The Road Goes On

Do I teach them about the elements?  Do I just skim over that?  Do I spend a lot of time on the particle nature of matter or simply mention it?  Should I examine state transitions in detail or just teach them the definitions of boiling and melting point?  Do they even have the English vocabulary to talk about any of this?

These questions and many others have been plaguing me all weekend as I’ve attempted to devise lesson plans for my M1 and M2 students.  That’s seventh and eighth graders to you Americans.  I have to teach science in English to students who are still learning English.  I have to hold the interest of the students who are practically fluent in English and those who barely understand three words.  I have to entertain not just those who love science, but those who hate it.  To make things worse, each class is completely different.  An activity might work for one class and fail spectacularly for another.

So what do I teach?  What do I cover, what do I skip, what do I focus on?  I have to write these lesson plans four weeks ahead of time, but not even the best laid plan survives contact with the students.  It’s very hard to judge how quickly a class will tear through the lesson plan.  Sometimes they burn through things that I thought would take them twice as long.  Other times they take forever trying to understand something that I thought was relatively straight forward or a given.  So far, most of my misjudgments have been underestimations.  But I’m sure that will change with time.

To make it a further challenge, there are a huge number of class days in the coming weeks lost to school wide activities.  This week Monday and Tuesday were holidays.  Next week, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday are sports days.  No classes.  The week after that, no classes on Friday.  After that it’s Thursday and Friday that there aren’t classes.  I don’t even remember the reasons for those.  I don’t see my classes every day.  I have one double period and two single periods a week for the M1s.  For the M2s its one double period and one single period a week.  Since I have three M1 classes and two M2s, if I miss a couple of days of classes it can really screw up the schedule.  There’s a week where I see one class twice as much as I see the others.  I’m going to end up having that class just play games to fill the time.  And the others are going to be jealous that they have to work hard to keep up.

And it just continues to get better.  There’s no defined curriculum, so I’m making this up as I go along.  I’m using the previous teacher’s vague course plan and the book to try and determine what to teach, when and how much time to spend on teach topic.  But I have no idea if I’m actually adequately preparing them for next year.  And given how things go around here, if I’m under or overshooting I may never hear until its too late really.  There’s so much responsibility on my shoulders for these kids future.  I could either excite a wave of scientists or completely disillusion one.  Or have no effect at all either way.

I’m really glad I’m just their science teacher.  I can’t imagine being an American Elementary teacher and having to teach all subjects.  We don’t pay our teachers enough…

So I’ve been teaching Science at Satree Phuket to M1 and M2.  That’s 7th and 8th graders in American terms.  I started last Wednesday.  As of today, it’s been a full week of classes.

I don’t even know where to start.  It’s very weird, being on the other side.  After twenty plus years of being a student,  I’m the one standing in the front of the room, giving the lectures,  doing the grading.  It’s strange.  Among the things I’ve noticed, my organizational ability has increased substantially.  It has to.  Before I could always say, “Eh, the only person this matters to is me.  Who cares if I’m organized?”  Now, I have 130 or more students to whom it matters.  If I’m not organized I’ll lose their papers.  And then I have sad students on my hands.

I used to be able to say the same thing for class.  “Who cares if I’m not prepared for class?”  The only person it mattered to was me.  I could ignore the teacher and catch up on the lesson later if I so chose.  Now I can’t say that at all.  If I’m not prepared for class, it means there are thirty students sitting and staring at me and being very confused.  It means I look like an idiot and they don’t learn anything.

So far I think I’m doing alright.  I’m barely ahead of my lesson plans, but I’ve only had a week to get my head around it.  So it’s fairly reasonable that I would be.  Teaching science is hard with out a language barrier.  It’s really hard when there is one.  But it’s not impossible, and I think I’m starting to figure out what works and what doesn’t.  But I don’t have a grip on how fast I can go yet.  Or how much I can fit in in the time left.  I don’t really have much idea how deep I should try to get into some of the material, or whether I should try and skim by it as fast as possible.  Am I taking too much time to cover this?  Spending enough time on that?

I’m not going by the book.  I can understand why teachers would go by the book.  It’s the safe route.  If you go by the book, you know you can’t get in trouble with the school for teaching the wrong stuff – “It’s in the book!”  But going by the book doesn’t help the kids if you ask me.  I – and every one I’ve ever known – have always hated “by the book teachers”.  So I’m using the book to determine – very roughly – what I need to cover.  And then making it up from there.

But that leaves me with doubt.  Were they supposed to get this detailed an explanation of the periodic table in M2?  Do they need to know the difference between ionic and covalent bond?  Will I get in trouble for teaching it to them – even though I think it will help them understand much of the stuff that follows in the book?  They do chemical reactions and balancing equations later.  How can I teach them that if they don’t know about protons, electrons and ionic bonds?

And then of course, there’s a wish to be a liked teacher. Do they look forward to my lessons?  Are they interested?  Or are they helplessly bored? Is there anything I can do to make the material less boring?

I teach 18 hours a week (give or take).  I probably work a little closer to 50 to 60 hours.  I’m not even giving them that much work right now.  I’m supposed to give four weeks in advance of lesson plans to the administrators by the end of the month. I’m only a couple of days in advance with lesson plans right now.  When I do that, it’ll probably be more like 70 or 80 hours a week.  If I were to give and grade more work, it could easily go up more.

When I get home I’m just ready to crash.  Poor Michelle.  She doesn’t start for another week.  She’s bored out of her mind all day, then I get home and I’m utterly fried.   But at least that’ll only last for another week.  Then we’ll both be utterly fried.

On the bright side.  There are worse fates than having to sit in front of windows like these and grade papers.

And I love my students.  They seem to like me, so far.  Hopefully they’re learning something.  Only time – and my first test – will tell.