Rialoves2cook: I'm feeling out of my element today with the new school term beginning. Teaching fourth grade is harder than I expected after working with the kindergarten kids. It's a relief to come back to something more familiar: cooking. Weekend Maria was a bit more ambitious and picked up the spices available in Thailand to make Berbere for an Ethiopian lentil stew, so enjoy!

#Ethiopia #Africancuisine #lentils #TastesoftheWorld

Posted Oct 29th, 7:15 PM

***

With a basket of teaching tools, Maria ascended to the third floor with a bounce in her step. Two weeks of October camp had gone well, and despite her churning stomach, she was sure she'd succeed today with her new fourth-grade classes. Reviewing her lesson ideas with Adrian had helped, even if he rarely spent time with young kids.

Outside her classroom door, she waited until the Thai teacher finished and tidied her things. A student rushed to erase the board while another placed textbooks in neat piles on the bookshelves. Even on the first day back, the Thai teachers enforced strict rules. Should she bother with the icebreaker activities? Emma had reassured her they were effective to establish a positive classroom climate, but it was the middle of their school year.

The Thai teacher greeted Maria in English before leaving the room. She'd be alone with this group, unlike with the kindergarteners. While Maria set her basket on a table near the whiteboard, the students' gazes followed her. She looked over the twenty-six unfamiliar faces. Each student sat behind a scuffed wooden desk. She'd have three periods with each group to learn their names today.

"Please rise," a short boy said in a monotonous voice.

Chairs scraped against the floor as all but one student rose. The young boy who remained seated had hair flung over his eyes while he scowled. As Maria smiled at him, his glower deepened until the bigger girl next to him nudged him with her elbow, and he stood.

"Good mo-ning, Miss Ma-lia!" the students chorused.

"Good morning class, please sit." She waited for the grating of chairs to stop. "My name is Ms. Maria, and I'm from a city called Edmonton, in Canada." A few children in the back whispered. She ignored it, assuming they'd stop when she spoke again. "My favourite hobbies are listening to music, dancing, playing basketball, and cooking."

A student in the third row laughed, and Maria smiled.

"You're probably thinking 'she's not tall enough for basketball', but I play. Does anyone else like or play basketball?"

While two children raised tentative hands in the front rows, most students in the back talked to each other despite Maria's narrowed eyes.

"Boys and girls, I need everyone listening, please!"

After the students glanced her way, they resumed talking.

Maria sighed and raised her voice. "Listen, now!"

Two of five stopped chatting while the other students watched her.

She maintained her calm demeanour. "What are your names, our two basketball players?"

"Ming," the girl with blunt bangs answered.

"Cookie," a taller boy said.

Maria contained her cheesy grin at the adorable nicknames. "In a minute, I will hand out these bingo papers, and for the square that says 'play basketball', you can ask Ming, Cookie, or me: 'Do you play basketball?' If the person answers 'yes', you write their nickname on the line in English." She mimed the action on her own paper. "Do you understand?"

After the children in the front nodded and asked if they could start, Maria handed piles of papers to the students at the head of their rows. Some children cocked their heads to the side when they studied the paper and others set it aside then talked to their peers in Thai.

"Please, stand up and start asking the questions. The first person to fill their paper wins." Maria had brought candies to give as prizes.

When a few children scribbled words without speaking, Maria walked over and re-explained they had to ask each other. They couldn't just write names.

"Pick a question and ask me." Maria used more actions this time.

A girl pointed to a square and slowly read, "Take an airplane?"

"No," another girl blurted. "Ms. Maria say 'Do you'. You say 'Do you take an airplane?'. You need to make question!"

"But Mr. Daniel said 'do you' is for habits and everyday actions. No student takes an airplane every day!" One boy interjected. "Correct, Ms. Maria?"

Maria nodded since that seemed right. While she had a good grasp of her native language, she was unsure of the logic behind each rule. This exercise was a simple introduction to their hobbies and interests, not a grammar lesson, but she couldn't appear incompetent.

"You can say 'Did you take an airplane' so it happened in the past." Maria crossed her fingers she was accurate.

The boy whose uniform read 'Pun Pun' smirked until the others muttered something in Thai, and the girls laughed. With his shoulders hunched, he took his paper and wandered to another group. Catching bullying would be tricky without understanding much Thai.

One girl turned to Maria. "Ms. Malia, did you take an airplane?"

"Yes, I flew to Thailand."

It was the only flight she had taken. But in a private school of kids who loved their new phones, whose siblings spent semesters overseas, and who rode up in Benz and BMWs, she kept it to herself. She helped the girl spell 'Ms. Maria'.

As she glanced at the back of the class, Maria's shoulders tensed. A few boys had turned her assignments into paper airplanes and doodle sheets. She marched over to them, but their behaviour didn't change as she approached. How could these students act respectful and focused earlier with the Thai teacher but awful for Maria?

"Boys, you must ask other students the questions."

They peered up at her with wide eyes, including the one who hadn't stood initially. His nametag read 'Hero'. How fitting. She took an airplane off the floor and flattened it into a sheet.

"These are not toys." She emphasized each word.

With a smile, Pun Pun strode over. "Ms. Maria, they do not know English. They will not understand you."

Hero grimaced and said some pointed words in Thai that wiped the grin off Pun Pun's face. As Pun Pun bunched his fists and shouted back, the other boys laughed.

"Thank you for telling me, Pun Pun. I will do my best to explain it to them. Please continue the activity with the other students."

When Maria turned around, Hero had stuck out his tongue. After bending down to his level, Maria made eye contact and said "Stop".

His shoulders stooped, and his eyebrows furrowed beneath his long bangs. Taking out her paper, she pointed to a box and explained very much as she did to her kindergarten students how to ask a question. She had them parrot her words, used lots of miming, and in ten minutes, there were at least three names on each paper.

The rest of the class dragged on as she put out fires while ensuring the students were on task and getting along. Between the low-English slackers and the gossiping girls next to the bookshelves, Maria couldn't say over four children were speaking English at once.

She was so busy attempting to keep everyone working that she learned few names and didn't learn their interests. Despite the clear lesson failure, she had to teach it again to her second class since it started in five minutes. Her coworkers had thought her activity sounded engaging, but why had it gone so poorly? Lessons were never this hard with the kindergarteners, but the Thai teachers backed her up whereas she was alone teaching the grade fours.

Her students thanked her as a chorus after she'd gathered her belongings as if they hadn't disregarded her instructions for most of the lesson.

The next class would be better.

After spending more time explaining the activity, she invited a student to model her expectations then wrote sample questions on the whiteboard. This class asked about the vocabulary words, which meant some read the assignment. While many students spoke Thai and doodled, she circulated more to remind them to work in English, and they more were engaged.

During her last class of the day, Math, she'd erred with the answer in the fractions example, which she only found out after finishing her lengthy explanation. A student had called her over and asked if her work was correct since her answer differed from the example. When Maria corrected her mistake on the board, the students whispered in Thai and laughed.

"Mr. Daniel never made mistakes," Punpun whispered.

"Mr. Daniel was excellent teacher," another student murmured loudly enough for Maria to hear. The girl spoke in Thai next, probably saying "and Ms. Maria isn't".

Maria inhaled and finished explaining with a forced smile. She assigned questions for the students to solve while she sat at her desk and reviewed her mental calculations with the textbook answer key. No students raised their hand to ask her for help, they turned to their friends instead and got the work done regardless of her presence.

As the class ended, some students packed their bags while others stayed for the homework class that some parents paid for. Emma described it as a general study hall time where she could support them with her assignments and keep the rest on task.

Pun Pun didn't take out any books, he studied Maria. "Ms. Maria, why did you come to Thailand?"

"To teach English and experience an area I've never seen before."

Ming scrunched her nose, as if in thought. "But you are like us, why you never come?"

"I was born in Canada, and I grew up and went to school there. I never got the chance to visit Asia until now."

"How long have you been a teacher?" Pun Pun asked.

Maria swallowed as if he could see her insecurities. "I've taught for a few years," Maria answered the half-truth the school had asked her to use. It didn't look good to hire random Canadians with undergrad degrees in a pinch, so the admin had told her to consider her time teaching in less traditional settings, like Sunday school, as experience if questioned.

Pun Pun nodded then took out a thick textbook with Thai writing.

"Can you help with English grammar homework?" Ming asked and pulled out a textbook Maria wasn't familiar with. It must have been from Prae's English class.

"Sure, what are you working on."

"Present continuous."

Maria nodded as if those words meant anything to her. They never learned formal grammar in school. "Can I see?" Ming handed her the book. Once Maria read the examples, she understood and could explain the verb tense to Ming. They worked through a few questions together until Pun Pun interrupted.

"No present continuous in that sentence. The action is finished."

Maria reread the sentence, and he was right, so they adjusted the answer. If she learned anything today, it was that she was not smarter than a fourth-grader.

By the end of class, Maria trudged to the staff room. Teachers supervising the second shift of homework classes lingered, but everyone else had left. New papers sat on Maria's desk. After how unfocused her lessons were, she expected the admin would reconsider her future here. The kids deserved a proper teacher, not a screw-up who fled her ex and who found grammar terms as familiar as Thai script.

The orange post-it on the stack of papers read: 'For Science class tomorrow. Have fun! Em.' The sheet described a lesson to label the parts of the ear, activities to introduce sound-related vocabulary and games to teach the difference between pitch and loudness. It would be fun if Maria were more competent.

The staff room door swung open, and Tom approached her desk with a grin. "How did your day go?"

"Great," Maria croaked out cheerily enough to keep the smile on his face.

He rested his hand on her chair. "See, you're a natural."

Maria forced a pleasant expression and asked about his day.

"It took a while to calm them down after chatting about our holidays. I'll get them on track tomorrow, but the other classes went well."

"That's great, Tom." Maria's gaze wandered to Shawn's tidy desk beside hers. Tom's 'going off-track' was probably nothing compared to her unfocused students or her blunders.

When another teacher called Tom's name, he lingered to say goodbye then returned to the junior-high section of the office. Maria's shoulders slumped as she reviewed tomorrow's plans. She imagined her failures or how the kids would disconnect. The lessons weren't the problem if Emma used them too. Maria was. With a gulp, she suppressed her tears.

She didn't belong here. She was such a fraud.