First week has been over.

Hello. I’m SUZUKA.

After arriving at Khon Kaen city, before you could say Jack Robinson, passed one week!! I experienced so many things in multi perspectives.

In the school, I usually observed the class. There are many University Students who will be teacher next spring and help me so much. Also my mentor is so kind and well takes care of me. I’m in teacherroom for teachers of 2nd grade students and all of teachers are so kind too.

I will talk about the class of Thailand. There are so many differences compared to Japanese elementary school.

This is an example of schedule of students. They come to school around 8 a.m. and go to the square of the school and hold morning ceremony. All grades of student are gathered and do something like praying, the representative students read the script and the others repeat that. After that some teachers speak on the stage and the ceremony over. Sometimes the ceremony prolongs and consumes the time for first period.

After going back to each classroom, teachers start the class. As I said in the above, there are so many differences from Japanese school.

・Students take off the shoes before entering the room but teachers don’t.　

・In math class, students sit on the floor, not chair.

・While listen to teacher, students don’t take notebook.

・For each subject, there are teachers in charge.

These are the differences that I was really surprised at. Especially, the second one made me shocked. However, it maybe good way to make students near the black board and teacher, and make them more concentrate on the contents. Certainly, they actively speak up their ideas by themselves and it looks easy for teacher to pick up good idea that she should share hole the class members. It is same as Japan that lower grade students (about 1st grade to 3rd grade) cannot concentrate on the class. After a short time, their concentration are lost and they start to chat each other, fiddle with hand and so on. Then, teacher in Thailand says like, “crap your hands once! crap your hands twice!”. Students are so simple that try to keep up with the play. Teacher often sing a song ” If you’re happy and you know it, crap your hands”. By using these way, teachers easily gather student’s attention and smoothly conduct class.

Anyway, like this, class is hold. Surprisingly, there are two times of time of snack in a day. One is after the first period and the other is before the homeroom. I think this is also good for students because if they are hungry they cannot concentrate on the class. Usually, they drink yogurt or milk and eat little donuts.

Classes last 50 minutes and there is basically no break between classes. Students often be late for the class because there is no break and time to prepare for next class. It is impossible in Japan but both teachers and students don’t worry about that.

After homeroom, students go to each activity. There are students who go back to their house, who play soccer as club activity and so on. In this school, it is natural that the parents pick their child up everyday. In the morning and afterschool, there are so many cars of parents. There are many differences from Japan in Thailand. It is really precious experience for me to think what is best for students.

Incidentally, I will talk about my everyday life in Thailand. Now, it is cool in Thailand compared to hottest season. My mentor; Miss Aree told me like this, ” there are 3 seasons in Thailand, hot, hotter and hottest!!”. I felt so interesting. Main transportation of university students in Khon Kaen is bike. We don’t have the one, so we ride on shuttle bus that is free and be managed by KKU to go school every morning. The sunshine of Thailand is so strong that my instep was clearly tanned in the shape of a sandal string. When we go shopping, the bus isn’t enough to go where we want to go that we sometimes use the system of ” Grab “. This system is so convenient for us. Soon after I book the grab car, it picks me up at where we designated and takes us where we want to go with cheap fee.

Likely above, I can get used to the life in Thailand little by little.

See you next post….