First Week Teaching in a School in Thailand

First week of teaching in the classroom is now complete! Who knew teaching was such a physically demanding job!!!

If you have been following our blog you probably know we have been living and teaching in Thailand for nearly 6 months. However, only now (August 2020) have we completed our first week of classroom teaching. Due to Covid-19 we had an unusual introduction into the world of teaching as our our first semester of lessons were via Zoom.

Having mastered the art of teaching and managing our students online we now have to learn a whole new set of skills for classroom teaching.

The new school year at the International Schools in Thailand begins in August, similar to the academic year in Europe and the US. We also will be getting similar holidays to Europe and the US, one week in October, 2 and a half weeks mid December, 4 weeks in March and then a 6 week summer break. Let the travel planning commence!!! We will be traveling around Thailand for the forceable future due to the pandemic but we feel very lucky that we will be able to do so.

We have actually been back to school for two weeks. Week one was for orientation, class room set up and teacher training. Week two (last week) was the students first week back in the classroom and it was crazy!!! Students have not been in school since March so there was a lot of excitement.

Our day consists of waking up each morning at 6am and on our bike driving to school by 6:50am. The school is only a 15 minute drive from our apartment however there are 4 sets of traffic lights that can really through our schedule off. We need to clock in by 7:30am but we usually arrive around 7:10am.

The school day is from 7:30am – 4pm. It is a long day but we do not have scheduled lessons all day. We both teach for about 19-22 hours per week. When we have no class we are free to prep for lessons, chat in the staffroom or leave the school to grab a coffee. We will be sharing a blog soon outlining a day in the life of a teacher in Thailand.

The first day was spent getting to know the students through ice breaker games, activities and fun. The next few days were spent trying to identify what level each of the students were at with each of their subjects.

The new routine, the workload and trying to get our heads around a job we have zero experience in is a little overwhelming. There are so many things to familiarise ourselves with – lesson plans, supervision duties, communications to parents, incident reports etc.

Despite the million and one thing to get our heads around we are really enjoying teaching. If you are reading this because you are interested in becoming a teacher abroad CLICK HERE to get the certification you will require. Stay tune for more blogs to come.