A day in the life of an international kindergarten teacher...

Only one month left in Thailand now. Here's what happened:

We packed up our house and moved it into one of my Dad's self storage containers on New Year's Day. 5 days later we boarded the plane, still with hesitations. I was worried about not getting a job and Rob was worried that I didn't have enough money saved up and that the move could effect his business given that he would be working all through the night. We spent a week in a hotel during that time I sent off my cv to several schools with not much luck given that the Thai school year ended in April so any potential positions would be available in May. However, after checking the Phuket Gazette online jobs directory I saw a position that was advertised in December for a kindergarten teacher at an international school.

We moved into a villa in Chalong, close by to the school and I was given an interview. I got the job! So two weeks after moving to Thailand, the Angel of Good Fortune set it so that I could stay and work :)

The job was not quite as I had expected and whilst my TEFL course helped to some degree, nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to be thrown into. I was responsible for teaching about 12, 18 months - 3 year old, children in the nursery from 9am-12. They had a schedule mapped out for me that consisted of:

0845 - 0900 circle time (singing with nursery, P1 and P2)
0900- 0920 phonics - letters and phonics - sounds
0920 - 0940 dance and songs
0940 - 1000 numbers
1000 - 1020 life skills and shapes or art colouring or English conversation - animals or family
1020 - 1040 toys and games
1040 - 1100 books
1100 - lunchtime followed by playing outside and shower time


So......... this was interesting. At the age of 18 months a child is only just beginning to speak their own language. Most of the children had Thai mothers and 'Farang' (foreign) fathers. So they were learning to speak Thai and some Danish, Russian, French, English or whatever the mother tongue of their fathers. For the kids who spoke no English, here I was trying to throw a third language into the mix.

We also had quite a few Russians in the school (I was surprised when I arrived in Phuket, especially after doing a snorkelling trip, to discover that the island is overrun with Russians). There were also a good few Korean kids. A note on the Koreans, I don't know what they feed their kids but they are totally crazy! They will not sit down no matter what. The bane of my first few weeks at nursery was a little boy called 'Song Won', or Won as he was known. He was about 2 - 2 1/2 and was as strong as a baby ox and was on a totally different level from the other kids. He would run around all day, not respond to his name at all and occassionally abused the other children if there was a sharing issue involving toys.On one occassion, Won managed to smack me on the head with a plastic lion and shortly afterwards give me a backwards headbutt to the nose. That was a tough day.

I tried to stick to the schedule where possible and always started with the letter of the week (I worked my way through the alphabet one letter per week). Numbers I always found more difficult for some reason. By 10am I usually gave up and let them play for half an hour with toys before reading to them for 15 minutes. At 1045 the nannies would get them ready for lunch which was actually at 1050 not 11am as the schedule suggested. Every class had a nanny, a Thai lady who would sort the kids out in terms of water and toileting. I had 2-3 nannies in nursery, thank god! 

After nursery I had an hour break to eat lunch and make a quick run across the road to the 7/11 to fuel up on caffeine and chocolate to get through the afternoon.

I was then upstairs with the P1s (aged about 3-4) and the P2s (aged about 4-5). I had a nice easy half an hour doing games and puzzles, colouring or teaching shapes. I was then joined by my American colleague, Teacher Gillie, and we would take it in turns reading them story books for half an hour. I then had half an hour of teaching Shapes and Science to the P1s. Hmm, teaching Science to 3 and 4 year olds. Where to begin. Well I had no books or curriculum but I spent the first two lessons observing the Head Teacher who shared this lesson with me. When I say shared this lesson, he was there for the most part but had me do the teaching. After shadowing him delivering an improvised lesson on trees and leaves, I proceeded to basically teach them about animals from different continents. Although I started with the life cycle of a butterfly. This is where I discovered the magical teaching tool that is my Kindle! I downloaded a time lapse video of a Monarch butterfly emerging from a cocoon. The kids loved it! I also taught a lesson on sea creatures, which turned into about 5 lessons as the kids loved it so much that they would shout, "Teacher, Fish!". Their wish was my command. The ultimate lesson I delivered was on sharks, the kids were crazy about them, especially one little boy called Phumin who would come to school everyday with one toy shark or another, and a shark hat.

Following Science/Shapes, I would spend half an hour with P1s as they had snack time, which was very chaotic once they had fuelled up on sugar and would run around the room like wild animals. Until I discovered the magic Kindle, I proceeded to download videos of sharks, pingu, the alphabet song, and some David Attenborough documentaries. Brilliant, calm restored to snack time.

After snack time, Gillie and I took it in turns to teach After School English from 3pm - 4pm. I would do Mon Wed Fri and Gillie would do Tues and Thurs and then vice versa the following week and so on. AS Eng consisted of children aged 3 all the way up to about 6 or 7. With a total mix of abilities it was a challenge! 2 or 3 days a week we would teach a letter of the alphabet and the rest of the time consisted mainly of vocab such as actions, feelings, places, body parts etc. I enjoyed this lesson after a while, although somewhat chaotic as it was the end of the day and most of the other kids had gone home which made it difficult for these kids to focus, it was usually fun.When I wasn't delivering the lesson I would be helping to control the class, mainly by sitting with a 3 year old black French boy called Victor who was cute but had such an attitude on him! I would ask him to complete his worksheet, he would say 'No, I cannot' in his little French accent. I would ask him to sit down and get the same response. I would put him outside and he would cry. But every now and then he would voluntarily get on with it like a little trooper, and even do extra work by tracing his name on the back of the sheet.


So that was my day. The first day I was thrown in at the deep end, I did circle time with T.Gillie as we did every morning, I then had T.Danny (Head Master) come in and try to teach the kids colours using the little plastic balls. Half an hour later he left me to it. I hadn't prepared at all, had zero training and here I was surrounded by 10 babies.

I have so much thanks to give to the head nanny in nursery, Buoy, for a couple of reasons. The first is that she gave me tips on what to do to engage the kids, she had been there a year and watched various nursery teachers come and go but had observed things that work and things that don't. The second reason is that she lived down my 'Soi' (road) and would drive me to school every morning. All I had to do was to walk out of my road, a small circle of villas, to the road that took me to the main busy road and it is just before I reached the busy road that I would wait for her to pick me up. I was dropped off in the afternoons by the school 'bus', a 7 seater space wagon. One of my favourite things about my daily commute was walking to and from my pick up or drop off point at the end of that road. On a daily basis I was greeted with 'Hello!' and 'Good Morning' from several different people. I was also greeted with 'Motorbike!' everyday by one guy who had a little make shift shop on the corner. Everyday I said no until one day I thought, yeh ok, can you take me to Kata beach. He said no. Weird.