Bit harsh (unproffesional buffoon), I didn't explain at the start though that we had already agreed upon an amount to be deducted for my tardiness, I certainly didn't feel privelleged working there and I worked past my clocking off time on numerous occassions to prepare for sports day, christmas, Loy Krathong, etc etc. I did dedicate a lot of time and effort to that school more so than a lot of the Thai teachers, admittedly coming in late for lessons is a bad impression to make for students but all the fill in teachers got paid for it out of my pocket. it's the other 7.5K or 4 full days of work that was my disgruntlement, Yes mate that's why i'm "whinning"?
Entertaining the kids hmm, it's debateable I suppose, I find personally my lessons are better when I proceed in this format (I teach Pratom level), chorally recite vocab, spelling it a few times, deal with the phonetic sounds (if any), test the kids on the words now memorised and read through a few sentences using the Thai Translation as well, get the kids to record both new vocab with Thai translation and also sentences, a few examples of sentences that contain those new words learned, then we proceed with words that are similar. I find this helps with those students who frequently jumble up letters, kids who write b instead of d and vice versa. I motivate the class to finish there work by marking the books individually in the classroom (most times), at the desk of the student and try to enforce a no copying policy to ensure the students are studying new topics. By the way I get class members to come and write thai translations, I tend to avoid visual aids as in actual articles and use drawings on the board for Pratom 1 and 2. I will have a bit of a laugh with the kids and use a game as a motivator to get the class to finish their work further enforcing lessons but generally I think I am sided with traditional teaching methods as the kids can get a bit out of control. Another reason why I tend to sway away from visual aids just to add is that I find certain individuals make reference to pictures rather than words, one experience where it could have got me into trouble was when my pratom 2 exam paper was suspiciously tampered and contained drawings which didn't relate to the words, thankfully the P2's were well aware of the meanings of He, She, They, I, we, you and it so most of them answered the questions properly. I tend to find that the pratom level kids read each word independently which sounds terrible so I try to pass on the concept of reading ahead translating it in their heads and then reading the sentence out aloud, I personally find that this trains them to think of the translation and recognise sentence structures which differ to Thai grammar structures, and coaches them in conversational English too. I think that's a lot of dedication to students, I also don't just try to teach the good kids I offered my services free during lunch periods for those who failed the spelling tests, the management were shocked with my dedication, like they said from the start it was only a 3 month contract.
I just feel that regardless of the fact that I had come in late since I had dealt with that issue with the managers that I should have been paid for those 4 days for the work that I had put in, by that time my contract had expired and I was more doing them a favour by sticking around.
From a constructive nature though, I would advise that if you are to take a job with Chokchai, they are recruiting now by the way and the salaries now over 40k with special classes thrown in, just be careful with those 3 month contracts and special class money, ofcourse make sure your on time too. LOL
Ben
Topic: Chokchai School, Lad Prao (Read 4855 times)