Frustration in the Beginning

There have been a few more things the last few days that have been frustrating at school. The service department (in charge of supplies, copies and helping out with other aspects) seems to be very slow. Apparently it takes a few days to get copies made, when I could go in and make copies myself in less than 5 minutes. Also, it has been over a week and I still do not have a trash can in my room. I asked someone about that today and he said that the trash can was on its way. I thought it was kind of funny because I didn't know that it took so long to get trash cans ordered for the school.

One other thing that is a little frustrating is the fact that several copiers and printers broke down the first few days. There is a teachers lounge in the main building with computers so we can print things off, but there is never any paper in the printers. It almost seems like I am in an inner city school without many resources. However, on the other hand, all elementary classes and a few high school classes have smartboards in the classroom. I see that as a way to improve the image of the school. I don't know how much money was spent on the technology, but it would be nice to have some paper to print things out as well.

From what I understand of the school, the director, Miss Lakhana, has quite a bit of power and pretty much has things done her way. If she doesn't like something, she tells someone about it and it gets changed. I haven't had any run-ins with her, though she has stopped in my class a few times and observed me. I was completely fine with that. I really have no problem with someone coming in and observing me teach.

Again, these are merely observations. I understand that every school is going to have its own problems and issues. Given all of that, I am extremely happy with the school environment, the attitude of the teaching staff and the choice I made teaching at ASB. I simply see some aspects that could be improved upon and things that I think should be done differently.

I truly believe that some of the strictness with the supplies comes from the culture and some comes from the school needing to save money. I think Miss Lakhana is harder on the Thai workers at the school and she comes down on them more than she lets us see. I think the policies they have in place are due to her harping on them about saving resources and not being wasteful.

The textbook issue is still causing problems in the class. Today, I sent one class up to get textbooks and it would have been a wasted day had it not been for that class being in my homeroom and first bell. We were still able to get one lesson completed. Two other classes did not have books yet. I sent someone up to the library to see if the class could come get books and the librarian said to have them come back in an hour, after they were gone out of my class. So I went ahead and did the lessons I had planned and will give homework assignments out the next day I see them. Sometimes thats all I can do.

I did realize I have some very intelligent students in my class. I was playing a review game today to pass some time in one of the classes without text books. I asked the class to split up into two groups and come up with a mathematical number pattern that the other team had to figure out the pattern and fill in the next three values. One of the groups actually came up with the Fibinacci Sequence (1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, ...) of adding the previous two terms to come up with the next one. I was shocked and amazed because this was my 6th grade class. Although, I discovered they did not know the name of this sequence, I was still happy that it came up. The other group did guess the pattern and correctly filled in the blanks.

Aaron