End of the 3 weeks OCIP

In a flash, three weeks of OCIP came to past.
I must say that doing volunteer work by teaching English (in Krabi) was not something I got to do everyday.

I could still remember the first day when the Krabi Openmind Projects coordinator brought my friends and I to Ban Nanok school. It was a school in a village (as Ban meant village). The basic was there - One class per level, fans, just enough classrooms, a field and a indoor area to house the students during rain and assembly. We decided to teach primary 3,4,5 and 6. Our ideal lesson time with those classes were given to the vice principal who is a teacher herself.

Language posed quite a problem. I could not speak thai like the students there so I really appreciated google translate. It was a great help during the delivery of my teaching/lessons. Picking up a few terms in thai from the students was also rather interesting. Learning was less one-way than usual. Listening to some speak broken English during communication can be rather comical sometimes too.

Engaging the students was hard work. We had to enforce class control and I was glad my friends were there to help another during lessons. The attention span for the students can be rather short and some just could not keep still for a few minutes. My friends and I experimented different ways to engage the students - be it introducing songs, showing videos then phrases which describes the video and games. Games were found to be very effective as expected. So injecting some happiness/fun through was the bulk of what we tried to do though some drier lesson time had to be brought forth first.

I was able to observed to understand them and a little of what they want and what they are going through - little things like she is feeling unwell, what they are asking, what some of them like. Generally, they were rather friendly, saying hello often. Towards the end of the three weeks, though we still had communication issues, we could still "connect" through sports, handshakes, fistbumps and high-fives.

The teachers there were quite friendly and hospitable as well making sure our lunch is adequately wholesome. My friends and I ate durain, mangosteen and many other desserts in school. The vice principal even cooked Pad Thai for us on one occasion and she said that it was her first time of this year to cook something. 真是没话说了.