The other weekend I was forced to partake in a teacher training seminar on Saturday and Sunday. This meant no weekend for me.
I have come to dread these seminars after being through 4 of them. I can truthfully say that one out of the four was in some way useful. Two of them were just down right boring and a complete waste of time.
I wasn’t confident about this seminar either as the person who was arranging it had arranged the previous seminars. It wasn’t until a few days before that we actually knew who was coming to train us. And also one of our newest teachers was asked to present a section on motivating young learners.
So I went with serious doubts and was expecting it to be very boring and mundane. The first guest was a really lovely lady, Dr. Saisunee, she did a presentation on Authentic Assessment, I am not going to go into this but in short it is about how we should assess students and also set tests now, not how they did in years gone by.
I actually sat through a presentation on the same topic last year by a foreign guy and it was delivered terribly and was so boring I was looking for rope to hang myself. Thankfully Dr. Saisunee presented the topic incredibly well and I enjoyed it, I also took plenty out of this as well.
Then the rest of the weekend we played games, yes games. There really wasn’t too much more to it. We did browse the topic of how to control a classroom, teachers offered their ideas and they were written onto a board for all to share.
So we played games, smiled and laughed.
One funny game they did was a game where you can only ask, ‘yes/no’ questions. I have played this game before with native speakers and older students and it is fun.
The victim has a name of something placed on their back, they then have to try and work out what it is using the least amount of questions.
Now, playing this with Thai teachers was funny, some of the teachers from kindergarten have very low English ability but they had come along and were trying their hardest to participate.
It was pretty hilarious when a person has, penguin on their back and they ask, ‘Do I have fur?’ Yes, can be a little misleading.
Or the victim has ‘snail’ on their back. He asks a Thai teacher, “Do I have more than 6 legs?” Of course the answer is, ‘yes’. And this goes on and on.
Dancing, dancing and dancing.
And even some limbo.
In the end the weekend was fun, but I didn’t take much out of the weekend that I hadn’t already learnt at some time before. The other thing that hurt is losing a good whack of money from my private students.
I teach 7 hours a weekend, 5 hours on Saturday and 2 hours on Sunday, that is 28 hours a month. In those 28 hours I only take a few thousand Baht less than the wage I get for an entire month from my school for working 160 hours a month.
Thankfully I won’t need to go through this for another entire year.
Brunty
3 comments:
Hi Guys,
This has nothing to do with teaching English, but believe me, no way would Mike Hare be told to come away from family on a weekend to sing songs anmd play games without his wife. I would have walked out.
This is for all you Ubon-Warin guys out there. We are experiencing heavy continuous rain which could cause flooding later towards the end of August and September. Maybe into October. The Mun river is very high.
I’m an old hand here in Ubon and remember history a bit more clearly than the locals. Like in 1915 when they bused several hundred Free Isarn men from Roi-Et down to Ubon for a meeting and lined them up in Thung Sri Muang to raise the flag and the machine guns rose up and shot them down. We have our own killing fields in the middle of town.
Back to rain and floods. In 1978, I lived in Khon Kaen, and for my late wife to get home to Ubon she bused to Roi-Et, changed buses to Surin. Then a train from Surin to Warin. She then took a boat a little way down from the railway station across to the main Ubon market. In Khon Kaen my house near the hospital was flooded through the ground floor and my friend erected fish nets in the garden to catch all the fish from the fishery research station.
In 1982 the same floods occurred again in Ubon. Then in 2000, 2001 and 2002 the floods were more severe. This time the ring roads impounded more water, more business had been built between Ubon and Warin (Ubon Watsatduk the big offender here). I couldn’t drive on any road out to the university. Army trucks were brought in to ferry people from the main market across to Warin. There my researcher would pick me up to go out to the university.
The cause of these floods is caused elsewhere. Heavy rain upcountry in Udorn and Kalsin will cause their dams to almost overflow; the Ubonrat at Namphong and the Lat Prao in Kalsin. The dam authorities open the gates to release the water to protect their dams. All this water flows down the Chi into the Mun and along to Ubon. If China then releases more water, the Mekong backs up, the Mun can’t flow out and so the water spills over around Warin and Ubon. Further north the same happens in Sisaket, Yasothon and Roi-Et.
Flooding may not happen in 2009, but at the moment with the high level of the Mun, signs are ominous.
Buy some gumboots.
Michael
Hi Jason,
You can't beat a weekend doing some teacher training! It looks like everyone had fun. I miss you all, say hi to everyone for me!
David x
Hi Michael, Thanks for the info about the likely floods. I have seen the Moon (Mun) river in flood and all the house evacuated on teh banks and the people living under tarps near Ubon Watsudor.
I too wanted to walk out of the seminar, as I didn't really learn anyything.
David, great to hear from you, mate. We played a lot of silly games and laughed a lot which helped make the time go pretty quickly.
I hope you and Nop are well and all is well back in the UK.
I said hello to all and Tooktik said she misses you Mak mak.
Hope to hear from you again sooner than later mate.
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