For the past three days, our group has been traveling about an hour outside of Chiang Mai to a monk's school for our teaching practice. They are obviously all boys, from ages 10 to 18, that board at this school and study 5 days a week. Although they are better behaved than a lot of public school students, they are still teenage boys, and the setting presented some unique challenges.
For one thing, there are a lot of cultural differences to keep in mind. We teach barefoot, as in a lot of Asia. The foot is considered unclean in Thailand, so we have to be careful not to move anything with our feet, touch anything with our feet, or rest our feet on anything. Also, we can't touch any of the monks' heads, or even pass papers to another student over someone's head. A really hard thing to remember is that in order to call someone up to the front, we have to wave at them with our palm down. The typical "come over here" motion that we use in the Western world is the way they call dogs. We both keep messing up on that one... But the hardest thing is that monks are not allowed to touch women, so the women teachers have to be super careful, especially in small classrooms. We have to drop the chalk into their hands instead of handing it to them, and use very clear instructions. But it has been a really fun experience.
We've both been able to teach three lessons. The first was a young learner's lesson to 13 yr old boys with a pretty low level of English. The next day, we were supposed to have older, more advanced students, but they all decided they didn't want to come to school that day, so we ended up teaching the exact same students a much more difficult lesson. However, I guess that word got around to the older ones that class was fun, because when we showed up on Saturday, all the older kids were in class, so that lesson was much smoother. We have two more lessons next week before our course ends.
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