Have you ever had a job interview where the interviewer gives you a form to fill out, then talks on the phone the whole time, and finishes off by informing you that they already have two people for the position, but they will call you if they don’t work out? I just did.

I’m bummed, because it certainly would have been a step up. My current school is one of the top ten best bilingual schools in Thailand, and pays good money (I make 40,000 baht a month, which seems like a lot if I don’t convert it into $1,000 a month). The school I talked to today is one of the five best bilingual schools in Thailand. They pay well too: 50,000 baht a month. That’s big money in Thailand. But, more important than the money, was the fact that the job was for what I want to do: teach math to old students, grades 11 and 12.

Oh well. There is some good news. I will have an interview next Friday for the “dream job.”

I’m really getting into my grade 7 math class, now that we’re doing geometry. I was all excited an enthusiastic, and all the students paid attention. It helps to teach something you enjoy.

Copy cats

One thing I can’t think about if I don’t want to get depressed is the Thai attitude toward copying. In America, the smart kids get beat up by the other kids, so they don’t want to share their answers. They did the work, so why would they want to give anyone else a free ride? But in Thailand, the smart kids are concerned about their dimmer peers, and they want to help them pass, so they share their answers. So the whole class will usually quickly have answers to all the problems. This is disastrous for little kids, who all start chanting “teacher finished,” even if I tell them in Thai that they are wrong. At least the seventh graders will let me explain mistakes.

It’s an unwinnable battle, but I fight it every day. Today half the class all had the same answers to their problems. The student who did them didn’t read the instructions, so the answers were all ridiculous. I asked them three times if they copy from someone who is wrong, will their answer be right? These guys speak very poor English, but finally someone answered “no.”

The one thing I always try to stress is the the answer isn’t good enough! They can’t just come up to the board and write that the area is 42. They have to write out the equation. The fact that I think the equation is more important than the numerical answer, and that I want them to use a calculator to solve the equation is a concept they just can’t grasp. Most of them don’t seem to know how to use a calculator, and one of the good students refuses.

Since this is summer school, there is no homework, and no tests. So if they copy, it doesn’t really matter. In fact, that actually helps me, due to the school’s demand that the books be completed. It doesn’t matter if the students learn anything, as long as their workbooks are complete and marked everyone is happy.

During the real term, copying of homework would be a problem. Despite the problem, I wish I could continue to teach the seventh graders. I would tackle the problem by forcing them to do what I had to do in my engineering education: show all work. That way if they didn’t do the problem themselves, they would have a lot to copy.

So, I’ll miss the seventh graders, but I’ll be glad to never see the little first grade bastards again. I’ve decided that if I were to die and go to hell, that hell would be a room full of Thai first graders chanting “teacher finished” and “play game”.