Here we are, the very last day of September, and I realize that it's been over a month since my last blog post.... I've been doing a pretty good job at blogging at least once a month, but somehow September seemed to fly by so quickly! Really, where did the time go?? I can hardly believe it!! This past month, in addition to my regular work routine, I spent a couple weeks working on my first six-month report for Peace Corps, then I spent about a week in Bangkok following up on a brief illness, and it seems like the rest of the month just got lost somewhere in between there.
Did you notice that I referenced a six-month report?? Yes! It's been over six months since I've been at my site, a quarter of my service is complete, about a third of my time here in Thailand has passed. Time certainly does seem to fly in Peace Corps!! So more about this report... Every six months, Peace Corps Volunteers have to submit a comprehensive report which entails a quantitative and qualitative summary/breakdown/analysis of our service. Basically, we do some number crunching and write a few essays reflecting the work that has been done so far.
One section of the report called for a success story, a story that demonstrates a positive impact that I've made. I revisited and skipped this section so many times. I kept thinking: I know I've been here six months already, but it really doesn't seem like it's been that long, it really doesn't seem like I've been able to do very much, I don't feel like I've made much of an impact at all. Most of what I've done so far is teach English, and that's hardly been "successful." Sometimes it seems like the students forget half of what I teach after a couple weeks; sometimes just being in the classroom is difficult, as I haven't had much classroom experience and behavior management in a different language is no walk in the park... Honestly, I'd had a particularly trying week, and I just could not drudge up any semblance of a success story aside from how I resisted a teacher's insistence of "You should use the stick, they understand the stick."
At some point in this whole thought process, I thought back to my days as an AmeriCorps/City Year Team Leader, I often encouraged my team members to look for and share "starfish stories" from their service. The term "starfish story" is based on the tale of a little girl walking on a beach littered with starfish, she picked them up as she strolled along and threw them back into the sea; though she was ridiculed and taunted by others telling her that she couldn't possibly save them all or make a difference, she smiled as she went along, and as she threw in another starfish, she said "I made a difference to that one!" (paraphrased)
Although somewhat different, I decided to follow the advice that I'd given my corps members in the past, "The story does not have to be a grandeur spectacular tale, it's the little things!" So here goes my success story...
[XYZ] School is the smallest school in my subdistrict. Every Thursday afternoon, for three hours, I teach a room of fifteen students from ป4 to ป6 [4th through 6th grade]. We learn and we play together, and when they asked me recently if I have any children, I told them that they were all my babies. These students, although they are a handful at times, are the nearest and dearest to my heart. Most Thursday afternoons, the pre-school (anuban) teacher, the foreign teacher (teaching English to ป1-ป3), and I are the only [teachers] present at the school; sometimes after pre-school is dismissed, I would ask the anuban teacher to join us in our activities for the last hour of school.
Recently, I taught Mother's Day songs at all six of my schools leading up to the Queen's Birthday/Mother's Day Celebration. I had selected two songs - "You are My Sunshine" and "I Love My Mommy." At each school, I played both songs once and had the students vote on which one they wanted to learn. At [XYZ] School, "I Love My Mommy" won by a single vote. I translated the song so that the students could understand the meaning, transliterated for pronunciation, then we practiced singing and came up with some actions together. I realized that some students were slacking off a bit, just doing the actions, and relying on other students to carry the song. To encourage full participation and teamwork, I separated the students into three random groups of five and gave them fifteen minutes to practice the song. The groups were randomized to encourage students to work with other students outside of the little "best friend" cliques that they usually form.
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| Group Practice |
Each group occupied separate empty rooms to practice, I informed them that there would be a competition after fifteen minutes. I went from room to room to silently observe and to give time reminders in five minute increments. In one classroom, I observed students singing and playing separately in different areas of the the room. In another classroom, I observed students singing together with their papers and practicing the actions. In the third room (office/lounge), I observed students lounging and laughing on the couch, drinking water from teacups, pretending that they were having coffee, then pretending to practice when they saw me. After fifteen minutes, I brought the groups back together, and they had a surprise audience/judge, the anuban teacher. The groups went up one by one to perform, it was obvious which group really practiced, which group semi-practiced, and which group "pretend practiced." I didn't have the language to fully and properly explain to them the correlation between their practice session and their performance, but I conveyed some of my ideas to the anuban teacher (who also doesn't speak English, but is a sympathetic listener), and she was able to really bring it home for them. The students all understood why the winning group won and agreed that they should work better as a team.
As I dismissed the students, they asked what I would be teaching them next week. The next week was going to be a short week due to the Mother's Day holiday, and I hadn't really thought about a lesson, so I told them that I didn't know yet. They told me that they wanted to learn the second song and that they wanted to use teamwork. Although it would be post-Mother's day, I loved the idea and decided to take them up on their suggestion. We did a take-2 the following week, this time inviting the other foreign teacher and the ป1-ป3 students to be the audience (the anuban teacher had to leave early). Honestly, the improvement the second week was stellar compared to the week before, it was a more difficult song, but each group demonstrated teamwork in their practice, and they all did a great job performing! It was so good that by the third round, the younger students were able to sing along to parts of the song. I told my students how proud I was of all them.
I had only planned to teach them an English Mothers' Day song, even though I knew that they would probably forget it in a few weeks, but I have a feeling they walked away with much more. I hope that they will always remember the importance of teamwork and apply that lesson to other areas of life.
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| The moment they became my babies... They'd had their "Wai Kruu" ceremony to honor their teachers that morning, When I got there in the afternoon, they showed me the arrangements that they had made and said that they wanted to honor me too. They sat me down and proceeded to have a mini ceremony, just for me! It was so very touching. I adopted them right then and there. |
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| Post-Wai-Kruu-Michelle Ceremony |
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| The Fifth and Sixth Graders performing "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing" |
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| Check out the cunning little wolf! |
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| With my babies :-) |
