Student Blogs - 1st January 2006

The end of my first school term as a rookie

Darren, a participant on the TESOL course in August 2005, looks back at the the past few months

Well, what can I say? From that dreadful, stomach-wrenching feeling, wanting it all to be a bad dream, when I walked into my first class room a few weeks ago, to now, when I think it’s a dream but I don’t want to wake up. It’s amazing how things have changed in such a short time. I am not the same man I was a few weeks ago. If I’m truthful, I’ll tell you that the children in my five classes a day have changed me. Everyday when I walk into that classroom, I learn so much from them; I sometimes wonder who is teaching who! I have had to learn the names of 150 students in only a few weeks, and slowly but surely they’re all falling into place. It’s strange to think how you start to remember them: first I remember the little DEVIL’S; then come the little angels; and the rest drift in ever so slowly - the bright and the not so bright.

From the very beginning, you start to realize that these little people aren’t that bad. You see their little (or not so little!) personalities start to come through. I have such a mixed variety of children; from the very bright ones, to two students who have learning difficulties and one who is autistic. These students have given me much more confidence, because they are so caring and so forgiving. I don’t know how I did it, but on that first day I waltzed into the first classroom, and went onto auto-pilot - just acted like a circus clown with gestures and ice-breaking exercises. Since then, I have built up such a rapport, not just with the students, but with the staff too. The staff have told me that in all the time their students have been learning English, they have never seen any foreign teacher teach pronunciation using mouth shapes. The teachers have never seen foreign teachers teach songs or play learner-centered games. They have responded to me amazingly. If I’m honest with myself, I think at first I was a little too relaxed with my classroom routines, but I’m now starting to pull them all into line.

To wrap up this journal, I would like to mention that all the staff on this course are an amazing bunch of people and have given me a greater understanding of how the little people learn and what they need from us as a role model and teacher. There has been so much information crammed into such a short time and you think you’ll lose it, but in times of despair it just all comes back like a bolt from the blue. Now my course has finished, I think I would like to go on to do something else with a young learner based qualification.

6th August 2009

Anna shares her experiences from training to starting work in Thailand

25th June 2009

Rowan's first experience of this amazing "Respect Teacher Day" in Thailand's idyllic southern province of Surat Thani

20th June 2009

Charlie looks back over the last three years and reflects on how dramatically his life has changed. From leaving England, to taking the course in Thailand and now teaching in Tanzania

1st April 2006

Francois and Sanru Jansen van Rensburg, a young couple from South Africa, joined Chichester College's TESOL course in Bangkok in February 2007

1st March 2006

Lindsay looks at how her life has changed over the 2 years since she took the course in September 2004