Arriving at school in Ayutthaya

Thailand TEFL Intern Matt learns the importance of a great support network and a warm welcome when he arrives at his school to teach English!

The next morning, we got packed and boarded a minibus to the town of Sena, where we were dropped off in our pairs at our respective schools. My partner and I were taken to Wat Jaojednai School, where we were introduced to Amm; the English teacher at the school who would be our main point of contact and our best friend on the classroom for the next seven weeks. Amm showed us to our accommodation, a little shack at the back of the school grounds. We had Wi-Fi, fans and mosquito nets in each bedroom and a western style toilet and shower. That said though, it was otherwise very basic, and we later learned that some of the other interns had not been quite so lucky with their accommodation, so I think any readers who might be considering going on an internship need to be honest with themselves about how well they think they’ll be able to handle living conditions which can be trying at times. We would have geckos, frogs and cockroaches find their way into the shack through gaps in the walls, the water was only ever as warm as the pipes leading to the shack could get in the sun, and despite the fans it would often still be uncomfortably hot at night, and like I said, we had been quite lucky. So prepare yourself mentally for this sort of thing as best you can. You just have to tough it out.

Amm showed us where we could do our laundry and then we attended a meeting with the rest of the teachers and the school director, where everyone introduced themselves. We were taken to a supermarket to pick up some essentials then taken back to our new home. We had been invited to the school director’s house for dinner, and that evening Amm picked us up and took us to a beautiful house with an outside dining area right by the side of a river. We met the school director’s wonderful family and were presented with authentic, delicious Thai food, which we were shown how to eat the Thai way. We were given the warmest possible welcome and had a lovely night.

We were up early the next day for our first day in front of a class. We had been told that we would teach kindergarten together in a morning, and then I was assigned to teach grades six through nine. For my first class, I introduced myself to about fifteen students, and Amm explained that they were studying grammatical structure and if there’s anything on the subject I’d like to teach! Needless to say, I was not prepared for that at all, and must have looked like a deer caught in headlights! I wasn’t to worry though, as I explained that I didn’t have anything prepared yet and she said that that was fine, I could just assist her with pronunciation for now. Cue a huge sigh of relief that she understood and that it was ok.

She promised that we would be given lesson plans the next morning so we could prepare. Watching Amm teach the hard rules of English to the students made me realise just how different a method of learning English it is compared to how a native English speaker learns it. We pick it up passively through exposure, whereas they were trying to learn all the rules that frankly, not even I know completely off the top of my head.

That night, we met with the other interns at a nice little bar we found in town to discuss our first day of school. At around 9PM we left the bar and tried to find a tuk-tuk or taxi cab back to the school but the streets were deserted. After twenty minutes of wandering around, we had to admit defeat and call our LoveTEFL helpers to come save us! Here was a lesson for us: travel options around this small town were unreliable, especially at night when things seem to shut down earlier than in the UK. I would learn later that the journey was a 45 minute walk but this was our first night in town and we had no clue which way to go, and wouldn’t have wanted to walk that way at night anyway.

Finally home, we went straight to bed. Tomorrow we had our first full day of teaching!