who do 4 lessons every day get virtually no covers.

One reason our teaching group gets so many covers is I think Prathom 1, 2 and 3 teachers have a more stressful job and consequently get sicker more or get “sicker” more. That unfortunately means more covers for people within the group. I have no idea about the actual numbers but it feels like this is the % of which group needs and does the most covers.

needs does

P1-3 40 45

P4-6 30 30

M1- 3 20 15

M4-6 10 10

Any time the imbalance is mentioned ( and remember its not just me, a couple of others are in the same sort of boat ), a common response is “well, I am doing 4 or 5 lessons today, so whats the big deal?” The big deal is that they are including the after school lessons that they get paid extra for. Another is ‘well I did lots of extras last year” but this isn’t last year is it? This from a guy that has probably done 4 covers all year.

At the start of the year, we were told we could do this, do that in the sense of getting the kids to behave and the way to control the classes and collect the classes from outside the classroom etc. Well, that soon started going by the wayside. A few of the other teachers basically took the point of view of either it was too much work or thought it unecessary. At the end of lessons, they just let the kids run back to their class, went part of the way to their classroom and so on. One of the first things that went is timekeeping.

There is one guy that is late ( and by late I mean 5 minutes after the lesson is due to start I reckon about 50% of the time – partly because he overruns his lessons constantly and also because he cant stop his breaks on time. He is always appearing with bottles of water or cans of drink or even still eating. For a school that takes so much “effort” in being proper, I would have thought that would have been deemed proper. Last year, eating in the corridors was a big no no and eating while collecting a class was ust not thought about. Ah well, so be it. I soon realised that it was a fight that it wasn’t worth fighting as it was never brought up in meetings that it shouldn’t happen. So I just started doing the same – although in my view not quite going as far – turning up lateish sometimes, letting the kids run out back to the class and so on. On that subject, there is another teacher that is constantly complaining that his kids wreck his classroom and he is always having to tidy it. Yeh well no shit mate, he leads the kids out at the end of the period and hasn’t the patience to wait for the tail enders before he goes and collect the next class. No wonder they wreck the place, they are just left to their own devices.

Its all about the show. Don’t ask questions, don’t try to hard, don’t care, just look good and smile at the right people.

You try and break the mould, you try and install independent thinking in the kids, you ask questions, you care and some things are guaranteed. The kids wont like you and neither will a lot of colleagues or employers and or you will go crazy with the sheer frustration of it all.

Oh yes, if you are thinking, this isnt all that dark then you would be right. I re-read everything and decide to self censor a lot of it. Strange I know but I a few folk at work have found out who I am and so discretion and valour and all that.

And anyway, I am feeling a little less depressed than last week so that helps matters, especially since I have booked my school holidays and today is the start of the staffroom makework nonsense.

I will leave you with a couple of happy words. Jolene Blalock. Grrrrrrrrr! :)

2005-09-23T13:13:00.000+07:00

To those who were thinking you are a miserable bastard, its not that bad. yeh, ok, you were right.

I didnt get a cover lesson, in fact this week is the first time in ages I have not had one. It makes such a difference in my energy levels, especialy with the way the kids are just now.

Anyway, yes I know I promised to enter the rest of it but I really cant be arsed at the moment. Maybe tomorrow.

Exams & Happenings

2005-09-21T14:53:00.000+07:00

Well, for the first time in ages, I basically just sat down and started to write something for this while I was still in work. It turned out to be a bit longer, darker and bitter than I had imagined, but right now that’s just the way I am feeling. The rest will come tomorrow – or maybe even more.

Thank god we are nearly on holiday, as we are slowing down a bit

As it seems to be nearly everywhere for some reason, mathayom is stopping before prathom, we have two more days with the kids than they do.

We are now in that twilight zone of being after exams and being before holidays. Well, I say holidays but we have the usual bullshit of having to come into work to write the reports and do summer camps before they rulers deign to let us away for a couple of weeks. Almost everyone is feeling the same in that we are all saying that the kids are basically climbing the walls and going ape shit. Whether its because they can smell the holidays or they are as fed up as we are I don’t know. My lot are bouncing off the walls.

I had planned some light hearted fun stuff for them this week but they are being such utter dicks, I am not going to bother giving them everything. I had one class today where a kid said he didn’t have the worksheet from yesterday. I asked where it was. Mai ow maa baan. Basically its at home, I notice another kid at the same table hadn’t got it out. I asked him the same. Same answer. A third kid hadn’t got anything out and before I could talk to him one of the other kids in a stage whisper mai ow maa baan. Then he repeated it. Being a naturally suspicious bastard, especially when it comes to kids, I asked him if he wanted a bet. ( I love getting sarcastic with the real shits in my class, they haven’t a clue what’s going on and it makes me feel better ! ) Sure enough, in the bag there it was. He turned round and gave that little butter wouldn’t melt to hide the guilty smarm that he was beginning to show. A quiet little search revealed they all were lying little shits.

If there is one thing I hate as much as anything about the kids, its lying. No matter the reason, to save face, to show contempt, to hide that they don’t know the answer, that they just enjoy winding up the teacher or whatever. I HATE it, I really do. So that set my mood up nicely for the rest of the lesson – why will these kids learn??

Anyway, their behaviour at the moment is just hyper bouncing off the walls stuff. Somebody somewhere is giving them speed laced with sugar, fried with batter on a stick – chicken or pork flavoured.

I have just about reached the end of my tether and am really tempted to just let them loose and do whatever they want. The trouble is, I know I would just be storing up trouble for myself when I wanted to do proper teaching.

Even the simplest task of getting them lined up and into their seats in the class is turning into a 10 minute job.

Walk in and sit down. Nope, get them out and line up again.

Walk in and sit down! Nope, get them out and line up again.

Walk in and Sit down! Nope, get them out and line up again.

Walk in and Sit Down! Nope, get them out and line up again.

WALK in and Sit Down! Nope, get them out and line up again.

WALK in and SIT Down! Nope, get them out and line up again.

WALK IN AND SIT! Jesus, there must be an easier way to make a living than this.

Then once they are inside, the goldfish brain takes over. You can tell one boy to be quiet and stop talking but then the one next to him starts or continues on!

What is it with Thais and the need for noise? Why do they need to shout at every opportunity to each other, especially if the other person is only two yards away? Is it a law somewhere?

During the exams there were the usual pathetic attempts of cheating, hiding their faces with the paper to stop me from seeing them looking at others papers. You would have thought that maybe the moving piece of white paper might catch my eye would occur to them. Nah.

Well, I say exams, but in reality it was just an exam – singular. Not Speaking, just a combined Reading and Writing one that we had to make up. Depending on the level, the exams were out of 20, 30, 40 or 50. Then the fun began. The assessment grids are split into Reading and Writing out of 5 marks each. So guess what the solution was? Just reduce everything down to 10 then split it equally between the two parts. DOH! A real scientific test of the kids abilities. Why do so many schools do this? Why not at least set up the exams so they are the same mark? This mucking around is just pathetic.

We are still a couple of people short following the recent departures and have had a couple of permanent casual people in to do some of the cover - it turns out the only casualty of the probation shake out was Mr Banger who disappeared off to a language school. This still leaves quite a few classes to be covered due to the regular "illnesses" and despite assurances from the management that I would be used as the last resort due to the number of covers i had already done - I am still getting as many as ever. I will make a bet with you right now. That I get a cover lesson tomorrow.

Catching up

2005-09-14T14:52:00.000+07:00

Its been a few days since the last effort so thought I would get my arse into gear and put something down.

In some ways, it has been fairly quite with no real excitement and nothing new to relate that hasn’t already been told a dozen times, but on we go….

In the last week we have now passed the probationary period at the school – a massive 4 months. It was something that had been in the back of mind based on the stories I heard last year about people being booted out in time for the holidays. I had hoped and thought I was ok but this being Thailand, you never quite know even if you are told you are ok. But I got the letter that I had passed and basically that means I am “in” and can relax a bit – from the sense of job security.

A couple of people didn’t though. Its shrowded in the usual mystery that is Thailand why that was. One of them got the letter late and one walked off.

Although we are just out of probation we are still in the “hostage deposit” period. (The 4000 baht a month deduction from our salaries that is taken out for the first 5 months and returned after the end of the school year.) So this guy is maybe waving bye bye to 12000 baht – assuming he doesn’t challenge the school and ask for it back. I am not sure what the position is if the school doesn’t renew your probation and says you are out. I would hope and assume that the deposit money is returned.

We are now getting into the realms of end of semester exams and winding down for the holidays and compulsory english camps we have to do. So more of that later

Assorted Ramblings

2005-09-01T20:34:00.000+07:00

If you read the various newspaper and forums you will see that corporal punishment it now against the law. You now can’t legally hit any kids. Errr yup. Well, unless you are a Thai teacher. Sometimes, going to my first class of the day, I see boys who are presumably coming in late and receiving a late “ticket” just inside the gate and another little line hidden from the main road where boys line up and get whacked a couple of times by a cane on the rear end. You can actually hear the sound from the other side of the road sometimes! Ouch!! I think it depends which guy is in charge of the whacking as a couple of times I have sent he kids really get whacked and a couple of times it didn’t seem to be that sore – at least judging from their reaction.

As is common which a lot of schools, there is always a circus outside with various people selling the kids stickers, pirated PS2 games, food and of course English language schools. Sometimes the language school folk take things way too far. Handing out the leaflets is a thankless job, I know, I did it for a while in a summer holiday when I was younger and the number of refusals can get you down but… I saw something last week that made me mad. I was walking behind a small kid, maybe Prathom 2, the schoolbag bigger than him, struggling his way up the street and the woman who was handing out the leaflets held out the leaflet in front of his face, when he shook his head to indicate he didn’t want it she took one of his arms and forced the leaflet into his hands and closed the hands around the leaflet. I couldn’t quite believe what I was seeing. I really felt like going up to the woman and smacking her one. In the end, of course I didn’t and she carried on forcing the leaflets into the hands of the kids. The overall result? A few yards behind her was a growing pile of those same leaflets that the kids didn’t and therefore just dropped on the street. Stupid.

Things in the office are fairly calm at the moment, unless you count the fact that 3 people handed their notice in and one left immediately. So if anyone wants a job let me know! Over the last couple of weeks we have been observed by the bosses, this was one of the final steps before passing probation. Mine went Ok with a few comments about language level in instructions ie it was too high and the mix of activities wasn’t quite right but overall pretty positive. The one thing that amazes me is that the feedback is given in writing, you don’t get to talk with the observer – unless you want to! Umm. Seems a bit strange, especially for such a “serious” English program. Ah well, whatever.

Once we pass probation, a few things will happen, we will have to wear the school uniform on Mondays – white shirt and school tie, not really such a big deal. We stop having the “bondage deduction” taken from our salaries. And maybe most important of all, it will be more difficult to sack us.

The crackdown on downloading stuff seems to be serious. A couple of comments were overheard about removing any sort of program that will download music or movies so maybe it will be more than a couple of weeks before people start downloading stuff again.

I will now tell a tale of a teacher who joined the school not that long ago in another section. You make up your own mind whether he is an idiot, unfairly picked on, unrealistic or whatever.

He joined about 10 days ago and said he was going to resign. He was teaching M5 & 6. Not the brightest pack of cards on the table but … He is teaching 22 lessons a week of 50 minutes. Because of various activities that the kids did and a lack of enthusiasm generally for turning up, he was never teaching full classes and in some cases, no one turns up at all. The way his timetable is set up, he effectively has a couple of half days were all he needs to do is make sure he comes in at some point to swipe his timecard.

He says that he has been having trouble with his bosses as they tell him that if no one turns up, he still has to give the lesson and that if no one turns up it is his fault. But the main point of him wanting to resign is that the school will not give him the full bonus at the end of the year. He is not getting the flight allowance bonus and is being pro-rated on the “normal” bonus. He seems to think he deserves the full bonus.

Now, no school I know of will ordinarily give anyone joining 4 months into the school year the full bonus – unless you were a really good negotiator and or the school were desperate to get bodies in.

A few days later he decides that well, I am not going to get another job until October and then it will be the schools holidays so I wont be paid for the holidays and well if I stay until then I might as well stay until December and if I stay until then I might as well stay for the full year.

To my mind he was being a bit silly in wanting to resign as he seems to overall have a very sweet deal. Kids not turning up? Great Stuff. Half days? Wonderful. I wouldn’t mind that.

TOEICs and Deadlines

2005-08-13T12:21:00.000+07:00

Tales from the other programs continue to show what a laughable situation the education system in Thailand is.

It seems that the school is now being very careful now when they are hiring staff. One guy who got interviewed last week got the 5th degree. During the interview he was asked about the previous schools he had listed on his CV. They then got a phone and phoned the school there and then to check! He was also asked for the phone number of his university and the lecturers he had at university. Wow! In one way I suppose its quite good that they are doing this in that it should weed out all the fakie guys but then if they are that serious during the interview, they should also be serious about their program.

One teacher in Mathayom has been told that of his classes at least 75% must get an A. The reason? They all play football for the school so the school can no doubt boast that its students can excel at both academic and sporting activities. If it wasn’t so serious then it would be laughable.

No wonder Thailand scored so lowly in that international TOIEC test.

From the Bangkok Post 10th August 2005

“
Tests put Thais near bottom in S.E Asia

SIRIKUL BUNNAG

Special English-language curriculums are being drafted for staff in six major industries after tests revealed Thais have the second-worst English language skills in Southeast Asia.

The finding, compiled by educational testing services, is worrying those wanting Thailand to become a regional hub of car manufacturing, medical care, spas, cuisine and fashion.

The director of the Higher Education Commission's English proficiency development centre, Achara Wongsothorn, said in the 12 months to June, Thai students came eighth in the nine Southeast Asian countries rated by TOEFL (Test of English as Foreign Language), scoring on average only 201 on the cumulative 300 scale.

Of the six countries in the region rated by the multiple-choice TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication), Thai students ranked fourth overall with an average 524 of the full 990 score.

In TOEFL tests, Thais averaged one higher than Cambodians (200) and two lower than Lao students (203). Singapore topped the region (252), followed by the Philippines (234), Malaysia (224), Burma and Indonesia (214) and Vietnam (205).

In TOEIC tests, Thais averaged 524, compared with the Philippines (751), Singapore (628), Cambodia (606), Indonesia (471) and Vietnam (446).

Ms Achara said the number of participants from each country varied greatly and this could affect the overall comparison of results. For example, about 9,000 Thais took the TOEFL test but only 33 Lao. Even so, the Philippines managed to come second with about 10,000 test participants.

She said results of English tests in 2002-2005 university entrance exams also reflected Thais' poor English skills, with scores as low as 30-40 out of 100.

The poor results would seriously affect the country's competitiveness in the global market.

Deputy director Siriporn Pornsurapipat said the Thais' poor English proficiency was likely to be a barrier to the government's plan to turn Thailand into the centre of businesses under the Detroit of Asia, Medical Hub, Capital of Spa, Thai Kitchen World Cuisine and Bangkok Fashion City projects.

The centre was trying to solve the problem by drafting English proficiency improvement curriculums for personnel in six important industries _ tourism, fashion, health science, food, automobile and information technology, she said.

The centre already had similar curriculums for staff in 23 professions, including physicians, dentists and nurses, bus drivers, maids and hotel security guards.

These curriculums were free of charge to workplaces, including handbooks and other education material, but the employers must find instructors and run the courses themselves.”

And the official response to this from the government? They have set up a months deadline to come up with a plan to improve the score. Goddam. What is it with this country and deadlines. The Pm is all for doing this. This country will be drug free within 6 months. There will be no traffic problems in Bangkok within 3 months, the airport will be open in 1 year…….. Bwaa haa haa haa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maybe if they got off their arses and did something instead of setting up stupid deadlines something would be done. Maybe if they allowed people to fail it would improve things. Maybe if they stopped corruption in schools it would change. Maybe if they stopped the culture of cheating it would change. Maybe I should just stop dreaming. Those things will never happen. There are too many people who like the system as it is. Keep the common people stupid, feed them some leftovers at election time and then just carry on as before.

Back to my backyard. Unlike American schools where they talk about The Class of 94 or 05 or whatever the graduating year is. At this school it’s the number of years since the school started. So the class who will finish this year are Class 154. I think that kind of nice. But when it gets to class 1840 it will be a bit of a mouthful. Assuming of course the school survives that long.

An interesting story came across my ears about all the downloading that had been going on and the “slowing down the connection” in the school. Seems that somebody who has a bit more IT knowledge than me ( not too difficult I know ) had done a little research and a trace. The result was a little surprising. Yes, some teachers had downloaded music, but then so had virtually all thai staff. It turns out that one big culprit was a thai male member of staff who had been downloading gay porn movies – hundreds and hundreds of Megabites worth. Hmm. A male at an all boys Christian school downloading gay porn. Back home of course there would be outcries galore with parents demanding the teacher be fired, police investigations etc etc here, the thing will all depend how much clout he has. Some new guy? Might be asked to leave ( doubt it would even be that much ). Some high up? Probably wont even be mentioned to him. Of course if it had been found out that farang staff had downloaded porn – of any sort – it would be immediate dismissal.

Its a Job Jim But Not As We Know It!

2005-08-08T19:12:00.000+07:00

Hey ho. Another collection of snap shots from "It’s a job Jim, but not as we know it."

Last week we had virtually a free day as it was sports day at the school. Various rehearsals had been going on for a few weeks so they could get it all sorted out on the day. Yeh right. It was the usual Thai level of organization. Lots of speeches from the high pooyings who then sat on big fat comfy chairs while their underlings brought them assorted snacks and coffees through the morning and adjusted the fans to keep them cool.

Out on the field they had cheerleaders to rouse the crowds onto higher efforts to support their team. The school is separated into different teams or houses – quite how I am not too sure. As teachers we also got allocated teams and got given t-shirts to show our loyalty to the cause of Green, Orange, Red or Blue. Of course, the cheerleaders were the gayest guys they could find in the entire school. We are talking about so gay that Julian Clary seems like Sylvester Stallone.

It seemed to be that the theme for the team banners was some sort of environmental cause. I say seems, as despite having maybe 60 odd native speakers at the school, a couple of teams had not bothered to ask any of us whether the banners make sense. Therefore we had “For the World, For the People, For the Blue” and “Save the Blue”. Quite why Blue needs to be saved I am not sure but there we go. Maybe there is not enough Blue in the world. They might have been talking about water, who knows. One of the efforts from the Greens had “Please, take care them” It was something to do with the previous banner that said “Plants are nice” or some such. Red and Orange could be bothered writing anything in English, well, if they did I didn’t notice it.

Fortunately the weather was not too hot and dry so I watched a few of the games and sports. On the actual day it was mostly athletics of various sorts on the main field and the swimming pool. It was quite funny watching the little P1 and P2s and their total lack of coordination trying to run the 50m sprint. It was like watching a race between octopuses – or is that octopi? – there seemed to be more arms and legs than there should be. Mind you it was quite difficult to count with the various limbs flailing around so quickly.

As well as that you had the Thai teachers giving them quick last minute lessons on how to start from a proper sprint position. One kid just gave up. As the others crouched down, he basically gave a sort of standing Superman pose. Hilarious!

Over at the Prathom section, there seemed to be a alternative sports day with Musical Chairs and other races like running between chairs, eating a banana as fast as possible then running to another chair and drink a glass of water as fast as possible….. Funny.

There was a report in the Bangkok post a few days ago about how Thais are getting fatter. Bloody Hell!! Surely Not!!! I just wish they had given me the research funds and it would have taken me about 5 minutes to confirm that and the reasons for it. You only need to look at the kids and their parents to see the height differences. Then all you need to do is look at what the kids eat every chance they get. Fried food or anything with sugar. As well as that, every afternoon break, the school gives them a little afternoon snack, just to make sure the little darlings aren’t hungry. This can be something semi healthy as a Yakult ( I am not quite sure if those active bacteria/yogurt drinks actually do the things they are supposed to ) to the downright heart attack in a packet specials from Dunkin Donuts. Yup, the little donuts are sometimes given donuts. Mind you I shouldn’t talk, I am not eating as much proper food as I should.

Another week, another holiday. This week it’s for the Queens Birthday on Friday. Also there may be interruptions on Thursday. Yeesh. I am supposed to be giving two tests this week and with interruptions, I might only see some classes two times. Happy Mothers Day Kids!

Rant Mode Engaged

2005-08-03T21:31:00.000+07:00

OK, back onto full rant mode.

I am convinced that the kids in this school are actually an alien species. They are not of this earth and of this solar system. They have been sent down here in some diabolical plan of which only I seem to suspect.

The clues are obvious. The slack mouth, the wide open doe eyes hiding a lack of intelligence, the lack of ability to comprehend anything that doesn’t refer to food, the constant intake of food and specifically sugar, the inability to pay attention, the lack of physical coordination and of course the ultimate proof, their unique ability not to pick up any useful words of English despite being “passed” through each year, the private lessons, the extra lessons after school, the language school lessons at the weekend and so on. In fact by the time they graduate from some universities as an English major they might not have progressed from being able to say those ever so useful phrases like “Teacher toilet” or “Teacher videeo” and hey who knows? They might have picked up new phrases that they can use in the future like “Sexy DVD!” or “Hello hansum man!”

My theory is that they are in fact Aliens from another planet sent here to suck the life force from teachers. They then transmit it back to their home planet which is dying and cannot produce the energy it needs for lighting, heating and so on. How else do you explain the mentally drained feeling we all get after a days teaching?

I don’t know if it is my continuing depressive mood or the experience of seeing more and more backpackers or young “enthusiastic” undegreed” coming over here and working but my attitude to other teachers has hardened and got more critical. Maybe it has been the consistent griping from other expats and the international school mob here who look down on us mere English teachers.

There have been a few ( fortunately only a few ) who when they found out what I was doing decided to reply with “oh, you’re an English teacher” with the sort of tone that they had discovered something nasty on the sole of their shoe and dragged it about the house for 15 minutes. Needless to say they were put right very quickly about my so called failure and my qualifications and the blue chip companies I worked for. I wish that in one particular case that I had just twatted the guy. To say he was obnoxious is to call Tony Blair slightly greasy. He just kept on and on about English teachers being total low lifes. Of course all expats were good guys who were only here for the good of the company and their career etc and how he would never go to beer bars or Patpong like a sexpat or lowlife. The irony of his next statement obviously was too complex. He only went to the hi-so massage parlours like Poseidon to entertain clients and relax.

In all the forums I have been getting harder and harder on folks asking about whether they could just come without any experience or degree and telling them to stay home. Those who boast about either having fake degrees or asking about how to get them are also getting a terser response than a few months ago. I used to be quite open to the old life experience and enthusiasm overcoming the laws and regulations here but now I am more and more on the side of righteousness. Whether my view will change when finally I have got back my TL & WP again I don’t know, maybe not.

Just to add to the mix, we had a big meeting last week and various things came out. Some run of the mill, some dull, some ah gawd, here we go again. The 30 odd staff have been told that the 6 pcs in the staffrooms should never be used to personal use like reading emails and so on. We now have to use the 2 pcs in the small lounge.

So for all the personal and private stuff we now have to use very public ones, now I know that in some ways I am better off than in some places where they don’t even have pcs but for a school with this so called “better” reputation 2 pcs between 30 is really bad. They gave a few reasons for this – people downloading music files, visiting meeting point sites, going to chat rooms and so on. In other words some people were downloading mp3s, using msn messenger and err dating sites.

Anyway, the basic result is that people instead of being up front about personal usage, they are now being sneaky and using the pcs but hiding it by doing other things at the same time. The net result is that the staffroom pcs are now being used for a longer period of time than just the simple log in log out of email with the hide and seek with the bosses.

The other thing is that if we have to download anything we should do it during lunchtimes!! I have no idea what the bandwidth is for the school but bearing in mind it has about 6000 plus students and hundreds of pcs across students, staff, admin and so on. I cannot see how we could possibly be affecting the student computer labs connection speed. I am quite sure that we take up a miniscule amount of the total bandwidth.

Ah fuck it. In a few weeks everyone will be back to doing what they want anyway. Or at least until the next staff meeting.

Resource Links

2005-07-28T12:13:00.000+07:00

Well, the same old same old has been going on, so in the light of no new grumbles, I thought something useful to fellow teachers might be in order.

I think thats a first ! :)

So here are a list of links for various resources and web sites of organisations etc that you might find useful.

Organizations
AAIEP www.outfitters.com/com/aaiep/ The American Association of Intensive English Programs
ARELS www.edunet.com/arels/ Association of Recognized English Language Schools
BAAL www.swan.ac.uk/cals/baal.htm British Association of Applied Linguistics
BASELT www.wwt.co.uk/baselt/listbs.html The British Association of State English Language Teaching
BATQI www.u-net.com/eflweb/batqi.html British Association of Teacher Qualifying Institutions
British Council www.britcoun.org
CALICO www.calico.org/ US Consortium for CALL
CILT www.campus.bt.com/CampusWorld/pub/CILT/
Centre for Information on Language Teaching (UK)
ELICOS www.elicos.qut.edu.au/association Australia
IALL www.eleazar.dartmouth.edu/IALL/ International Association for Language Learning Technology
(US)
IATEFL www.man.ac.uk/IATEFL/ International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign
Language
JALT langue.hyper.chubu.ac.jp/jalt Japan Association of Language Teachers
MATSDA cis.nmclites.edu/~banfi/MATSDA.Html
Materials Developers Association NATE www.campus.bt.com/CampusWorld/pub/Nate/index.html
National Association of Language Teachers (UK)
NCELTR www.nceltr.mq.edu.au/home.html National Council for English Language Teaching (Australia)
NCTE www.ncte.org/ National Council of Teachers of English (US)
TESOL www.tesol.com/ Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
TOEFL web.toefl.org/ Test of English as a Foreign Language
TOEIC www.toeic-usa.com/ Test of English for International Communication
UCLES www.edunet.com//ucles/index.html University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate
USIA www.usia.gov/ US Information Agency
World of Language www.worldoflanguage.com/

General
Aardvark's EFL Resources www.ilcgroup.com/aardvark/
Commercially available TESL material www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Links/Commercial.html
Dave's ESL Cafe on the Web www.eslcafe.com
Digital Education Network Home Page www.go-ed.com/
EFL: An Independent Site www.globalnet.co.uk/~efl/
ERIC Clearinghouse on Teaching & Education www.ericsp.org/index.html
ESL Home Page: University of Illionois UC www.lang.uiuc.edu/r-li/esl/
ESL Loop www.webring.org/cgibin/webring?index&ring=esloop
ESL Virtual Catalog www.pvp.com/esl.htm
Pilgrims Online www.pilgrims.co.uk/
Resources for teachers of EST www.cibnor.conacyt.mx/est/est.html
TEFL Links www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/ESL.html
The Training Resources Store [link deleted--possibly hijacked -Reg]
Volterre- Fr www.wfi.fr/volterre/
Yahoo! - Education:Languages:ESL www.yahoo.com/Education/Languages/
Work Abroad ESL http://www.workabroadesl.com/site/default.asp
EducationGuardian.co.uk TEFL http://education.guardian.co.uk/tefl/0,5477,480994,00.html
PowerPoint Resources: http://classroom.jc-schools.net/la/activities/pptresources.html
More PowerPoint Resources: http://jc-schools.net/write/ppt.html

Flashcards

http://bogglesworld.com/cards.htm
http://www.1-language.com/eslflashcards/
http://www.thefrankes.com/esl/eslflashcards.htm
Clothing: http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/articles/clothing?cc=th
Food: http://www.oup.com/elt/teachersclub/articles/food?cc=th
http://www.moec.gov.jm/resources/earlychildhood/

Lesson Plans and other Teacher Resources
CD-ROM Lesson Plans www.mls.co.jp
Clip Art Collection for FL instruction www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/JapanProj/FLClipart/default.html
ESL Plans www.csun.edu/~hcedu/eslplans.html#LessonPlans
ESL Plans from California www.csun.edu/%Ehcedu/eslplans.html
ESL Teacher Connection, Michigan www.sils.umich.edu/~jarmour/etc/etchome.html
Gessler Teacher Tips www.gessler.com/gessler/teach.html
Lesson Plans from a New York teacher members.aol.com/Jakajk/ESLLessons.html
Links to ESL/EFL Lessons on the Net (ITESLJ) www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/Links/LessonLinks.html
OTAN Forum www.otan.dni.us/cgibin/webdir.pl?dir=%FLesson%Plans%FESL
Searching the Web: Handout www.otan.dni.us/webfarm/emailproject/search.htm
TESL/TEFL Game: Wham! www.rede.com/eslgames/wham.htm
Word Search Maker! http://teachers.teach-nology.com/web_tools/word_search/
Linguarama Index of other exercises in Postscript http://www.linguarama.com/ps/other.htm
Worksheets, Teaching Tips, and Rubrics from Teach-nology.com www.teach-nology.com
Children Only ESL-EFL games, clip art flash cards, stories, songs for download http://www.childrenonlyesl-efl.com/
Merriam-Webster OnLine Dictionary http://www.m-w.com/home.htm
Games for learning and teaching English. ELT, ESLTeaching writing in English for ELT-ESL http://www.onestopenglish.com/Games/Index.htm
Free Coloring Pages http://www.coloring.ws/coloring.html
ESL go link to sites for English as a Second Language + EFL teachers http://www.eslgo.com/tlinks.html
englishbanana.com - 400+ Free Printable Worksheets - www.englishbanana.com
Resources http://perso.wanadoo.es/tobyrob/
www.englishteacherx.com
www.efl4u.com - EFL _ ESL FUN English Teaching Lesson Worksheets
Handouts Online_ Supplementary English Resources and Materials for EFL _ ESL _ TEFL Teachers http://www.handoutsonline.com/
Kid Crosswords and Other Puzzles--November - December 2004 http://www.kidcrosswords.com/
http://www.theschoolbell.com/Links/Dolch/Contents.html
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/
http://www.britishcouncil.org/learning-elt-resources.htm
www.eslgold.com
http://www.talesetc.com/shortstoryindex01.htm
http://www.gutenberg.net/

Geography
http://geography.about.com/cs/blankoutlinemaps/

for adults
http://www.voanews.com/specialenglish/

Report Card Writing
www.rayslearning.com/report.htm free
www.gradekeeper.com Not free but click 'pay later' each time and it is

Wordsearch Generators
http://www.schoolhousetech.com

Testing and Examinations
Bibliography for Language Testing (Kitao) ilc.doshisha.ac.jp/users/kkitao/library/biblio/testbib.html
CILTS www.edunet.com/ciltsrsa/
College of Preceptors www.preceptors.ac.uk/preceptors
Analytical Writing (high level) http://www.ucop.edu/sas/awpe/sample.html
ESL Placement Test http://www.testingoffice.uci.edu/AE.html
Language Testing Articles Database www.surrey.ac.uk/ELI/langtest/ltfind.html
Language Testing Research Group (Lancaster) www.ling.lancs.ac.uk/groups/ltrg/index.htm
Resources in Language Testing Page www.surrey.ac.uk/ELI/ltr.html
Test Suites for Natural Language Processing (Essex) www.essex.ac.uk/group/projects/tsnlp/
The British Council: English Language Tests www.britcoun.org/english/insengte.htm
TOEFL OnLine www.toefl.org
Cambridge FCE Practice Tests http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/fce/students/tests/tsindex.htm
Cambridge CAE Practice Tests
http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cae/students/tests/pt1index.htm
Cambridge CPE Practice Tests
http://www.flo-joe.co.uk/cpe/students/tests/index.htm

Grammar & Quizzes
Elementary Grammar www.hiway.co.uk/~ei/intro.html
ESL Quiz Center (ESLCafe) www.pacificnet.net/~sperling/quiz/#grammar
Grammar and Style Notes www.english.upenn.edu/~jlynch/grammar.html
Grammar Help www.hut.fi/~rvilmi/LangHelp/Grammar/
Grammar Links www.gl.umbc.edu/~kpokoy/grammar.htm
INTALL (Internet Aided Language Learning) www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum//test.html
Language Net www.point.co.uk/lnet/
On-Line English Grammar (Edunet) www.edunet.com/english/grammar/toc.html
Self-Study Quizzes www.aitech.ac.jp/~iteslj/quizzes/
(common errors in English) http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/
(idioms) http://home.t-online.de/home/toni.goeller/idiom_wm/
(more idioms) http://www.eslcafe.com/idioms/id-mngs.html
(anagrams) http://www.wordsmith.org/anagram/
(conversation questions, PDF format) http://iteslj.org/questions/
(language puzzle generators) http://www.puzzlemaker.com/
(complete guide to the phonetic alphabet for English) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_English
ntroduction to Composition: http://bol1800-01.k12.fsu.edu/compositionpage.html
Guide to English Grammar: http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/index2.htm
Guide to Grammar and Writing http://webster.commnet.edu/grammar/index.htm
Concise guide to English grammar http://englishplus.com/grammar/contents.htm

Forums
English Language Teaching Web Discussion Forums www.eltweb.com/laison/discussion_forums
ESL Cafe Job Discussion Forums http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/job/
ESL Cafe - Forums http://www.eslcafe.com/forums/teacher/
ESLEFLjobs.com Forum http://eslefljobs.com/forum/index.php
Thai School Watch http://www.thaischoolwatch.com/

Hope some of these are what you need. Enjoy.

The ranting will return, dont worry.

Have You Been Saved Yet?

2005-07-14T22:14:00.000+07:00

This week has been a bit of a funny one as the timetable has been messed around because of various activities at the school.

Every day this week one period is completely wiped out and another is curtailed. Because we are catching up with the weekly exams it’s causing a little bit of friction in some teaching groups.

The cause? It’s a Spiritual Revival Week. For the kids it’s a case of going to a show with a few hallelujahs thrown in, singing a few simple songs with actions the kids love like putting one hand in the air, two hands, turn around and so on and so on, then getting a moral story at the end. It’s all fairly inoffensive I suppose.

For the teachers we unfortunately have to attend a lunchtime meeting just for us. When I say just for us, I mean just for us foreign teachers. Yup, we have been separated from the rest of the herd. Quite why I am not sure, might be to do with the approach used. For the Thais, it seems like a quite couple of hymns being sung, a little sermon and a couple of prayers. For us, at least today we had a good old fashioned fire and brimstone born again evangelist preacher. I will give you 3 guesses where he is from, yup got it in one. He is a good ole boy from Tennessee! I don’t think he lowered his voice to less than a fervent roar.

I am not quite sure what exact sect he represents but he came out with some very strange ideas and concepts. Apparently GOD knows everything. Well DUH! But seriously, he said that we are born innocent until we know sin. That point is different for everyone. Once we know sin we are condemned to hell unless we accept GOD into our hearts and put our trust in him. If we die before knowing what sin is, we are allowed to go to heaven. Which as far as I am aware goes against the concept of original sin that the Catholics hold dear. Anything and everything we do in life doesn’t matter, good or bad, baptism doesn’t matter, christening doesn’t matter just as long as we accept GOD before we die. Again that sort of goes against, well just about all Christian teachings I know about because they all basically go the same way, follow the 10 commandments and be a nice person.

One of the worst things that we can apparently do when judgement comes is to have what he describes as idle talk. This is quite a bad sin as sins go. He kept on going on about how when Jesus is talking to him when he dies Jesus is saying, Ii told you to spread the word of God but instead you talked to that woman in the supermarket about a movie you saw, why did you do that? So, now you know. If someone suddenly comes up to you in a supermarket and starts to ask you have you found your saviour yet that’s the reason. They don’t want to sin and not spread the word.

This guy also said he had a “normal” job before but was empty and had tried a whole load of other things but there was still a hole inside him, he had tried all sorts of things including the occult - he probably read Harry Potter – before he was saved and heard Jesus calling him to be a missionary in Thailand.

He also gave out a little gem of personal information that he has 8 kids. Bloody hell, that’s all we need. More born again Christian fundamentalists. He said that at the age of 6 his oldest son had made – I can’t remember the exact word but it was something like an acceptance of GOD. But at the age of 16 he realised that he knew sin and that the previous acceptance was an empty and worthless one. Sorry, but what sort of household is it that has kids at age 6 making acceptances of GOD and puts the fear of GOD into them? He was also prattling on about how he punishes his children by spanking them and how he felt sorry about judging them and so on.

It was originally scheduled that we would have to go four times in the week but it has been cut to twice. Just to make sure we go, we have to sign an attendance sheet to prove we were there.

All I can say is thank god. Oooooops J I have to say that sometimes I have gone to church or other religious meetings because I have been with family or friends who do believe. As you can tell, I don’t. I suppose the best way of describing my view is Agnostic - from Greek agnōstos, (“unknowable”), strictly speaking, the doctrine that humans cannot know of the existence of anything beyond the phenomena of their experience. The term has come to be equated in popular parlance with scepticism about religious questions in general and in particular with the rejection of traditional Christian beliefs under the impact of modern scientific thought. There you go!

This guy, whoever he is, is the sort of evangelist that would never make me more interested in wanting to know more about Christianity. He turns me off it. Sometimes, when I have gone to the religious meetings, some of the speakers have got me wondering hmm, I wonder. Not because they were any less enthusiastic or fervent but they channelled that into – at least for me – a more productive message and more realistic one that says yes there are questions, yes it can be difficult but….. This guy today was be saved or go to hell – literally. Nah, not for me. Or for others. There were maybe about 25 teachers there and 5 people walked out after having had enough. I don’t blame them. It was, I suppose, morbid curiosity that I stayed, like watching a fire, a car crash or laughing at a sick joke. You know you shouldn’t but you do anyway.

I have been told that it’s a different person each day. In one way I hope it’s a new guy and in another masochistic way I hope it’s the same guy.

Another Brick In The Wall

2005-07-12T16:45:00.000+07:00

This is another test to see if the old picture upload will work yet. It has nothing to do with my old school at all, ever, honestly.

This week and next are heavily disrupted with holidays for Kao Pansa ( spelling ?) - basically the retreat of the monks - and a Spiritual Revival Week for the kids. Basically more christian brainwashing for the kids to screw them up even more. Unfortunately, this combined with a shortening of our exam timetable means that our weekly exam load has increased and we need to do a couple this week before the end of the 1 st part of term. Its not that bad at the end of the day as we are up to date and we are only scheduled to do 1 a week anyway. Others were supposed to do 2 a week and are having trouble trying to fit them in in time.

Mind you, its the same old joke, we are going through all this trouble to create, give out, mark and record papers and then we will pass them all anyway.

I tried a reading exercise with the kids today. Absolute bloody shambles, they needed their hands held all the way through. I can see an average score of about 1.3 out of 5 appearing. Its not that difficult. Its the level of

"My name is David and I am six years old."

How old is David?

The total "story" is 5 sentences long and they are not long sentences either. Its going to be so frustrating trying to get them to improve. One class just literally sat there and Mai Kow Jaied the whoel lesson. Well, not true. One went Mai Penn (Spelling?) - cannot do. Yet other classes took 5 minutes.

If I Ruled The World

2005-07-06T13:45:00.000+07:00

I suppose I shouldn’t have asked the question.

What have we done to deserve this – for lack of a better word – system? What could we do, what should we do?

In practical terms we as teachers have very little input. In some schools we come in, get told what to teach, what book – if we are lucky and there is your pay, now get out. In others it’s a bit better, they ask questions and listen and then do it the same old way of not failing students etc etc. It is exceptionally rare for a normal school to actually think properly and logically about what needs to be done - from the schools perspective, from the parents and from the pupils. Even the big “International Schools” can be fucked up when the franchise owners decide to maximise profits and forget about education. Look at Dulwich in Phuket. It is now the International British Curriculum School. Hmmm.

So enough of the moaning, if I ruled the world what would I do?

An unlimited supply of Cider and Viagra / Alka Seltzers depending on the circumstances! Peer to peer programs to be made legal……

But seriously, in no particular order here are some random thoughts

Visa / Work Permit / Teachers Licence

Make the Teachers Licence transferable. I mean EASILY transferable. Make the form a little book like the work permit where all you need to do is take it to your school. Get them to go with you to the Ministry of Education and the Ministry stamp it after recording the change of school.

Make the Work Permit EASILY transferable and make the visa for teachers last 13 months, not just to the end of the contract. Why that extra time? Well because a lot of schools give 11 month contracts so that the holidays in April are unpaid. This means teachers have to go out of Thailand to get new visas. Even if the contract is 12 months, a lot of teachers start new schools just after the 12 month period. That means again a lot of unnecessary travel and expense.

Can anyone tell me the sense in the huge rush all the various agencies and schools have to go through in may / Jun because so many have to reapply for documents and permits they had the previous year. It’s all work for works sake.

If anyone is suspected of producing duff documents, the Ministry and or the school should contact the University to check the authenticity. If the degree is proved to be duff i.e. a Khao San copy, the degree should be seized and used for comparison on other suspects. The teacher should not be forced to pay for letters from the embassy or extra letters from the university or whoever.

If the Ministry says it will accept documents one year for a Licence it should have a damm good reason for turning round the next year and declining one.

Even these small changes would make a great impact I suspect on reducing the fear factor for schools, the stress level for teachers and would help to make a lot more teachers legal.

The school should give a clear list of documents that are needed at the contract signing stage to give the teacher enough time to get it ready to be processed.

The teacher should have original documents! It’s a bit of a no brainer but its strange the number who arrive without their original certificates and have to wait for them to be sent over here.

If the school think they have a got a bit of an anally retentive twat who insists that John Robert William Lewis is not the same person John R W Lewis then they should tell the person to fuck off and process the damm thing or go to someone else for a second opinion without fear of it being rejected just because the first anal twat did.

Schools.

Listen to the teachers. Have a discussion, listen. Some of the ideas may be good, some may be bad but actually listen. Then take the good ones on board and actually do something.

Give the teachers’ real worthwhile training. Help them to improve.

Tell the parents NO! Revolutionary this but what the hell. Tell the parents some kids are not going to cope in the particular English program and bump them down to the next level. Tell the parents kids will fail. Don’t allow cheating. Tell the Thai teachers to ditch the microphones and get out from behind their desk.

Try and start making the kids think for themselves instead of the ritual of copying from the board and from each other in exams.

Back up the teachers ( where appropriate ) on parent v teacher arguments.

Make schools places of learning not just where you meet future business partners of the future and network.

Teachers

It’s a job so treat like one. Its not a holiday, you didn’t go out on the piss every night back home and came in stinking of booze, did you? ( If you did then you really should look at yourself ) Don’t do it here. Chuck the 3 month holiday / working for beer money folks back out onto the street or into organised low salary / volunteer programs. This would help attract more teachers, who quite frankly would never consider working here because of the joke image it has.

When I went back home and told people what I was doing they thought I was wasting my time and basically my time here was just one long holiday. It’s that sort of perception that has to be changed and the only way it will is if the bigwigs here get the heads out there arses and look ahead, not 6 months, not 1 year but 5 years, 10 years ahead.

The fearless leader is all for making this place a regional hub of this that and that other. I tell you. If Cambodia, Laos or Burma ever decide ( or get enough help ) to overcome their past and get seriously developed, Thailand will be a dot in the rear view mirror. And that’s not forgetting about Singapore, Malaysia and of course the big giant in the north who could swallow all of Asia if things go their way.

Oh yes, I heard that another person resigned today. Another one bits the dust and another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust!

More Paperwork Groans

2005-07-05T21:55:00.000+07:00

Another week another batch of moans and groans in the office. Much of it is the usual stuff with paperwork for licences and permits and the lack of transparency in the processes.

As well as the usual rubbish that we have to put up with from the actual officials, there does seem to be extra nonsense going on in the school office, which in theory is on our side. Getting any sort of information is difficult, we aren’t being kept informed of any sort of progress. Where is my application? Er, not absolutely sure. I think I have the Teachers Licence but I haven’t seen any confirmation of that yet. Where is the Work Permit? Haven’t a clue. Every time I ask its “its being processed” Others are having even more of a problem with the old middle name problem with the old this is ok, no this is not ok two step. There are a few folk that are starting to wonder if this place is worth all the agro and by that I mean both the country and the school.

I haven’t really moaned about the kids in a while so here we go, part of the problem is that we have basically rich or semi rich parents who pay a bag of money to the school and therefore expect their kid to be fluent in English after the first week. In one of my classes I have a kid that is trouble with a T. At the start of the term he sat with the others, did nothing and fought and had to be sat on his own, then he has repeatedly then refused to sit with the others again, choosing to sit on his own. Since then he has done about 2% of the work of everyone else. He invents new ways of sitting or using the combination of desk and chair. One leg on the chair, one through the chair, one arm through the chair, banging the desk against the wall etc etc. As well as that he talks to the rest of the class, gets up and walks around, makes various noises, shouts random words and generally makes a nuisance of himself. Even the other kids in the class are aware of his problems and think he is crazy. Apparently he also has an older brother who has just as many behavioural problems. What happens? Nothing. The school continues to ignore the problem, continues to accept the parents money, the parent continues to waste money thinking he is learning English and the poor teachers get left with the mess to clear up.

In another class that is comparatively small, I have them split up so that there is no one sitting next to each other. Of course the obvious then happens, they talk to each other across the room almost completely oblivious of me trying to teach them. Today I was trying to teach them weather. I ask what’s this and amongst the answers I get back are pizza, woman and 7-11. Its not just the case that they don’t know, its that they are willfully being little shits. The really really annoying thing is that when they want to work – which isn’t that often - they can do the stuff, they can speaka da engleesh. The only time when they are semi quiet is when they are copying stuff down from the whiteboard or doing worksheets. But that isn’t why I am supposed to be here, why any of us are supposed to be here. Christ, if all the school wanted was people to teach them writing or worksheets they would just hire Fillipinas or following Fearless Leaders’ idea, getting them from India at quarter of the cost. And yet, they still want us. They want us and don’t want us.

You can see the same sort of attitude from Prathom right up to the highest levels. The refusal to listen, to think logically, think or act independently. That’s why so many people have problems getting work permits if the slightest thing is wrong. The folk in the Ministry are shit scared of actually making a decision that possibly James Robert William Smith that’s shown on the passport is the same person who is on the degree certificate as James R W Smith. As it is, the various embassies are making a lot of money from people who have to turn up to get a letter confirming that they are the same person.

How will this change? I don’t know, there are too many important people who would lose money and too many who would lose face and a few that would lose both. There are too many attitudes entrenched and heads in the sand. I suspect very few people do and none of them are in a position to change anything.

Exits, Banks and Problem Kids

2005-06-28T18:01:00.000+07:00

I seem to have got the commentators curse. As soon as I said no one had been screwed than somebody left the next day. I am still not sure exactly why but it does seem that things were promised and not delivered. Seems to be quite common here.

One of the other things that have not been delivered to anyone is a copy of the contracts. It’s a bit worrying that we still don’t have them. They keep on saying that we have extracts and that will do. Err yes, the extracts are going over the main details but they also leave out important stuff that could be relied on if the shit hits the fan. Like stating exactly why we can be fired, what constitutes grievance procedures ( if I remember right ) etc etc.

One reason for wanting the contract is to double check what it says about out of school hours activities. This was something that was glossed over – as well as the having to work the first two cover lessons free each week. Looking at the school calendar today, it maybe that we have a weekend coming up of school activities. It will be interesting to see what is expected. Already a couple of people are starting to grumble and make noises about “I’m bloody well not coming in two days and giving up my weekend”. We found this out because we got measured for our official school t-shirts that we will have to wear. Lovely white things with trimmings of green, blue, red, orange and purple I think. No idea how we got allocated our colours or anything, there will be a meeting soon we were told that will tell all. Uh huh. I won’t hold my breath.

Another task we might get is attending the chapel for a spiritual awakening week. It won't be so bad during the lessons we are supposed to be teaching the kids, as all we need to do is turn up with them and stay awake and make sure they don’t run around. But they were also talking about doing it for the teachers during our lunch hour. Stuff that. My lunch hour is the only time I get on a couple of days to chill, no way am I going to sit in a chapel and listen to somebody rattle on about Gods love. If god loves me I am sure he will forgive me and at least I am honest towards him unlike some Christians who preach about love and forgiving but will then stab anyone in the back who gets in their way. They are they few people who can look you in the eye as they stab you in the back. I seem to saying this word a lot today but another wait and see event and see what will actually happened compared to rumour control.

Ah well. No news today – as you can probably tell, the bit above was written yesterday but because of problems connecting it didn’t get uploaded.

No more news today officially about the contracts but unofficially we should get them this week. Apparently they are with the program director for her to read – exactly why I don’t know, as far as I am aware they are all the same. Maybe she is inserting the clauses that say we if we get a government holiday that we have to make the time up. That is a story that appeared on www.thaischoolwatch.com I think that the person is from the other program that the school has, the facts just fit better on their side. There are a few bad tales coming out on that and some of them are true.

Pay day is tomorrow whoop de whoop and we got out bank accounts today and we are promised that the money will be in there tomorrow. At the start of the year we were told that we had to have an account with the bank that is purple. All other banks were no good. Hmm, school colours purple and the bank is purple. Connection or paranoia? After a couple of weeks some people had got their new accounts and some hadn’t – like me. Then we got told that the school would organise it and we shouldn’t go the bank ourselves. Alright, something less for us to do, good. Fill in the form and wait. Err, what account are we getting? The normal one. Yesssss, but what is the normal one? Is it a card or a book? It’s a book. Oh, no card? No, just the normal one. Can I get a card? Umm, yes but you have to pay. Err, ok, how much? 300B. And it can be used in an ATM and is a debit card? Yes, you can use it at the ATMs.

So we troop along to the office today to pick up the card. Its there, jolly good, sign for it and open it up. Whoo Star Wars limited Edition card, funky! Now, can I use it at the ATM. Yes. Can I use it like the Visa Electron? No. Aw feck. It’s just a normal ATM card. Yet another story that was invented to get out an awkward situation of not knowing? I should have just told them that I had got one myself and that way I would have got the card I wanted rather than the book and basic account they were going to foist onto me. Sorry but what the feck is the point of having a book and no card in this day and age. Carry a book round with me and have to queue up during my lunchtimes or right after school along with the possible wrong queue / translation difficulties? Nah. Make sure I have enough cash on me at all times just in case I see something I like or spend too much? Nah.

Never mind they said, you can always change it at the bank. How about getting it right so I wouldnt have to change it? No doubt there will be another fee that I have to pay.

I have just watched an interesting documentary from the BBC about Autism. It is one of these diseases that do not exist in Thailand. The shame would be too great for the parents and for the school a possible loss of revenue. It seems that more and more discoveries are being made not only in the diagnosis of it but also the causes – even if they are still years away from the definitive reasons. They now no longer think of it as a black and white disease and more like varieties of grey. Some of them can actually seem to be previously described as other psychiatric diseases like obsessive compulsive disorder. What quite makes the difference it wasn’t quite explained. It could be that a lot of “Autism Spectrum” disorders could be currently diagnosed as other things.

It sort of makes me wonder where one disease starts and one finishes when the symptoms are so similar and that it could just be the new medical “in” disease for doctors.

One thing that I realised is that I have seen a lot of the symptoms in my kids, in this and my previous school, that probably some could be suffering from Autism Spectrum disorder of one level or another. How many? Not sure, single figures probably with a few more that have some other psychiatric problem but a lot more than the school or parents would like to admit.

Tests Test and More Tests

2005-06-23T15:24:00.000+07:00

The way this place seems to be driven by tests scores and reports of one sort or another.

Every week we have to do tests of either speaking, reading, listening etc etc as well as that we have to do semester exams. We have to record all these scores into special record sheets to give out overall marks at the end. Unfortunately, like most Thai schools I heard that last year it was a case of everybody passes. I somehow dont think that this will change this year.

You would think that the more money people pay, the more interested they would be in what is actually hapening with the kids but it seems here that it is almost the reverse. Not all the time of course but...... a lot of parents seem to have the attitude of shove money at the problem and no matter what the kid will come out a native speaker. Errrr nope. There is a little thing called atttude. And the one in question is not the teachers. If the kid doesnt want to learn, he wont learn. Full Stop, end of story. No teacher in the world can force a student to learn.

We have a thai guy who is sort of the office manager. Well, thats the title but basically he helps us get stationary, acts as a go between the personell office, thai staff, the photocopier guy etc and us and so on. He is a nice quietly spoken youngish guy maybe mid 20s. But anyway, today he had a message to pass on to one of the guys who joined us this year. He was asking for a copy of the guys old teachers licence. Now it appears that the guy left on less than pleasant terms with his old employer and didnt want to contact them again which is fair enough. But what annoyed me was the way he was speaking to the office manager. He really was quite unecessarily agressive - I dont know what this form is, this isnt mine, I'm not doing that, why are you asking me for this, no way am I doing this. Just very agressive and dismissive. I really wanted to tell him to just chill and leave the guy alone. I mean it wasnt him that was asking for this, he was just the messenger. What is it with some people?

Rant In Uber Minor

2005-06-22T15:31:00.000+07:00

Another few days have passed and things seem to be settling down into a routine. It was interesting to see that the school got a mention on thaischoolwatch.com It seems that there are a few unhappy people out there who used to work here. I suppose that is only natural given some of the stories I heard before coming here and some of the things that I have seen.

There is certainly a lot of paperwork here compared to my last place. We have to
write weekly lesson plans for each class – 5 classes
write work done sheets
write a letter to parents weekly about what we will do in class next week

as well as that we have to create a hell of a lot of supplementary material because the book is so shit. Add that to the normal weekly meetings and the unannounced meetings and church services and after school meetings it does all mount.

There was a meeting last Friday after school with the high and mighty director who told everyone that she was there and all the school staff were there to help us in any way they could – unless of course you mean helping with paying for unnecessary extra documents the MOE wants or giving us some real discipline options in the staffroom or listening and actually acting to our suggestions and complaints about how to do things better or defending us from weird parents who want us removed because we insist little Somchai should be told not to drop his trousers in class or is constantly talking or running around or……..and deserves to be shouted at.

As far as I am aware we have yet to see someone shafted and fired – although we have had one person leave ( for reasons unknown ) but then it is still early days.

Its becoming a real pain walking to and from class now because our staffroom is in a totally different part of the school from where we teach, we need to actually need to leave the school and re-enter it across a road. If you have forgotten to bring your classroom key its a 5 minute dash across the way, up the lift and back again. And we arent allowed to have copies. Nope, that is against school policy aparently. We might sneek in after dark past the guards and steal a marker pen or something thats in the class. A spare key was actually taken off someone this week and got ranted at for his troubles.

Oh Well.

I have been listening to Bill Hicks this week and compared to his ranting, I am a complete and utter beginner. The man was a comic genius.

Hoops, Jumps & Mood Swings

2005-06-16T22:22:00.000+07:00

Bah humbug, this place is turning out to be just as frustrating as the other one for an entirely set of different reasons.

There are a few people that got caught with the middle initial query – the passport shows the full names but the degree certificate only shows an initial. I might still get caught with that although they haven’t mentioned it yet. It seems to be tht the school office are meekly accepting anything the MOE says instead of kicking up a fuss and saying we have checked these people we don’t employ Khao San tourists, we are the best school in Bangkok with many mighty connections blah blah blah. The school are also making up a few rules of their own, I mean why cant we get the medical certificates at the same time instead of when they tell us, why do we have to use one hospital.

This is making a few of the Thailand newbies unhappy and really moaning and saying that unless the school pay for the various embassy letters or whatever they wont get the additional info. It will be interesting to see who blinks first.

My transfer of teachers licence and work permit is not proving to be smooth and I am also having to go through additional hoops and jumps that I shouldn’t have to. Its actually making me wonder that maybe this year will be my last and I will go home at the end of the year or if my mood doesn’t improve maybe sooner. I am maybe reaching the top end of my bullshit level. Or maybe I am becoming like Raphaela on the ajarn forum who really does have major mood swings - I am going home, no I am not, yes I am, no I am not, yes I am, no.............

Its one of these overall things, the school, the paperwork, life outside, the rip offs, the smells, my family back home, things going wrong with the bank back home and so on. Maybe it is time to go back home. Lets see if I still feel that way in a few weeks.

I had to laugh today, we have two staffrooms, one for Matayom and one for Pratom. In our one we unfortunately have a typical loudmouth yank who drowns out anyone else who happens to be talking in the room. He has been constantly moaning about not being told about this, that and the other. Some of which he has and some of which is just plain common sense.

He is actually one of those complaining about the extra hoops and jumps I mentioned earlier. Anyway. He was moaning away saying how unprofessional this place was and so disorganised (which admittedly it is but its still better than many others ), then a bit of extra material somebody made up caught his eye and asked whose it was and commented how good it was. He then asked when she had time to make it as he never has time. The reply was that she sometimes stays behind or does it in her lunch hour. Godammit, they don’t pay me enough to stay behind was the response.

Hmm. A bit two faced I thought given his comments about the office seconds before. Incidently we actually get amongst the highest salary you can get without being either a “proper” teacher or a subject teacher.

How Do I Still Cope?

2005-06-10T20:02:00.000+07:00

I will answer very quickly someone who commented that if they were me they would kill themselves in my position.

Well, it aint that bad. At the end of the day I walk away from the school. I dont take work hom. I dont think about it once I am out the school gates. It doesnt dominate my life like my last job back home did, although if you listen to me down the pub tonight you might think it does.

You do get pleasant surprises like I did today. One kid in my worst class actually managed to get some individual time with me today and I was very pleasantly surprised in that his English is actually bloody good and he is a very polite little boy. Unfortunately he is submerged most of the time by the other snotty little sods who dominate my time by trying to control them in keping things down to a dull roar.

And lets face it, if you want to kill yourself over a stupid thing like a job then get another job or go top yourself and prove Darwin right.

Uber Rant part 2

2005-06-07T22:38:00.000+07:00

A little late I know but what the hell. I think last year I managed to get into a real rhythm with the scribbling but this year its somewhat disjointed to say the least so if it isn’t updated here for a few days don’t worry be happy, it’s coming soon.

OK, the kids. Its funny but in some ways these kids are better than the ones I taught last year. That is individually. They seem to be better at vocabulary. They know the individual words are but they are worse I think at putting them together. Apparently the teachers they had last year at P1 never lasted that long or didn’t bother their arse so the end result is kids that are collectively not very good. It seems that it is my destiny to always get the tough year kids. Why godammit why?

I do seem to have a few good kids, a majority of easily swayed and a few hard core couldn’t care less troublemakers or downright disturbed kids. You know it’s bad when the head honcho and the teacher from last year come up to speak to when they find out he is in your class and warn you about his violent tendencies and his family background. So far, he hasn’t actually hit anyone yet although he has tried throwing his weight around a bit. The main problem with him so far is his total lack of involvement and interest in the class. He originally started off in the main body of the class but he then misbehaved and I moved him to a seat on his own at the front and he now actually refuses to sit anywhere else. Whether that’s because he knows he is not that well liked by the other kids or that he is now the centre of attention or front stage so to speak, I am not sure. What is sure is that he is becoming more and more of a distraction in the class – moving his chair or table, tilting the table over, dropping his metal pencil case, hiding under the chair, the table, slumping in his chair, crating new ways to position him self in the desk chair combination, singing, making noises and so on. There is no hope of him being moved out of the class or even god forbid out of the school because of one big reason MONEY. His parents pay – apparently they are weird as well. He has an older brother who is also just as many behavioural problems. So we the teachers are stuck with them both.

I have a couple of heavy days as I said earlier so I have decided they will be might light teaching days. I am not going to try anything heavy, serious or difficult. I tested that theory out today. It almost worked. Gave them a couple of worksheets and tested them on the vocab we have been using the last couple of weeks. It was going ok right up to the last two lessons. It was just lets wind up the teacher time by writing on the desk. Only bringing one pencil then deliberately breaking it, lets ignore the worksheet and have a sleep instead or chat to the person beside me, lets see how many ways I can sit in the chair, lets shout out random letters when I ask how do you spell scissors. Did you know there is an a,b,d,g,h,k,l,m,n,q,t,u,v,w,x,y and z in scissors? Well they think they do. I am sure they were just taking the Michael.

Once class was actually due to get a video as a reward for last weeks best score, so I said to them they would get a video if they got a 7/10 for that lesson. Next thing I know, one kid bolts out the door when my back is turned. No word of explanation, no asking for permission, nothing. He comes back in a few minutes later and again without explanation tries to come in and sit down. Where were you? I said “Yes” he said. Huh? Where were you? I said “Yes” he said. Where were you? I said “Yes” he said. Oh lordy. This is not a yes no question. Where were you? The home room? A shake of the head. The toilet? A shake of the head. He vaguely points downstairs which could mean anything as there are a load of offices, the canteen area, school shops, vending machines, water coolers etc etc. None of the other kids have a clue where he went either as he didn’t speak to them when a couple tried to translate the question into Thai for him. Where did he go? No fricking idea. And then the lesson went downhill from there. This and in fact all classes take a perverse delight in doing the opposite of what you want.

Take the desk layout for example. I have moved from 5 or 6 desks together to get group work to 4 desks together to now traditional rows of twos so control them better. This lot seem to be even worse than the old school for wanting to move the desks when they sit down rather than the chairs when they come in and the desk creep during the lesson. But anyway, I now have the “wing” desks angled into the whiteboard so they can see it better. But the number of times they move the desks so they are parallel with the rest of them after a few minutes is unreal. Even after being told again and again and again not to move the desks. And actually that’s just reminded me. Getting them to move the desks is unreal when I do want them moved. Move the desks I say and use my hands to gesture and indicate where they are to go. The expression on their faces is the same as when you show dogs a card trick. There is no comprehension and no connection to what they have just experienced and what is stored in their heads.

I have already created a crack in the plastic board wiper with banging it against a desktop to get their attention. Nothing like as sturdy as the wooden ones.

Uber Rant

2005-05-30T15:38:00.000+07:00

OK, time for an UBER rant I think.

Where do I start? It’s been too long since the last real rant I don’t know where to begin, so lets split it up.

Fellow staff.

We have one teacher that is so fucking annoying to talk to. Why? Basically any time you do, when he has something in his hand he bangs it on the table every few seconds or so. Even in meetings he does it. For me that is so distracting its unreal, I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it to hi or not. I am really tempted to but I know its quite petty so will bite my tongue for the moment until I can stand it no more J

Another teacher in my group is habitually late to collect his class. Like my old school we have been told to collect the kids from their homerooms, take them to our classrooms and return them afterwards. Apparently this is beneath him and he is almost always late coming to pick them up meaning I and the other teachers are delaying our classes to make sure his kids are not left on his own. When he does come, he just ambles up and lets the kids in the classroom run up to him not matter if anyone else if trying to collect their class. Result? Chaos and kids just milling around in one big huddle. Then once outside the class he doesn’t bother keeping his class in order and they run ahead “It doesn’t matter. They know where to go!” Yeh, fine but in the meantime I am trying to control my lot and they are being mixed up with your lot.

I started off having quite a good schedule and for once here having under the normal allotted hours. I was told that I would have to do cover classes to make up the time. Sometimes I would win and not have to do any and sometimes I would. OK, not too bad! But then another teacher finds out he can’t take / handle 14 kids. So what happens? His class gets split and I have to take over 7 kids. Another 4 friggin hours which admittedly brings me up to the requirement but it leaves me working 5 lessons in a row on one day and 4 lessons in a row on 2 others. It also means my “best” day is a Monday with 3 lessons. Unfortunately this means I can and have been lumbered with doing cover lessons on Monday as more people tend to be off on that day than any other day surprise surprise. Compared to others I have a light day and therefore I am more likely to be free. FUCK!!!! In other words I could consistently be working more hours than other teachers.

Cover lessons

This brings up another point. Although every teacher has an allocation of 20 contact hours per week, we have to do 2 cover lessons for free before we get paid for the third one and up. Bastards!!! They didn’t mention this one.

Oh yes, doing a cover isn’t by asking for volunteers, it’s done by the boss who sees who is free and then tells the person they are doing a cover. It doesn’t matter if you had something planned, you are doing it. I got landed with 2 covers when I was sick as a dog and it was tough luck, just do them.

Paperwork, Tax & Withholding

Well, so much for an easy transfer of work permit and teachers licence from one school to another. It’s the same old stupid story. Lets just apply for everything right from the beginning and get everybody to kill 3 trees in the process with all the photocopying that has to be done. Dear lord. It took me about 25 minutes to sign all the photocopies. Yup that’s right, don’t forget you have to sign any photocopy you make to make it an “official” copy. Then we have to get 2 new medical certificates – but not at the same time. We have to wait until we are told to go get one. Then we will be told to go get the other one. And on top of that, we have to use one particular hospital. I was always told that the medical certs were valid for 3 months. Based on what they were saying, all the permits and licences will be issued by then. What’s the problem? It’s not like we are some small fly by night school. We are one of Thailand’s’ best. Copyright all the schools in Thailand who want to charge more for the same thing.

My take on the matter has been (through reading ajarn and thaivisa ) that officially tax is not due to be paid until the work permit is being processed and issued. We have found out today that the school is taking it straight off from the get go. But typically for Thailand, they have been taking different amounts from different people even though we are paid the same. Yeesh.

Also our immediate joy at finding out that they had taken tax instead of the withholding money ( 20,000B over 5 months ) was soon short lived. We found out in the afternoon that it was a “welcome” to the school arrangement and the withholding would start next month. So a double whammy for 5 months - tax and withholding! The best part of 7k a month gone and no money for less than 3 covers a week. Jesus, this pay raise isn’t turning out to be a raise at all.

Misc

We have actually got a reasonable amount of pcs to work with for the amount of teachers and so far it had been going reasonably well with people using them for work and email and moving off when others wanted to work. But now it’s gone up in big bold letters above each pc that they are only to be used to work only and the message was repeated in a meeting today. If we want to look at emails etc we have to use 1 pc between 30 of us. HUH!?! That’s about 2 minutes per day then before we start work, lunch hours and breaks. There goes another perk. It’s not as though anyone was on them all day looking at the news and so on preventing anyone from using them for work. So the result is they are going to have 6 pcs sitting there unused 90% of the day. Another case of looks over substance?

I leave the kids until tomorrow.

The New Term & Paperwork

2005-05-24T11:55:00.000+07:00

It seems that for various reasons that I am not yet back to the prolific rants of last year. Part of it is down to the same shit different school syndrome, some is down to lazyness, some down to being busy, some down to the fact that I have been doing other things and some down to the access of the internet.

I think that if I dont do this straight after school I lose some of the creative impetus and calm down a bit thus losing some of the desire to let off steam.

Anyway. back to the good stuff. Last week was quite mixed with all going fairly averagely until Friday when the kids just decided to go berserk. I mean the best behaved were just talking amongst themselves. Others were deliberately putting their hands over their ears so they couldnt hear me or the book tape talking, playing with their bags or just hitting each other. In the end I just had to totally bollock out 1 class, lights off, air con off, 0/10 of the class behaviour scorecard. It was a full rant on mode I was in. I didnt quite get the culprits in tears but one was starting to bubble when I pointed him out saying he was a bad boy, not good, not polite etc etc

2nd class of the day and I thought, oh god. Friday syndrome, all of them are going to be nuts Then somehow, it all turned round and the last two classes were great. In fact, almost best of the week. So I ended up the holiday weekend feeling quite good about it.

In order to get the work permit and teachers licence, it seems that the school are going to apply from scratch again despite me having all the gubbins last year. This means, 23 photos ( of 2 different sizes, 6 copies of all the used pages of my passport and 4 copies of everything else ( transcript, certificates etc). Then we have to get 2 medical certificates. But not yet. The school will tell us when we have to go. And we have to go at two seperate times, we cant get the two copies at once. Why this is I have no idea because as far as I am aware, the certificates are good for 3 months and the paperwork should be finished by then. Oh yes, we have to use a certain hospital as well. Not just anyone, but probably the most expensive one for this sort of thing. Last year they apparently were charging between 150 -200 Baht depending on who was making up ( and I use that term advisedly) the bill.

Hey ho. As I said, same shit different school.

Beginnings

2005-05-12T21:20:00.000+07:00

So far this week its just been a case of getting to know you with the students and basically playing games with them. The actual teaching starts next week.

Having had a look at the book, I am a bit worried about content as to say the least the book is very thin. Its called Superworld 2. I dont like the layout of it at all, it is very very thin considering we are going to be using it all year. Each chapter is about 6 pages and half of them are photographs and we need to make each chapter last 4 weeks. Even with the activity book and cassette that means a lot of revision and dead time even with supplementary material.

The chapters dont really make a lot of sense in what they cover, there seems to be no logical theme to each chapter. There is even a a full section on Xmas and one on carnival. Yup that makes a lot of sense to kids in Thailand. If its possible, the book is even more western orientated than the Get Set Go Books I used last year. I mean to say, who has heard of an asian called Rupert or Sadie? At least there are a few Sallys about. There are bits of things all over the place - a bit like this blog I know but I am not paid money to produce this. Whats makes it surprising is that it is from Macmillan Heineman. So its not just a small company that produced it.

Episode 4 A New Hope

2005-05-10T16:00:00.000+07:00

Well, its been another while since the old blog has been updated but here we are again in the start of the new term and so far here are a few first impressions.

It is as disorganised and chaotic as the last place. Mostly. The overall impression is that it is more professional that the last place in terms of expectations from the school. They seem to definately care about what you do and dont do. We have to swipe in and out using an electronic card before and after a certain time or have the possibility of getting pay docked, we are not supposed to leave school premises during school hours etc etc. Most of these are ok and not much to put up with ( at least at the moment ).

We got a school calendar for the school year which again is much more than we got in the last place, so we already know about when Xmas holidays and mid term tests are. Of course the dates could change but... at least we have an idea. The calendar also lists a whole load of school activities like church services, school sports days, outings, camps and so on. At the moment, its not clear just how many we need to attend or do anything for. But so far we have been to two church services with long christian sermons ( in Thai ) zzzzzzzzzzz and they were compulsory and we needed to sign an attendence sheet. Ah well.

So far, the majority of teachers seem a decent bunch and theres only a couple that I have taken an instant dislike to. It will be funny to see if the instant feeling of like and dislike lasts and is confirmed or is changed one way or the other.

Dont worry more will come and the sarchasm will return!! :) Like wondering which school directors' family owns a drinking water factory and supplies the school with its own branded bottles.

A New Beginning Or The Beginning Of The End

2005-04-30T14:26:00.000+07:00

And so all good things must come to an end. It is now only a couple of days before I start at the new school and confront the chaos that will no doubt confront me.

For the last few weeks I have actually been home to remind myself of what my family looks like and them what I look like. Of course within two days all the old foibles and behavioural traits that make you made at your family start to surface again. For reasons of cost and practicality I was living with my family whcih made it even worse. I couldnt even say "ok, nice to see you, I am going back to my place now." Sometimes even moving rooms didnt help as within a few minutes someone would appear to find out what I was doing. If I went out, I got the where are you going, meeting someone nice, oooh that will be nice, did you have a good time, when will you be back..... interrogation. My god, my family still thinks I am 6 years old!!

Going round the city centre it seems to have changed quite a bit. There seems to be more hotels, bars and restaurants than ever before. The number of national shop "chains" has definately increased and a lot of the independent shops have closed and been replaced with the anonymous corporate brand image. Thankfully the number of "traditionally authentic" Irish pubs have not increased.

One thing I would like to have done was go round to my sisters a lot more because she has got broadband. Hmmm :) Soulseek is all I will say to you. I only had a little time to use it but it seems to be a better altenative to Kazaa and the like. From what I can see, it has no spy or scumware on it. Still, even with that little time, I managed to download an almost full cd of mp3 songs that I only have on vinyl.

In someways going back was great as you didnt need to bother about the language, you knew everything was going to cost X - even if X is a damm sight more expensive than Thailand. People had the same sort of sense of humour, you didnt need to explain any ironic comment. ( How many thais can you say that about?)

British tv hasnt really improved since I left. Satellite ( Sky ) tv is a full time job trying to find something interesting - at least it sometimes felt like that. It seems to be full of reality shows of one sort or another - house makeover, garden makeover, beauty makeover, job reality programs, and the adverts are all about selling ringtones for mobile phones or personal finance loans for debt reduction.

Some of the wierder ones are those selling stuff or quiz channels where you can win 50 pouns or higher if you phone a premium rate number costing you 1.50 pound a time. Of course they say, they only select one or two people every 5 minutes to actually get on air and answer the question and the more times you phone, the higher the chance of getting on air. Yeh right. They are probably making mega profits on the premium rate phone calls and giving away about 10% of revenue for prizes.

Most of the weather was pretty cold at home - a definite change to here. Some of it was the good cold, that crisp cold you get with blue skies and sun. Unfortunately, it was also the other cold. That raw hard cold that comes down from artic and will cold burn your ears off while blasting your face with 45 degree cold sllet or rain. And yes, one afternoon it actually snowed. Not for long or big flakes but it snowed. I must remember that feeling in the next few weeks when I am waiting for a skytrain drenched in sweat from merely being outside.

The Old School

2005-04-15T03:49:00.000+07:00

OK, it's been a while since I have posted but as there is very little going on I haven’t really had a reason to post anything!

But to help fill the gap here is a warts and all analysis of the school I worked at.

Good

The rooms we worked in were ours ( with a couple of exceptions ), so we could kit them out really how we wanted. We could put work up on the walls, change the seating arrangements whenever we wanted and so on without someone coming along the next period and changing it back.

The rooms were all air con. A big plus come well actually all year round but especially in the crucial hot and steamy months of June – August ish.

The rooms did have a tape player, tv and video recorder. So I could, if I wanted, play videos for the kids but also play tapes from the books to save my voice and also reinforce the idea that people can speak English slightly differently from the teacher.

The school was actually near my flat so I didn’t need to bother about traffic jams and the like.

We did have the option of having the free school lunch or buying something out the pay canteen or buying something outside. Sometimes the free lunch was actually pretty nice.

We eventually got 4 pcs that we could use for the internet or typing lesson plans or .. actually mostly just using the internet. Which meant I could download a whole load of programs and stuff for free and more importantly quickly onto my flash drive and then take them home.

Most of the buildings were pretty modern so it wasn’t some Dickensian atmosphere with dark damp dungeons and coal cellars.

Bad

The rooms did have a tape player, tv and video recorder. This sometimes meant that if other teachers were playing videos all the time, my kids would get to know abput it and every time they went into the class they would chant “tv” “tv” tv” and sometimes even start moving all the desks and sitting on the floor in front of the tv.

The pcs were behind the school firewall so sometimes programs like yahoo went down. It also meant peer to peer programs didn’t work so no kazaa, grokster and so on.

The staffroom was a bit cramped so it was sometimes difficult to move around if somebody had moved their chair to talk with someone else.

The staffroom was tucked away in a little corner in the school grounds so there was very little interactivity between us and the thai teachers. As a general rule we didn’t go into their staffroom and they didn’t go into ours. Which was good in a way, as it gave us space but overall probably harmed us more by not breaking down the barriers between us. It will be interesting to see what happens this coming year when the teachers are all together.

Although the buildings were modern they did share a common problem with other thai buildings and architecture. Sound. Everything was bare stone or wood. The concept of sound baffling definitely seems to have escaped thais. Every room, every corridor, every stairwell reflected, increased sound. It didn’t take many kids talking to raise the noise level to what in the uk could be called legally deafening and requiring ear protectors.

Every so often like every other Thai school we would turn up at the classes and find out that there was no one there. They had been called away for a meeting or activity of some sort. This was sometimes 5 minutes or all lesson but usually we had no idea and just had to wing it.

Mixed.

The Thai teachers. This was a bit funny as it depended on the individuals on both sides. As I said before, the location of our staffroom was not the best as it was in a corner away from all the other staffrooms and I think many people walked by the door without realising that we were actually inside. Some of the teachers wouldn’t return smiles, some would totally blank you every day, some would return smiles and nothing else, some would gradually start to talk to you and so on.

Interview Merry Go Rounds

2005-03-29T15:21:00.000+07:00

The merry go round continues although it looks like I have landed a decent job at a school. I wont name it for obvious reasons.

People complain sometimes about employers and schools not knowing what they are doing but sometimes teachers really dont help themselves. I went for an interview last week and it tirned out to be an agency who would be employing teachers and then contracting them out to a school.

The first interview was with the agency and the second with the school. During my first interview the woman who was interviewing me kept on answering the phone every five minutes or had people coming in and out of the office to give her things or to take away things. Which meant that it was really really distracting and no real flow happened with the interview. Somehow I passed the test and got the second interview. As it happened it was a group interview. There were five of us who turned up including one guy who was there in a casual shirt, some sort of neck thong thingy with a tribal talisman dangling from it. He also didnt have his passport, original degree or his TESOL Cert despite being asked for it. How do I know he was asked for it? Well, his was one of the phone calls that was answered during my interview.

The agency girl had a chat with him and sent him home and then promtly told the rest of us she wouldnt be asking him back and who did he think he was turning up like that.

That may well of been her thoughts but not exactly professional to share that with us was it? I wonder if anything else was being said behind our backs when we werent there.

I am trying to get home at the moment, but its turning out more difficult than I thought. Many Airlines are full and this is the strange thing. It isnt the leg from Bangkok to XXXX Its the connecting leg to get me home. Which is very strange because I wouldnt have thought that connecting leg would be all that busy, so its looks like I might be staying a while longer here and more or less coming back and going straight to work ( give or take a day ). Not ideal I suppose but better than not getting home at all.

Strange Feelings In Bangkok

2005-03-22T20:38:00.000+07:00

I woke up this morning with a strange feeling.

No, not that sort you smutty dirty minded people!! :)

It is one of these strange feelings that you get when something ends. Something that for all the bitching I did, I sometimes had good times with. Is it relief, is it rapture, is it the absence of stress, the realisation of knowing that you will not put up with that particular set of fuckups ever again, the possibility of a cure to the madness you have suffered from over the previous academic year, a hangover, the lack of a hangover J ?. I really don’t know but there was a void. I didn’t have to get up for work anymore and go to the school or the office of the agency.

What to do? What to do? What can I do that will mean I don’t spend money at an unacceptable rate and will keep my liver intact or at least not decline any further. Stay at home and go to the pub every afternoon and evening and spend money and expand the waistline? Do I just grab some books and head to a beach? Grab a tv guide and stay in my room? Hmm, don’t really fancy any of those things on there own, so it will probably be a mix and match, a bit of tourist stuff in Bangkok, a few days away somewhere, a few days just staying round the neighbourhood, some interviews for new jobs. Of which more later.

Maybe a few days summer camp somewhere but not with the agency who were offering a full time camp at the princely rate of 1000B a day. Only a few hours teaching a day they say to tempt you in. Well, yes but then you have to hang around “supervising” the kids during outings and afternoon activities and then you can’t really go out because usually the camps are 15 miles out of the back of beyond and can’t get drunk as that would be an unacceptable roll model for the kids and you don’t really get any time to yourself as you share a room with anywhere from 1 to 5 other teachers. So maybe not. Then there seems to be an increase in the number of full time camps. By that I mean for the entire summer holidays. Work all year round with kids and then during your holidays work with some more kids? No thanks. I need a break and I don’t mean just a long weekend.

Now back to jobs. To enable me to vent the old spleen during the holiday, what I will do is have a look at ajarn and crucify some of the job adverts.

On a personal front, it seems that I have a job lined up through a friend of a friend deal. Or at least lined up as much as anything can be without me having an interview or seeing the school or ……..

On Parole

2005-03-19T17:02:00.000+07:00

And so the end of the prison cell existence has ended and we are out on parole.

I say parole because officially we still work for the agency until the contract ends on March 31st and then we need to wait for the rest of the salary and the bonus. The last couple of days were really dragging and it got to the point where the final morning was just excruciating. It seemed to be that because we were so near release that every second seemed to last hours.

We even had a fairwell party that consisted of pizza and coke. Wow. They really pushed the boat out on that didnt they! What was quite sad was that the bosses all suddenly appeared and dispite the fact that they ( ie King of the Walking Cadavers ) hadnt spoken to us at all for the two weeks we were there they came in and had the pizza and deigned to share the same room. They still didnt speak to us though!!

After that it was the farewell speech and the awards. One for best attendence and one for the teacher of the year. This prize was a 500Baht voucher for a book store. Wow and again I say wow. Their generosity underwhealms me completely. 500B for a "good" years work. Pathetic.

It turns out that nobody has got a job with the agency for next year. They have a couple of vacancies but at the 30 -32k a month level. That would mean a salary cut for everyone and for some, a 10,000 a month cut. Nobody is going to accept that. Which means they are going to have a load of inexperienced straight off the plane teachers working for them. Oh well. Its their funeral.

The next few weeks are going to be fairly quiet. No idea what I am going to do and where I am going to be. Back to square one as that was the situation I faced when I first arrived here all those years ago.

Lets see what happens.

Almost Free

2005-03-14T20:35:00.000+07:00

The days continue to drag as we sit around the office wasting time and waiting for release from the misery.

The agency is being quite sneaky in their attempts to get us to do “make work”. The FUD comes into the room and says the corporate manager is wanting to have a meeting to discuss work. It was phrased in such a way to suggest that it would be work next year. Of course, the more suspicious were saying that it would be not real work but more make work. The key test would be if the boss appeared with lots of papers in his hands.

The meeting starts and the boss has lots of papers and sure enough, that meant make work. He basically wants us to create a new 40 hour course with materials. Not only that we were to give a 1 hour lesson to the other members of staff!! Why we would have to deliver a sample lesson I am not too sure. A couple of people are going to do the silent rebel bit and appear to do something but in the end do nothing. Other tasks that have been invented are laminating worksheets, cataloging text books in the library, organising and putting into binders the worksheets that were taken out of binders when we moved etc etc.

Through the week the boundaries were being gently stretched or in one case being stretched to it's upmost and today was the same. A couple of people basically turned up and then disappeared about 10ish. The FUD then gave them a phone call to find out just where they were and to make a reappearance promptly.

Apparently he has been getting stick from the MD of the agency and Dracula or King of the Undead or The Corpse, well you get the idea. We are not absolutely sure just what title he has but it's something along the lines of Operations Manager, which essentially means he is No3 or 2 in the business.

This is the twat that supposedly suggested in meetings that we should be forced to sit around in the office doing sod all until the end of contract because “that is what we are paid for”. The thought of us getting paid holidays is appalling him. It's almost as though the money we are being paid is coming directly out of his personal pocket. Which is quite interesting, because according to rumour, he is loaded. Old money i.e. landed gentry. No title but supposedly he has a large income from very expensive London property. He actually talks like an old fashioned toff and a perfect gentleman but he is actually quite a back stabbing, two faced twat. Which is probably why he fits in so well there.

The job hunt continues. Which unfortunately means I am going to have to give up my visa as the school is going to cancel it on March 31. This means I need to reapply for one. I suppose it won't matter that much if the consulate is as relaxed as the last time I was there but its extra money I didnt want to spend and just another added complication.

Head Office Borezzzzzzzzzzzzzz

2005-03-09T14:48:00.000+07:00

Our final last two weeks of purgatory has begun and the degradation mounts and mounts.

The 20 or so of us turn up at 8am on Monday for the “welcome meeting” and it turns out to be the FUD going "this is the kitchen", "this is the reception", "this is the toilet", we are shown into the two classrooms we are going to be occupying for the next two weeks. Right. Bets are immediately laid to see how long we get to keep the rooms because of the summer camps over the next two weeks. ( I lost, I thought we would have stayed longer in a room )

We all get sat down and the instructions given for the next two weeks. Well, umm, what you have to um do is ( look at floor ) write two um well um activities that um someone can use ( look at floor again ) next year and two that ( look at ceiling ) need materials right and er um next week you will be doing more of the same.

Believe me this is a shorter and far clearer version than he came out with.

Oh yes, not only that, we were told that we had two pcs that we could use to print out the material. But not yet, they had to tell someone to move out of that room. Good to see they had planned this.

Within a couple of hours two pcs had been changed to one pc. Supposedly this was because of sensitive data on the hard drive. Umm, new windows xp user profile anyone? Then it turns out that the pc isn’t connected to the printer, so we can’t print the materials. Good to see they had planned this part 2.

Yesterday they decided that we couldn’t access the internet through the company LAN because of sensitive data on the network. So what do they do? They buy a pay as you go internet access card from KSC!! Nice to see they trust us so much. Good to see they had planned this part 3.

Meanwhile during the “welcome meeting” it was announced that the two weeks would be full time i.e. no going home early or coming in late in other words the full day 8 til 4. this seems strange as normal practice at school was at the end of the day that people would just leave when teaching was finished and that if people had a big break during the day i.e. teaching periods 1 then 7 and 8 they could leave school and go home, do shopping or whatever they needed to do. Indeed it was OFFICIAL policy that we didn’t need to sign out at the end of the day, that we could sign out the following day when we came in. This soon evolved into not signing out – ever. Of course the previous two weeks we have been turning up 8ish, 9ish and leaving for home at 11ish or 12 ish.

So we have the situation that we are now on the premises longer than we were during a normal working week or the previous two weeks when we have not been working!!!

Now during the day what are we doing? Umm, not a lot actually. In fact absolutely sod all to be honest. The 10 minutes work to produce the worksheets have been done by some people others have been “strategically thinking about the big idea”. In other words sod all until the deadline of Friday when it has to be completed by. Most of us are just reading newspapers, playing computer games on laptops, doing crosswords, seeing how long a lunch we can get away with and so on.

So far, its been 4 room changes, I wonder how many more times we have to move things out the way.

I was talking to another teacher last week and he had a right old go at me for my negative attitude about the agency and the FUD and that I was moaning about having to sit around doing nothing for two weeks. His take on it was basically it was my fault I have a negative attitude to the agency, the FUD and that I carried that into the classroom and the agency had never done anything to him. I should be grateful for the chance to do nothing over the next two weeks and get paid for it. I pointed out that given the choice I would gladly do real and useful training but nope, he wouldn’t have that. He kept on hammering the point that as I was allowing myself to get depressed it was all my fault.

Now to a certain extent I can agree with that, putting the positive spin on things and making the best of what you have etc etc. But, when you have worked for an agency for 2 ½ years you get to see the heart and mind of an operation. This agency has no heart and certainly no mind. It is petty, money grabbing, cynical and you could argue mentally abusive. Now, some may see this as a negative, I tend to see my viewpoint as realistic. I can see the emperors’ new clothes!

This guy makes the claim that he never gets tired of anything, that his daily routine is never boring etc etc. He never lets anyone with a negative attitude change his attitude and no one should allow that to happen. He wouldn’t allow anyone to change his attitude. I asked him, if he had a great boss who was really enthusiastic, knowledgable etc would that raise his game. He said yes. Ah ha! I said so you do allow other people to influence your attitude. Yes, but only the positive ones. So would you allow the concept that a negative boss could influence people? No, it's your fault.

I asked him if he had his favourite meal all the time for breakfast, lunch and dinner, did exactly the same thing everyday would he get bored with it? He answered no. just to check the point I argued that human nature needs change, it needs new things to learn, to prevent boredom etc. He said no, that’s rubbish. If that’s the case why do we move countries to work, why do we go to university, why do we change jobs etc etc. He would just not be having any of that. In the end I almost felt like belting him one, not only for refusing to acknowledge my points but also he was always interrupting me, not allowing me to finish my point and talking over me. That’s what I call a negative approach.

Lets see what the next few days bring along.

End of Bangkok Schools Days

2005-03-04T14:24:00.000+07:00

And so it ends.

Not with a bang but a whimper and a soft one at that. We walked out of school today never to return again. Not one of the 20 teachers has been offered a job by the incoming administration and it seems not one of the teachers has been offered a job by the agency.

Of course the FUD & little FUD have jobs with the agency. They made damm sure of that, but us? Nah, we are little people, small insignificant little cogs that can be changed and replaced at any time without thought or planning.

It seems that the schools they do have contracts for are small ones with one or two teachers and some are in Nothaburi, Thonburi etc at 30K a month. Nah, not for me. I don’t really want to move out of Bangkok itself. As the FUD admitted himself, at that level of pay they are looking for unqualified teachers who don’t know any better or who cant get anything better. Sums up the whole attitude of the system here in many ways. They want the system to improve but don’t want to pay the money to get proper teachers.

By 10.00am today already half the teachers had gone home and the remainder straggled out until … no idea. I wasn’t the last to depart by any means so it could have been 11am or 12pm or 1pm.

It is going to be interesting to see what they are going to do with us over the next two weeks. Supposedly there is a welcome meeting for us at 8am on Monday in the agency head office. A welcome meeting?!?! Why?? To welcome us to the last two pathetic weeks of make work? Apparently the teams and assignments for the work has already been made up and all will be revealed on Monday. And no slacking off early! We might be allowed like 90 minutes for lunch but it's going to be 8 til 4 every day. Yeh right. Where’s my sarcasm smiley?

Another wonderful suggestion surfaced today. The agency is running a summer camp in the office so if anyone wants to teach 9 til 12 they can then leave for the day. Whooooo!! Yes lets teach a bunch of uninterested kids 3 hours a day UNPAID just so that we can leave at midday.

I think not part 2.

The job hunt continues with no further news.

Report Dozezzzzzzzz

2005-03-02T14:03:00.000+07:00

Marking Dozezzzzzzzzz Again

Due to difficulties in uploading this is a few days posts put together.

The days are really dragging with all the marking finished and only 20 report cards still to mark. My forecast of the amount of time spent in the office is proving to be about right with the vast majority disappearing before lunchtime and not coming back.

So far nothing else has been mentioned about the portfolios for the next two weeks in the head office for. Lets wait and see if that is quietly dropped.

As far as jobs go, it seems that the dangling carrot of being offered new schools by the agency was just an imaginary one. The FUD spoke to someone yesterday and basically said along the lines of start looking for a new job. Of course he couldn’t quite say that as that would be straightforward and clear. He came out with a ramble along the lines of “well, I can’t promise anything but if you are comfortable waiting then wait for us to offer something to you, but if you don’t feel comfortable with that then maybe it would be better for you to think about doing something on your own. Yeesh, talk about using 20 words when 3 will do. I wonder sometimes if he is a relative of the poster machengzi on http://www.ajarnforum.net :)

To give you an example of what a prat our FUD is, we had a group photograph sprung on us yesterday. Unfortunately I had an interview to go to – using common sense I have arranged all my interviews in the afternoons. So I tell the FUD I am not going to be there and he gives it a considered hmmm, hummm, ahhhhhh, well I suppose if you have an interview, I suppose well hmmm, alright. ???? he tells one guy to look around and then later he tells someone that when they are going for an interview. Unbelievable.

I was speaking to someone on Monday night who basically said I was in fact very lucky for being paid to sit around doing nothing. In a way I suppose they are right but this is dead time, it's wasted time. I would love to have some proper training, I really would. Not just some ramshackle thing cobbled together and delivered by some numbskull that they have dragged in from the office or by the FUD but real teacher training that I would get some benefit from. But that won’t happen, that would cost money!

Today I finished the final report card and whoops by about 10.00 almost everyone was away home. I overheard someone saying that next week we would actually have to stay the full day because we would be in the head office of teh agency. Hmmm. I think not somehow. Where will they put us all? Errr the staff room isnt big enough. Will they put us in a classroom. Maybe but again then why do they insist on us wearing shirts and ties when at the weekend they dont insist on teachers wearing a shirt and tie. Who knows. Probably the usuall power and control attempts.

Marking Dazezzzzzzzzzzzz

2005-02-22T15:49:00.000+07:00

Two days into the marking and it's boring already. It's about half and half who has completed the marking and those who haven’t. So far, I have finished all the marking and made a start on the report cards.

Oh boy, are they a laugh. They always are, trying to think of as many different ways of saying

Somchai is not as thick as two short planks as that would give him more credit that he deserves. He possibly has as much common sense and intelligence as the shoe polish I put on my shoes this morning. Knowing Somchai he would actually probably try to eat the shoe polish thinking it was a new type of sweet cake.

My current favourite at the moment is that Somchai has made steady progress through the year. Of course, this hides a multitude of sins. What I mean on some of them is that he has made progress, at the end of the year he was remembering to bring pencils and books to class. Of course, sometimes I mean he did actually make some progress with his English!

As I said last week we had been told to turn up full time this week and next. I suppose predictably the first day there was a quiet revolt and most folk had departed the scene by about 1.30 in the afternoon.

Today was even worse with a mass disappearance by midday. I think it's going to get worse not better somehow. As well as that we have people turning up late. Surprisingly, the latest I noticed was just after 9.30am. But then again, there are a couple of people who didn’t turn up at all over the last couple of days.

As far as I am aware this still means they get a 2000Baht fine for going over their allotted sick days. This is something I really can’t figure as the couple of people involved are always going on about how much extra money they have to save or spend or their rent or whatever. But then they go and waste 2000B by not turning up in the easiest part of the year. Who knows!

One of the late guys is a guy that in his own words was a “senior manager in the aerospace industry for 20 years”. Unfortunately this guy is one of the most self obsessed individuals I have seen in a while. He seems to be totally self absorbed and unconscious to the effect that he has around him. Among his nicknames are “The Professor” and ‘Mr Slurpee”. He seems incapable of drinking or eating something without giving the full food expert effect of slurping a drink around his mouth or the food before swallowing it. He sometimes sounds like Skippy the Kangaroo. Where or when he got this habit I have no idea but eeeeuuuuuuuucccchhhhh! He also has the habit of sounding so supercilious when he is talking to people as though nobody is worth talking to.

One pleasant surprise was that beside the library rooms where we are based is a computer room that the kids use during term time – which basically means that we can go on the internet. Also because there are about 20 odd pcs it means that there is enough for everybody to go round, so no arguments of the “you’ve been on for 1 hour and I’ve been waiting...” type.

Tomorrow is Maha Bucha Day so an official holiday and see you all on Thursday.

Last Day of Teaching & More Contract Details

2005-02-19T12:22:00.000+07:00

Last day was spent just playing games with the kids and some of them were alright, some of them were just out of control and didn’t want to listen even to instructions on how to play. Idiots. They knew they would be getting something special as I told them not to bring books., immediately of course they started to go apeshit. As soon as they came into the room they moved all the chairs to in front of the tv. Why they thought they would be getting a video is beyond me as they have never got one all semester and they only had one or two lessons last semester.

It does look as though that will be the last time I ever see those kids as it appears that I am not going to get an interview with the school. Some who have applied have got interviews but I haven’t received a reply. Shame in a way but possibly it's good overall, stops the rut of the same old same old, new school environment etc etc

Drum roll please drummmmmmmmm tksssh!

We had the meeting to confirm what was happening for the rest of the semester and it was, in reality, quite boring with no major riots, arguments, storming of the gates, lynchings etc.

Whether it was deliberate or not it seems to have been that the rumours that were coming out last week were wide of the mark. There is no unpaid leave, no option to get away early etc. But the downside is that for the next two weeks we are going to have work full time in a couple of rooms off the school library. Hmmm. The rooms themselves are nice as meeting rooms but totally unsuitable for 20 teachers for two solid weeks. What are we doing during this time? Doing marking and writing report cards. OK. That takes care of 3 days if it's approached in even a slow but steady manner.

After that we have to work in the main offices preparing “Teaching Portfolios”. These are going to be used for the schools who have no resources or have very few. Riiiiight. Are these new schools? Exisiting schools? If they are existing schools surely the teachers there have created prepared some stuff. Also they know far better than we what year level and language level the kids are, what the class size is, what the school likes the teachers to do etc etc etc. Without knowing that, we could be preparing material that will never be used. In fact odds are, that is exactly what will happen. The work will go into a binder somewhere and never be looked at or used.

Basically the idea is to take the best ideas that we used during the year and write instructions on how to do the exercise. Now the question is, what was wrong with the material that we have been preparing, creating and using and storing in various binders during the school year? Apparently the answer is that they are not specific enough. Huh? They want more specific and detailed portfolios not just a scatter gun approach and the FUD is going to set up teams to create these. Wow, I can hardly wait.

Also because we are going to be in the main office we need to work full time and wear shirts and ties. Shirt and tie? Why? I didn’t wear a shirt and tie when I worked there at weekends. But no biggie I suppose. Full time for two weeks? Why? Again it really would take only a couple of days to do if it's approached in a steady manner. Traditionally the non contact time is reduced hours, something like 9 til 2. Why are they saying full time now? Who knows?

And on March 18 they are going to throw a party for us. A PARTY?!?! It will be interesting to see just how many people turn up as this is the last day of servitude and it will mean freedom – at least as far as turning up goes. They still hold the back pay over us and the end of year completion bonus will get paid at the end of April. So just for the moment, to stop burning bridges I wont name the names yet.

One other thing that came up was the announcement that there could be new schools for us to go to next year and that certain people had already been approached and offered jobs and that in the next couple of weeks more people would be approached. Age old story isn’t it.

The other thing that came up is that the school could and probably will cancel our visas on March 31 which means unless a new school picks us up very soon we need to go through the whole work permit process again and I HAVE to leave the country to get a new non imm B visa. Wonderful, not. Apparently the FUD never thought about what will happen to us. Even the ones who are going to be kept on by the agency!! I suppose I should be shocked but unfortunately I am not, it's just another example of the lack of forethought. It also more importantly shows the effect when people have a 11 month contract. If you have a 12 month contract, the work permit runs to the same date. With an 11 month one you have a gap every year and probably have to do a visa run and scramble around.

The Beginning of the End

2005-02-17T16:25:00.000+07:00

Well, today saw the first of the classes I will not see again.

It was not a sad occasion I have to say. I was actually pretty joyful with one exception. This Prathom 2 kid who is quiet, hard working, clever, listens and has a great attitude. How the hell did he get into the school :) He is actually the ONLY one out of 140 kids I have never had to say sit down or be quiet to at some point over the year. I will miss teaching him. If they were all like him I think my job would be 3 times as hard because they would all want to work and not goof off. But also 3 times more enjoyable because I would actually be teaching. This kid, given a choice between a colouring in sheet or a word search will do the word search first. Everytime. So to mark the occasion, I bought a children's illustrated dictionary and thesaurus and made up a little award certificate for him. Gawd!! I am turning soft!!!!!

I wont be doing that for anyone else. None of them deserve it

Next week we are moving to somewhere new as the staffroom is being refurbished. Don't know where yet though. Someone asked this morning and got told by the FUD that it was somewhere and he would need to find out. Oh, yes, its over there vaguely pointing down the corridor. Where? Its a room just over there. Where? Its a room they have given us ( the school ). Where? I think its near the library. So fucking typical of this guy. Knows fuck all, is sorted in a job for next year unlike most of us, so cant be bothered to do anything. PRAT. When I leave, I am going to name the name so everyone can avoid him as much as they can.

Well, we have a meeting tomorrow to presumably tell us when we are to be released and where we are going next week and indeed what time we need to come in - we normally get cut hours during report card time.

The rumours are still flying with March 18th being the favourite release date but I heard a new one that apparently the school wanted us not only out of the staffroom but also out of the school tomorrow!! This may have been extended by a week to let us do the report cards. But the funny thing is that a lot of the rumours are originating from the FUDS but through different people. So, is the situation changing that fast so when they speak to one person its this and then later when they speak to another its that? Are they making it up as they go along. Do they actually know anything themselves? God only knows! And they are probably trying to keep him off the circulation list.

But, I found the memo they gave us last year for the early release so I will bring that if they try anything stupid tomorrow like let us away early but no pay.

Lets wait and see.

Now, come on folks click that top thai sites blue square on the right, I am still not in the top 100. I mean for petes sake, I only need 42 hits to get to number 100.

Exam Week Part 3 and Contract Endings

2005-02-15T16:12:00.000+07:00

I wasn't too good yesterday so took a day off. Why not, I am entitled to 3 days a semester and this was only my second day.

Anyway, come back and find out someone has given a class an exam in my absence. Bollocks! Now what I am I going to do for the other 2 periods? Teach?! :)

It seems like the scores in the P3 reading and writing are considerably lower than they were last semester. No wonder. It is really a totally new type of exam they got from any others we have given them. I think the average mark will come in about 50-55% which is shocking when you think about it. But it all comes back to the same thing, that if they actually do some work themselves in the class instead of me having to pull them reluctantly in the direction of work, they would be finding things a lot easier.

Now onto another end of term possible horror story. As you know the agency lost the contract with the school as of March 31. Come the beginning of March, the school will be closed. No thai staff, no janitors, nothing and next week we have to leave our staffroom for refurbishment. The agency has no new school positions to offer anyone and only a couple were approached ( quietly ) for corporate full time teaching - and that was only if they were already doing it. So basically the situation is this. Out of 20 teachers here and another 5 at the senior branch of the school, about 4 are staying with the agency in an admin or corporate capacity. No one has been given a job in another school because the agency hasn't got any new contracts.

The ones they now do have are very small, around 5 teachers in, maybe 4 schools. There is a nasty rumour now going around that when the semester ends here in a couple of weeks and all the report cards have been marked Etcetera that instead of - as has been done before - giving a bonus of a couple of weeks holidays and letting people go early, they are instead wanting to make people come into the main office to do "make work". They are apparently thinking that teachers can do this or can leave early but with NO PAY.

So lets clarify

This year. With no job to look forward to, no schools to prepare material for, they want 20 teachers to continue to report for work in the main office after finishing marking and report cards and cut out stuff from newspapers and prepare material for who knows or walk away early without pay.

Last year. With teachers coming back or going back home, we finished the marking, writing report cards and then sat around doing nothing for 3 weeks in our staffroom and they let us away a couple of weeks early.

If this is true and at the moment I don't know if it is for certain, it will be a total slap in the face for everyone who has worked here. The contract is ending so why not end it on a good note with a sense of "you have worked here for 2 or 3 years so thanks and goodbye". THE AGENCY HAS ALREADY BEEN PAID FOR THIS PERIOD. So, this is not a case of them losing out, it will be a case of them been penny pinching bastards. But, I will now hold my ire and fire until I know for certain. A thread on ajarn.com could be soon arriving.

There was supposed to be a meeting today to announce something - probably the end date and the end of term arrangements but it was cancelled. Supposedly because the school hasn't told the agency when it will cancel the work permits. This is the most worrying for me because it goes with the Visas. I want to go home in March if I get away early but I don't want to come back from holiday to find out that I have entered the country on a cancelled Visa.

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

2005-02-10T17:19:00.000+07:00

Can't really think of anything much to say except ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZz same old same old.

The biggest announcement was that as of next week the assistant FUD is going to start deleting files off the pcs we use. Why? The pcs aren't ours, they aren't the agencys' so why is he deleting stuff? The only thing that will happen is that the EP teachers who use the pcs next year will get a laugh when they see the amount of crap thats been stored on them - funny pictures, letters home, avatars, holiday pictures and so on. Nothing interesting really.

On that subject the agency is now already starting to clear out the staffroom including all the worksheets and supplimentary material that we use. Ah well, we only have another 6 days teachign. Why would we want to have anythng to give the kids anyway?

And so far still no news on when we will be released from this hell that is called......... The FUD i no doubt enjoying the little sense of power he has in holding that information back.

Exam Week 2

2005-02-08T16:59:00.000+07:00

Hey ho and the week progresses.

Its all much of a muchness which the kids trying to cheat - badly. You would think they would at least make an effort to try and hide the fact. Nah, that would mean having some sort of imagination and intelligence. Its just been the usual asking each other what does this mean, what did he say ( in the listening test ), looking at each others papers by blatently looking.

Today was one of the worst, I had one kid who actually held his paper up in front of his head to try and hide the fact that he was turning round to ask someone what the answer was. So, little clues on how not to get caught -
no 1, dont hold up bright white paper at head level. It shows up nicely in peripheral vision.
no 2, if you need to copy dont copy from the guy behind you. Turning your body kind of gives it away
no 3, dont try and stand up and walk over to another desk to borrow a pencil. Especially when I can see your pencil case full of them on your desk. DOH!
no 4, dont sit next to the dumbest kid in class and copy from him. A monkey has got more chance of writing the correct answer.
no 5, when you ask someone what the answer is, try to whisper not speak normally. Not all teachers are deaf.
no 6, at least try and see where the teacher is. Trying to copy when I am right behind you looking to see how you are doing is not a good time.

The job hunt continues with a couple of applications sent away today and a couple of rejections back, Hey ho.

Exam week Over - Part 1

2005-02-04T17:31:00.000+07:00

Well, the first week has gone by.

Yesterday, 4 days into it, the FUD tells us that the speaking tests and listening tests are to be out of 10 marks, except the P3 which are 15. Oh goody and what happens if you have already done those tests? Ah well, never mind.

The writing test for P2 is so easy they are finishing it in about 3 minutes. No I am not joking. 3 sections where the have to put a tick or a cross into a box in part 1 a single word, in part 2 rearrange a body part name, so a single word and then in part 3 write a single word - name the object. 15 questions.

The writing test for P3 is 35 questions long. The quickest I have had someone do it is 23 minutes.

The first section they have to match a picture and a word to a definition sentence. Now, you would think that because the pictures and sentences are on different pages that they would be facing each other. Logical yes? Umm, too logical. The pages are on opposite sides on one sheet of paper.

The second section is a picture and then a series of questions about the picture. Now, you would think that because the pictures and questions are on different pages that they would be facing each other. Logical yes? Umm, too logical. The pages are on opposite sides on one sheet of paper.

And so the stupidity continues.

The next section gives a sentence and then 3 possible replies. They have to pick the most appropriate one.

The last section is a series of paragraphs and they have to answer questions by reading the paragraphs. Nothing in the book we use really prepares them for this, so most haven't a clue.

As someone else said to me when I asked the question why did they ( our management ) do this, why didn't they think? Thinking is not required here.

Now, you could say that they don't know how to do this as I haven't prepared them through the semester. A fair point to a certain extent but then since we the teachers, don't actually see the tests until about a week before the tests start and the exam we do is from a different syllabus, then I don't think we can really be held accountable.

Oh yes, please click the little blue box on the right, I would like to see if it works. If it does, this site would get into the top 100 thai sites.

More Exam Stuff & Moving

2005-02-03T17:05:00.000+07:00

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

Oh dear, 4 days of exams done. What is the boy zz doing zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Saying that stupid question again and again is doing my head in. Some of the kids have caught on and are talking about the test. IN a way I am actually quite pleased as it does show at least some level of intelligence is out there :)? I had one kid come out, sit down where I am doing the test and said "Beach". Good answer and one of the first I ask. But I hadn't asked him a question yet and the flashcard was upside down so he could only see the white backing!!!

Other beauties today. A kid that said yes or no to everything. I mean everything.

"what is your name?"
yes
"what is your name?"
no
"how are you?"
yes
"how are you?"
no
etc etc etc

oh dear. And of course you had the ones who went
"where are they?"
The mother, father, and two children are at the beach.
"what is he doing?"
he is sleeping on a towel on the beach
"what is he doing?"
He is swimming and looking at the shark coming towards him

Oh to have some sort of graded class. I would love to have a class of roughly the same level. It would be so much easier to teach. You would know exactly what the expectations would b. You could plan so many more interesting activities and challenges for the kids or basically go "WHAT IS YOUR NAME?" "MY NAME IS________" and give them colouring in to do.

But of course that wont happen. It would be to much against the whole notion of not being noticed, not sticking your neck out, not being different from the rest. Screw the education just be the same as everyone else.

As markign comes up, I am so tempted to grade accordign to how much I liek the kid. But I don't. I do give them a fair crack. Maybe on half points, if the kid is a trier I will give a bit more leeway but I don't turn a wrong answer into a right one. I will just get them on the report card sections for attitude, behaviour and other comments.

Seeing as how this is the last time we see the kids ( maybe ) a few of us are being really tempted to give a real report rather than a "positive" one. I would love to see the faces of the parents and school when we write something like " Although Somchai can produce high quality work, this only happens when he can shut up for more than 30 seconds at a time, isn't running around annoying the teacher or other students or isn't doing something he thinks is more important like cutting his rubber in half with his ruler. He will make a fine Minister for Education someday."

Our jobs have been advertised in the papers, so if we want to work at this school again, we need to reapply for them. Could be interesting. Anyone who is staying on will be working in the Thai staffrooms next year. Our staffroom is going to be renovated before the start of next term for the EP program teachers who will then take it over. They have in fact started already by demolishing the little store room we had across the way.

The discussion is now when do we need to leave the staffroom and how long are we going to be held to our contract. Depending on what version you hear, the school want us out of the staffroom by Feb 18 ( the last day we see the kids ) or the following week. The agency want us to move to the school library to work on report cards and do marking. Hmmm Is it secure, does it have a phocoto copier to help us copy our cvs and stuff as we are looking for new jobs - note to self, look at ajarn tomorrow - does it have a computer or computers to share amongst 20 teachers, does it have a secure area to store the report cards and papers etc etc

If the agency has their way, they will hold us til the last possible moment. I dare say the school couldn't be arsed one way or another as long as the report cards were done. So anything from March 4th to March 31st could be the release date. And oh yes, the agency is still not officially offering anyone any work for next year. BWAAHHAHAAAHHAAA!!!!!

It has offered work and some have accepted it. But not officially. Enough to make you sick.

Exams & Other Stuff

2005-02-01T17:53:00.000+07:00

Well, got a phone call last night from one of the corporate jobs I was after.

Big multinational, looks good. Ish. Go in for the interview today having bought new trews - smart as anything they look. And yes I am wearing a belt with them ( Private joke ). Get to the interview and am given an english test. Right, without looking it up who can give me a sentence in the

simple present tense - easy isn't it.
simple future
simple past No problems !!
present perfect er ok
future perfect
past perfect
present progressive huh?!
present continuous
future perfect progressive
past perfect progressive

Yeesh, that had me struggling. I can never remember all of them, never use all of them more importantly. As well as that proof reading, inserting the right preposition, suffix, prefix, describing what the most important things about teaching corporate english are ( I was tempted to say the fat wedge at the end of the month but resisted successfully), give the comparative and superlative forms of words. Ye gads it was worse than my English Higher all those years ago. 9 bloody pages of test!!!

The interview was a bit wild - unstructured and all over the place. Typically Thai I suppose. By the sounds of it, it will be half proofreading and being the pet native speaker and half doing in house training. Hmmm Need to see what sort of salary they offer, if they offer me the job. They were quite cagey about that, wanting to know what I am on and not saying what they would offer.

As well as that I splashed out on a new electric shaver last night, so I don't need to suffer the Jack the Ripper look each morning.

And speaking of tests, the little darlings continue on their merry way to destroying all hope and feeling of humanity I have towards them.

How are you? I say.
Nine years old, they say.

DOH!!!!

and again I say

DOH!!!!

[IMG]http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v167/ultras67/Humour/pic06868a.jpg[/IMG] height=100 width=100 align=left hspace=6

The Start of Exams Weeks

2005-01-31T17:10:00.000+07:00

Yes, I have got that right.

It is the start of exams weeks. We have three weeks to finish all our exams. I and some of the other teachers have started doing the speaking tests with the flashcards that have been provided.

Already my enthusiasm of asking "what are the differences?" "what is she doing?" has departed the scene by taking the first flight out of the country. I have 60 tests at one level to do and 80 of another. It looks like at the moment that the P3 test - of which there are 80 - may take 5 lessons to do, they are being incredibly slow so far. I am only getting 4 or 5 done in each lesson. Because the P2 test is so much easier I will have that finished in maybe two but definately 3 lessons ( 1 week ).

Its a bit of a joke. The P3 test has 2 cards and one of them is a little cartoon strip. In theory the kids are supposed to give me a story about the pictures. Fat chance. So far the results have not been encouraging. How are you I asked them to settle down. Monday replies one. DOH !!!!! I ended up giving a kid 3 marks just because he managed to walk from the class to the test area without falling over. It certainly wasn't because of any english ability he showed. Mind you, if he had been chewing gum at the same time, I am not sure if he could have got to the test area.

The behind the scenes politicking and manoeuvering is coming more and more to light and those who have been quietly offered jobs on the full time corporate side of things reveal their status. To be honest, that would be my preference as I think I said last week and as I did say to the senior FUD here but "he can only pass on wishes" BS.

New Teachers

2005-01-27T17:00:00.000+07:00

Today was just another boring day trying to get the kids to behave and do mock listening tests with the same results as before. Ho Hum.

The last lesson I spent 30 minutes waiting for the class to line up properly, stop playing and stop talking, finally they almost managed it but I had wasted too much of my patience to try anything so I just got them to be quiet and put their heads down on the desk for the rest of the period. At least it gave me a chance to sit down.

We have a new teacher here for the rest of the very short year and well, its just as well its a short year. He is already causing problems with the way he takes the kids to and from class. He just lets them run riot, running ahead into other class group, then when he lets them out he just opens the door and lets them loos to create havoc on the rest of the world. Then again, he is covering the class on the gay yank who had similar problems getting control. So it might not be his fault entirely but he is not helping matters. Earlier in the week he used someone elses classroom and by all accounts the place was a complete and utter shambles with worksheets that had been stored in cupboards, desks were all over the place and so on.

Ah well, only teaching/exam 3 weeks to go.

Listening Thai Kids ( not )

2005-01-26T22:45:00.000+07:00

Nothing of note really happened today except that I got feedback on my observation from the head FUD. I think it lasted all of 5 minutes and that included time for a “career chat” on what I was going to do next year. Wow. The biggest, well I will be honest, bigger comment because there were only two, was that I hadn’t got the kids into teams to “involve” them more.

True enough, I don’t have the kids in teams. I have tried it before and then had to change them round because of discipline problems. Then when I changed the teams, they ended up with about half the original team. Which sort of goes against the whole team bonding, making it involved and keeping their interest theory when the team changes every couple of weeks.

I tried a couple of practice listening tests today on the 2s & 3s and really it was as expected. Some did ok and some were just not interested and didn’t try. Some of them are so bad at listening. They just don’t try, don’t want to try and even if they are half trying they cant do it because they are not used to doing it in normal class. Imagine saying “draw a line between the dog and the ball…the chair and the snake….the father and the sandwiches….” Some of them drew lines between the right objects, some between the correct things, some drew LIONS ! Some had lines going from random objects to other random objects, some connected everything.

Now imagine part of the exercise is to colour in various objects. Despite being told to bring coloured pencils to every class, I had one P3 class where out of 20 kids, 7 of them had the coloured pencils. AAARRRGGGHHHH. So a quick lecture of you cannot share, you cannot borrow, you have to write the colour next to the object later and we start the test. Can you guess, the first thing that happens? Yes, that’s right, the ones without the colours start to get up to borrow from the ones that have them. Double aarrgghhh!

The search for a job goes on for May and beyond. But as I previously wrote, the timing in some ways is wrong with many of the schools not yet looking for warm bodies. But there are schools advertising and I have sent a few applications away to see what happens.

Ideally I would like to get a full time corporate gig or in house trainer. A couple have appeared in the Bangkok Post which I have applied for, so it’s a case of wait and see now.

Shaving Problems & Kids

2005-01-25T17:22:00.000+07:00

Ooooh eerrr missus. That title sounds a bit suspect doesn't it!

But sorry, I am not that way inclined. I am talking about that daily chore that we men have, scraping the rough hairs off the chin every morning.

By nature and habit I have been an Electric Shaver man for about 20 plus years. The only times I have wet shaved is on holidays when the batteries ran out or for whatever reason I didn’t have my trusty Braun.

I am now in one of those periods when my shaver has broken down and needs to be repaired. As my recollections of wet shaving were of rashes, cuts and pain, I decided to try and make the experience as painless as possible. So I popped down to the supermarket and purchased a BIC dual blade, adjustable head razor with one of those lubricating strips to “make shaving even more of a pleasure” (copyright just about every shaving company) and to make sure, I also bought shaving cream for I think the first time in my life.

The whole idea of using a shaving cream is to provide a foam that will soften the hairs and help the razor blades give you get the closest shave possible without cutting your face or leaving that nasty shaving rash. And to sum it up, that was exactly what I was looking for.

Now which one to choose? Errr Nivea? Wilkinson? Gillette? …… HELP!!!! Too many to choose from!! I quickly became one of those rabbits caught in the headlights of an oncoming car transfixed until its run over. God, which one? Nivea? nah too poncy and gay. Gillette? Yes! A manly product, no doubting I'm a man here. Now which flavour? Original, Lime, Sea Breaze, Pizza? OK, just joking on the last one. Bloody hell. Why does everything come with 15 choices? Cant have a coke now, got to have a caffeine free non diet lemon flavour or a diet caffeine included chery flavour.

Its one of these things in life a man cant admit to. That he cant use a blade razor. Oh bugger, how do I use it? I went straight from bum fluff to electric. I cant ask my mates as thats as good as saying KICK ME, I'M A TOSSSER! Do I go with the grain or against it? Why does shaving the moustache bit and my Adams apple feel so fecking sore ?

So, to the actual first use. Like most foamy things when it comes out the nozzle it is heavily expanded and its only when you first start spreading it over your face you get an idea of how much you actually have. Being the inquisitive and the frankly scared of hurting and cutting myself wimpish type I decided early on to experiment with volumes and time left on the face to see if it made any difference on softening the days growth. I found it didn’t really seem to matter that much how much I put on as it all came off with the first blade stroke. I started off with just one application but towards the end I ended up applying a double application of the foam for the initial sweep and then the following clean up sweeps.

Onto the shaving and the nitty gritty, did it work and make shaving a more pleasurable experience? Well, actually it did. I do have quite a sensitive skin ( no laughing at the back ) as despite the cream and the lubricating strip I still got the shavers rash and the odd cut but it was a definite improvement than trying to shave without. It was only really small patches around the area of my Adams Apple that looked raw. The last time I tried it just with water and soap, I ended up looking like a victim of some deranged machete wielding maniac.

Now whether all the extra ingredients will make any difference in cleansing my pores or moisturizing my skin I have no idea, I don’t really see any difference but who knows. Sounds a bit new age and metrosexual for me.

Why cant they make a smaller size? the smallest I saw was 175g, not only for people like me who are going to use it for only a short time but also for those who want a smaller can for holidays etc or who want to try a new brand without wasting a lot of money for 95% of a product they might never use again?

Now, I hope my Braun will be back soon so I can start using that again. Will I switch to a wet shaving man? Sorry, no. I still prefer the buzz and the shave anywhere convenience of the electric. But, if I need to wet shave I will definitely use the Gillette Foamy to help ease the pain.

Now back to the sad reality. I have managed to make a kid cry again. This time I didnt touch him. Honest! All I did was catch him playing with Blu Tack and I took it off him and for the last 20 minutes of the class he was blubbering away like nobodies business. Jeeeezo!

Assorted School Happenings and an Ajarn Piss Up

2005-01-24T22:05:00.000+07:00

Well, it’s been a long time since I slagged any of the staff off so I suppose it's about time.

Well, we finally got a copy of the exams we are going to give out darling beloveds in a couple of weeks and it's the usual cries of horror and bewilderment. And that’s just the teachers.

The Cambridge Exam is one of these tests that supposedly tests the knowledge in a real life type of conversation / instruction. To me it doesn’t do that, it just over elaborates the instruction unnecessarily. I will post the exact script tomorrow but it's along these lines.

Listening test – the student have to draw a line between two objects. Now if the instruction had said “ draw a line between the cat and bus” it would be ok but instead it goes.

Examiner - Put the cat into the bus.
Student - The car?
Examiner - No, the bus.

Now, if I was faced with that I would be going, how can I put the cat into the bus? It's on the paper, I cant physically move the drawing, do I have to draw the cat in the bus? Do I draw a line between them? What am I supposed to do? And the rest of the test carries on in that vein.

One of these days, I am going to find out at what age these are actually aimed at and at what language level. As I said, reading the script, It would take me quite a few seconds to work out what I am supposed to do never mind these kids.

Quite a few long faces I can tell you in the staffroom.

Now, I haven’t mentioned Cleric for a while so here is his chance for glory again. In some ways life has actually improved between the two of us. I don’t speak to him and he doesn’t speak to me. Suits me fine and lately he hasn’t been in the staffroom as much as he used to. Until the last week or so when he started hanging around it again spouting his usual I know best crap. “ This is what you want to do….”

He has started hanging round the back of peoples chairs again reading what they are doing and hoping they get pissed off at him and leave a pc free. Today, he was hanging around and started reading someones CV then he goes “ Oh, it's your CV!” and starts giving advice on layout and stuff. Now OK, this was someone who he is friendly with but.. MY GOD. This is someones personal details!

I don’t care if it is a friend of mine or not who says that but they are intruding on my personal information and space. If I choose to let someone see it or ask them for help, it's my right to do that. Someone imposing their help is unwelcome and frankly unwanted. Even if you do catch site of what someone is doing – email or reading an article or doing a CV it really is quite rude to be nosey. You can’t really help but see a screen if a pc is right next to another but you should really try and be as discrete as possible about it and pretend not to see anything personal.

The other thing is that he has started staying after work which bugs me as well as I write for a few different web sites and forums. Some of which I most definitely don’t want him to know about. So most times I end up going home and to my crappy home connection rather than give away any “secrets”. But, he is supposedly going home in a couple of months so with luck it will only be another 8 weeks or so I have to tolerate him for.

Sometimes people complain about their connection at home and I ask what connection speed have they got? Oh 29.8kbps they say or 30 or 25. Well, tonight I have hit a new low. 6.4kbps. I can only hope that I can actually upload this. Yes, I am typing this on Word and then will copy and paste it over. ICQ can function – just. The BEST speed I have ever got was 26kbps and even then it took about a minutes for a web page to open. Anything with heavy graphics is just a joke. I rarely bother surfing at home. ICQ & MSM messenger and sometimes not even they work until I disconnect and redial. Oh, how I would love broadband!!

Finally got to meet some of the http://www.ajarnforum.net crowd on Saturday night for a piss up. So hello to Reg Young - totally not what I expected him to be like, LDMA - taller than I thought he would be, DJ Pat - pretty much how I thought he would be, Wally Raffles - didnt really have a mental picture of him so no preconceived notions and the same with Mangoedout. Cheers guys.