Summer School

Started summer school today and it was rather interesting. As with many things in Thailand, I have to be flexible and able to adapt to different circumstances. Didn't know how many kids I was going to have or what subjects I was going to teach. I now know that I have about 11-12 kids (which could increase come tomorrow) and I am teaching a variety of classes ranging from Statistics to Algebra.

Its rather interesting how it works, but the kids are supposed to make up the classes they failed and use the summer school as a way to improve a grade, which makes sense to me. However, I was orignially going to have about 15 kids all day long for math, which is about 4 hours. Well, they also almost had me teaching science this summer since there was no one to teach science originally. We did find that the Language Arts teacher has taught some science before and could handle it.

Still, the schedule is not set yet, but we have improved upon it greatly. I am not 100% sure what exactly I will be teaching, but I'm working on that. The worst thing about all of this is that we don't have access to the library so I can't check out books for the students. I've been told that I can get books from the library with someone else opening it up for me. I'm not exactly sure how its going to work, but I guess I'm going to have to do a lot of independent study with the students. Presenting them with problems and having them find notes and information on the internet so they can solve the problems and get some practice with the stuff.

I think I'm going to have to assign a lot of projects to the students and hope things work out for the best from there. At least through projects I will be able to keep the students busy and they will be working towards something. Obviously, I've never taught summer school, so this is a different experience. The fact that it is in Thailand and unorganized only adds to the adventure.

Aaron