Happy Shan New Year! Today is the first day of 2106, so technically, in the Shan calendar I am 117 years old...however I shall choose to ignore that even though after the manic two weeks I have had I feel about 117! Definitely not complaining though; it has been a busy but very enjoyable time with lots of celebrations filling the spaces in between work. In the past week we had Shan New Year, Graduation, two CCT volunteer birthdays and Thanksgiving. That's the beauty of living in another country...you get to celebrate everybody's occasions and so have a calendar full of fun things to do :)
I'll get to the celebrations in a moment though, and will start with some of the only conventionally non-fun things that these weeks have held. On Tuesday, it was the English assessment for the students. Really this was neither fun for them, nor me as it led to quite a lot of stress on both our parts! As you will have read (if you an avid follower of this here blog) in the previous exciting installment of my life, Maria and I were all set for our first week of lessons together in which there was going to be a healthy (if slightly skewed) balance between education and fun, culminating in a well thought out sculpting game, Rapidough. Unfortunately, when I arrived at work on last Tuesday morning, I had an email informing me that the English assessments were the next week; something that I had no idea was coming. This quite spectacularly laid waste to our well laid plans, as there was no way it was fair to teach them new material the week before the exam, nor was there time to spare for games. Furthermore, it led to a whole host of problems for me, as I had to give an exam to students after only teaching them for a week! Although Num Aye (their previous teacher and current manager of Thai Freedom House) had briefly outlined what they had done, I had no real idea what her lessons had taught, what her learning objectives had been, or what she wanted me to test them on, and seeing as she has recently gone down to part time hours, there was no easy way to find out either! I know you are probably thinking that I was unnecessarily stressing seeing as I still had a week until their exam, but I wanted to have one revision lesson to go over anything that they were to be examined on but maybe not 100% happy with, and then one mock exam to get them used to the concept of sitting an exam, which several of them would not have done before. Both of these lessons were difficult to plan when I did not really know what I would be examining them on! I decided (after much faffing) that I would just have to go on what was in their work books and put together a revision lesson that would show me what angle they had come from in their lessons, so that I could write their test more effectively. This was not as easy as it sounds, as I had to make the lesson easy enough that they were revising and not learning anew, but challenging enough to see whether they knew what I was revising with them well enough to answer test style questions on it, and involved me having a lot of lesson matter ready in case I had to abandon something that I thought they might know but actually didn't. In the end though I was really happy with the way it panned out, and it turned out that I had guessed pretty well from their books what they knew and should be tested on. I also had a godsend in the form of Kathleen, an American lady who has taught extensively in the States at University level and acted as my teaching assistant, working with the lower ability students to bring them up to speed (or closer to it) with the rest of the class. It was a bit unnerving at first having such an experienced teacher helping me as I felt like she would judge the way I was teaching, but she was great - very supportive and encouraging - and seemed to think I was doing a good job, which is always nice to hear! After the revision lesson, it was a lot easier to plan the assessment, and, simultaneously, the mock assessment. I wanted the two to be similar enough that the students felt at ease with not only the knowledge they were being tested on, but also the way in which the questions were being asked, but different enough that they still had to think about their answers and couldn't go in to automatic mode, so it made sense to do them at the same time. The mock test went well and the students mostly coped with it as expected. Two, however, really struggled, and with the help of Kathleen I decided to write a differentiated test for them. At the end of the day, the test is useful to gauge the student's ability/proficiency in English, but more so it is to give them some confidence and a piece of paper (well, card) that says that they are doing well so that they feel they are gaining ownership over the language and want to keep coming back. It would be counter productive, then, to give them a test that they have no chance of doing well on and thus undermining any confidence that they have managed to build up. Jenny, for instance, is our youngest student and the most adorable little girl. When she first came to TFH she was apparently the most shy person any of the teachers or students had ever encountered and would hide under a table rather than speak in class. She has slowly been building her confidence, but failed the test at the end of last semester which set her back. By giving her a differentiated test, she was able to pass, and it was plain to see how much this boosted her self confidence. It's lovely, because I feel that she trusts me enough now to try things and be a bit more adventurous in my classes; she will quite happily speak out to answer lessons and in the speaking part of their assessment she came out on top with 10/10 for conversational skills - I was so proud! Everyone else did much as expected as well, which one boy S getting 91% overall, which is amazing! The most useful thing I found was that my initial impression that their reading is weak was bang on. All of them did the worst in the reading aspect of the test, and some of the lower ability students could not read at all, apart from the vocabulary that we have done to death, such as animals. It's good to know though, as now in the interim between this and their next term I know that I need to focus on teaching the lower ability students their alphabet/phonics and start them reading, and that I need to take the time to give the more able students to practice their reading as much as possible, so that their mastery of this basic skill is brought up to their others and doesn't start to hamper their acquirement of the language. I have some ideas for how to do this and think I will do a literature project with them on a book called 'The Giant Turnip'; I think they will enjoy it but we will wait and see!
Although the test process was stressful, it did lead to a very fun evening on Thursday. Normally English lessons are Tuesday and Wednesday, but as it was assessment week, the students had their Thai exam on Wednesday and were going to be free on Thursday night. Instead of this, Maria and I hosted a sort of games evening; a voluntary attendance night where we both let the students choose their own games to play together and organised (finally!) the Rapidough game! As predicted, they loved it! We had them all sit in a circle to make the play dough first which was truly hilarious. They got in to such a mess mixing it all together, and had a lot of fun with the different food colourings. One pair, Lurn Sai - one of our oldest and most able students, and Aka Lat - one of our youngest and least able students, were great together and experimented with so many colours, eventually managing to make...brown! Everyone (including Maria and me) found it so funny, watching them pour in a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and always coming out with the same murky brown colour - classic. Once they had all finally concocted dough of a suitable consistency, which required a lot of adapting with extra flour/water from me, we got going with the game proper. Again, this involved a lot of giggling and, actually, hysterical laughter, as we all enjoyed watching some of the attempts to sculpt various objects like 'an elephant', 'a computer', 'a banana' and many more seemingly innocuous things that shouldn't have been difficult but in some cases really were. It was lovely, as the game really made everyone laugh, which was exactly what we wanted from the 'lesson' to give everyone a break from not only their usual lessons and the assessment, but from their usual lives and stresses. It was perfect, and both Maria and I got a bit overwhelmed by it all and how lucky we felt to be there and able to provide that bit of respite for our students, and to be able to enjoy having a laugh with them: very fitting seeing as it was on Thanksgiving!
So yes, Thanksgiving was one of our celebrations this week and, accordingly, we had a Thanksgiving meal at the CCT volunteer house. Maria and I were very jammy as we arrived just as everyone started eating (to be fair it was because we had class and not just because we didn't want to cook!), and enjoyed a veritable feast of vegetarian Thanksgiving food such as green bean casserole (which I am told is a classic), mashed potato, spaghetti, cranberry sauce, fake sausages, chicken and steak, pumpkin soup and lots more delicious treats. For desert we had less, somewhat less traditional, Chinese doughnuts, fruit salad, and Swiss chocolates...all yummy! It was a nice evening, if a tad more low key than the Indian/Thai/Shan celebrations that I am becoming accustomed to! We also had two volunteer birthdays this week, one of which I missed last night because of Shan celebrations, but one that we celebrated in true 'ferrang' (foreign) style, by getting dressed up (relatively speaking, I am somewhat limited by my rucksack), going to the jazz bar, and getting very merry. It was great fun, even if I did pay for it in a big way the next day at work!
The main event of the week however, has been the Shan New Year celebrations. At TFH there is a big party every year for New Year to give students, families and friends a chance to get together and celebrate and share their culture without fear of being judged or criticised and this year was no exception. We closed the cafe for the day so that we could get ready, and it's a good job we did because even though the girls arrived at 6am and we volunteers arrived at 8am, we still struggled to do everything and have time to go and get into our finery for the evenings festivities! There was so much to do, but Nong and Nap Dow were not at all keen on letting us ignorant ferrang anywhere near their precious Shan food, which is fair enough seeing as most of the jobs they did let us do we failed to do in a satisfactory way. When Nong saw the carrots that John (a volunteer) and Lisa (the director) had 'thinly sliced' she was furious, and from then on wouldn't let us chop anything that needed to be smaller than chunks! We did other jobs though, like cleaning and organising, making a Happy New Year banner, washing tables and chairs etc etc. The garden downstairs was transformed into a magical space, where Nap Dow created stunning flower arrangements in the Shan colours (red, yellow and green) with fruits that looked oddly like yellow udders but somehow looked beautiful thanks to the way she arranged them.
Once everything at TFH was ready it was time to prepare ourselves, something we took quite seriously because we wanted to show the Shan families that we respected and revered their festivals and culture too and that it is a good thing for them to keep them alive, an attitude that Thai people generally certainly do not have. I wore a beautiful long handmade skirt that one of the families I encountered in India had given to me and Maria actually went and bought a full traditional outfit in lime green, which somehow, she managed to pull off beautifully! I never would have thought an entire lime green outfit could look good but it really did! I am glad we made the effort because while we outside having group photos two men on motorcycles rode past and said 'Ooo the ferrang made themselves look nice for the festival' in Thai, which Lisa translated for us...just goes to show that the general opinion of us foreigners is not very high but at least the effort was appreciated. The majority of the students and some of their parents came in traditional Shan dress, which is beautiful. In many ways it is similar to Thai, with a long wrap around skirt and a fitted wrap around top, usually in the same colour with detailed embroidery on it, but the Shan outfit also has an elaborate headdress that sits at the hairline and has two fans sticking out the side of it. I am aware that it sounds ridiculous when you describe it, but you will have to trust me when I saw that it manages to look cute on little girls, beautiful on teenagers/young women, and elegant on older women; a lovely addition. The boys were all in fishermen's pants and shirts and the overall effect of everyone in Shan dress was beautiful. We had our graduation ceremony, where every student came to get their certificates and then it was time for the traditional songs and dance. The students did such a good job and clearly felt very strongly about the songs they were singing and dances they were dancing. It was really moving to see them enjoying and celebrating a culture that they have all had to leave behind to an extent, and to do so in an atmosphere where all around were celebrating and revering it too; I think it is a really important aspect of TFH. After eating the delicious Shan food Nong and Nap Dow had lovingly made, we were whisked off to the Shan temple for more celebrations there. There was a crazy amount of people there; I had no idea there were so many Shan in Chiang Mai, all milling around, eating Shan food, buying Shan goods, watching Shan songs and dance and generally enjoying having a great time being Shan! Nap Dow and her sisters and some of the other students got to perform their dances on the stage and then we all mooched around soaking up the festive atmosphere. I had such a great time!
Tired today though, especially seeing as it was an early start yesterday and then today we had to be at TFH by 7am because we went to a garage sale at a local international school to try to make some of the money back that we spent on the celebrations! After finishing this I am going to treat myself to a nice relaxing herbal steam sauna and a nap, then it's off the the jazz bar again for a fundraiser, before waking up early tomorrow to get to a road just outside the old city by 6am to watch 12,600 monks line up to 'give alms'. Not entirely sure what giving alms is yet, but I guess I'll find out tomorrow!
Lots of love,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
I'll get to the celebrations in a moment though, and will start with some of the only conventionally non-fun things that these weeks have held. On Tuesday, it was the English assessment for the students. Really this was neither fun for them, nor me as it led to quite a lot of stress on both our parts! As you will have read (if you an avid follower of this here blog) in the previous exciting installment of my life, Maria and I were all set for our first week of lessons together in which there was going to be a healthy (if slightly skewed) balance between education and fun, culminating in a well thought out sculpting game, Rapidough. Unfortunately, when I arrived at work on last Tuesday morning, I had an email informing me that the English assessments were the next week; something that I had no idea was coming. This quite spectacularly laid waste to our well laid plans, as there was no way it was fair to teach them new material the week before the exam, nor was there time to spare for games. Furthermore, it led to a whole host of problems for me, as I had to give an exam to students after only teaching them for a week! Although Num Aye (their previous teacher and current manager of Thai Freedom House) had briefly outlined what they had done, I had no real idea what her lessons had taught, what her learning objectives had been, or what she wanted me to test them on, and seeing as she has recently gone down to part time hours, there was no easy way to find out either! I know you are probably thinking that I was unnecessarily stressing seeing as I still had a week until their exam, but I wanted to have one revision lesson to go over anything that they were to be examined on but maybe not 100% happy with, and then one mock exam to get them used to the concept of sitting an exam, which several of them would not have done before. Both of these lessons were difficult to plan when I did not really know what I would be examining them on! I decided (after much faffing) that I would just have to go on what was in their work books and put together a revision lesson that would show me what angle they had come from in their lessons, so that I could write their test more effectively. This was not as easy as it sounds, as I had to make the lesson easy enough that they were revising and not learning anew, but challenging enough to see whether they knew what I was revising with them well enough to answer test style questions on it, and involved me having a lot of lesson matter ready in case I had to abandon something that I thought they might know but actually didn't. In the end though I was really happy with the way it panned out, and it turned out that I had guessed pretty well from their books what they knew and should be tested on. I also had a godsend in the form of Kathleen, an American lady who has taught extensively in the States at University level and acted as my teaching assistant, working with the lower ability students to bring them up to speed (or closer to it) with the rest of the class. It was a bit unnerving at first having such an experienced teacher helping me as I felt like she would judge the way I was teaching, but she was great - very supportive and encouraging - and seemed to think I was doing a good job, which is always nice to hear! After the revision lesson, it was a lot easier to plan the assessment, and, simultaneously, the mock assessment. I wanted the two to be similar enough that the students felt at ease with not only the knowledge they were being tested on, but also the way in which the questions were being asked, but different enough that they still had to think about their answers and couldn't go in to automatic mode, so it made sense to do them at the same time. The mock test went well and the students mostly coped with it as expected. Two, however, really struggled, and with the help of Kathleen I decided to write a differentiated test for them. At the end of the day, the test is useful to gauge the student's ability/proficiency in English, but more so it is to give them some confidence and a piece of paper (well, card) that says that they are doing well so that they feel they are gaining ownership over the language and want to keep coming back. It would be counter productive, then, to give them a test that they have no chance of doing well on and thus undermining any confidence that they have managed to build up. Jenny, for instance, is our youngest student and the most adorable little girl. When she first came to TFH she was apparently the most shy person any of the teachers or students had ever encountered and would hide under a table rather than speak in class. She has slowly been building her confidence, but failed the test at the end of last semester which set her back. By giving her a differentiated test, she was able to pass, and it was plain to see how much this boosted her self confidence. It's lovely, because I feel that she trusts me enough now to try things and be a bit more adventurous in my classes; she will quite happily speak out to answer lessons and in the speaking part of their assessment she came out on top with 10/10 for conversational skills - I was so proud! Everyone else did much as expected as well, which one boy S getting 91% overall, which is amazing! The most useful thing I found was that my initial impression that their reading is weak was bang on. All of them did the worst in the reading aspect of the test, and some of the lower ability students could not read at all, apart from the vocabulary that we have done to death, such as animals. It's good to know though, as now in the interim between this and their next term I know that I need to focus on teaching the lower ability students their alphabet/phonics and start them reading, and that I need to take the time to give the more able students to practice their reading as much as possible, so that their mastery of this basic skill is brought up to their others and doesn't start to hamper their acquirement of the language. I have some ideas for how to do this and think I will do a literature project with them on a book called 'The Giant Turnip'; I think they will enjoy it but we will wait and see!
Although the test process was stressful, it did lead to a very fun evening on Thursday. Normally English lessons are Tuesday and Wednesday, but as it was assessment week, the students had their Thai exam on Wednesday and were going to be free on Thursday night. Instead of this, Maria and I hosted a sort of games evening; a voluntary attendance night where we both let the students choose their own games to play together and organised (finally!) the Rapidough game! As predicted, they loved it! We had them all sit in a circle to make the play dough first which was truly hilarious. They got in to such a mess mixing it all together, and had a lot of fun with the different food colourings. One pair, Lurn Sai - one of our oldest and most able students, and Aka Lat - one of our youngest and least able students, were great together and experimented with so many colours, eventually managing to make...brown! Everyone (including Maria and me) found it so funny, watching them pour in a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and always coming out with the same murky brown colour - classic. Once they had all finally concocted dough of a suitable consistency, which required a lot of adapting with extra flour/water from me, we got going with the game proper. Again, this involved a lot of giggling and, actually, hysterical laughter, as we all enjoyed watching some of the attempts to sculpt various objects like 'an elephant', 'a computer', 'a banana' and many more seemingly innocuous things that shouldn't have been difficult but in some cases really were. It was lovely, as the game really made everyone laugh, which was exactly what we wanted from the 'lesson' to give everyone a break from not only their usual lessons and the assessment, but from their usual lives and stresses. It was perfect, and both Maria and I got a bit overwhelmed by it all and how lucky we felt to be there and able to provide that bit of respite for our students, and to be able to enjoy having a laugh with them: very fitting seeing as it was on Thanksgiving!
So yes, Thanksgiving was one of our celebrations this week and, accordingly, we had a Thanksgiving meal at the CCT volunteer house. Maria and I were very jammy as we arrived just as everyone started eating (to be fair it was because we had class and not just because we didn't want to cook!), and enjoyed a veritable feast of vegetarian Thanksgiving food such as green bean casserole (which I am told is a classic), mashed potato, spaghetti, cranberry sauce, fake sausages, chicken and steak, pumpkin soup and lots more delicious treats. For desert we had less, somewhat less traditional, Chinese doughnuts, fruit salad, and Swiss chocolates...all yummy! It was a nice evening, if a tad more low key than the Indian/Thai/Shan celebrations that I am becoming accustomed to! We also had two volunteer birthdays this week, one of which I missed last night because of Shan celebrations, but one that we celebrated in true 'ferrang' (foreign) style, by getting dressed up (relatively speaking, I am somewhat limited by my rucksack), going to the jazz bar, and getting very merry. It was great fun, even if I did pay for it in a big way the next day at work!
The main event of the week however, has been the Shan New Year celebrations. At TFH there is a big party every year for New Year to give students, families and friends a chance to get together and celebrate and share their culture without fear of being judged or criticised and this year was no exception. We closed the cafe for the day so that we could get ready, and it's a good job we did because even though the girls arrived at 6am and we volunteers arrived at 8am, we still struggled to do everything and have time to go and get into our finery for the evenings festivities! There was so much to do, but Nong and Nap Dow were not at all keen on letting us ignorant ferrang anywhere near their precious Shan food, which is fair enough seeing as most of the jobs they did let us do we failed to do in a satisfactory way. When Nong saw the carrots that John (a volunteer) and Lisa (the director) had 'thinly sliced' she was furious, and from then on wouldn't let us chop anything that needed to be smaller than chunks! We did other jobs though, like cleaning and organising, making a Happy New Year banner, washing tables and chairs etc etc. The garden downstairs was transformed into a magical space, where Nap Dow created stunning flower arrangements in the Shan colours (red, yellow and green) with fruits that looked oddly like yellow udders but somehow looked beautiful thanks to the way she arranged them.
Once everything at TFH was ready it was time to prepare ourselves, something we took quite seriously because we wanted to show the Shan families that we respected and revered their festivals and culture too and that it is a good thing for them to keep them alive, an attitude that Thai people generally certainly do not have. I wore a beautiful long handmade skirt that one of the families I encountered in India had given to me and Maria actually went and bought a full traditional outfit in lime green, which somehow, she managed to pull off beautifully! I never would have thought an entire lime green outfit could look good but it really did! I am glad we made the effort because while we outside having group photos two men on motorcycles rode past and said 'Ooo the ferrang made themselves look nice for the festival' in Thai, which Lisa translated for us...just goes to show that the general opinion of us foreigners is not very high but at least the effort was appreciated. The majority of the students and some of their parents came in traditional Shan dress, which is beautiful. In many ways it is similar to Thai, with a long wrap around skirt and a fitted wrap around top, usually in the same colour with detailed embroidery on it, but the Shan outfit also has an elaborate headdress that sits at the hairline and has two fans sticking out the side of it. I am aware that it sounds ridiculous when you describe it, but you will have to trust me when I saw that it manages to look cute on little girls, beautiful on teenagers/young women, and elegant on older women; a lovely addition. The boys were all in fishermen's pants and shirts and the overall effect of everyone in Shan dress was beautiful. We had our graduation ceremony, where every student came to get their certificates and then it was time for the traditional songs and dance. The students did such a good job and clearly felt very strongly about the songs they were singing and dances they were dancing. It was really moving to see them enjoying and celebrating a culture that they have all had to leave behind to an extent, and to do so in an atmosphere where all around were celebrating and revering it too; I think it is a really important aspect of TFH. After eating the delicious Shan food Nong and Nap Dow had lovingly made, we were whisked off to the Shan temple for more celebrations there. There was a crazy amount of people there; I had no idea there were so many Shan in Chiang Mai, all milling around, eating Shan food, buying Shan goods, watching Shan songs and dance and generally enjoying having a great time being Shan! Nap Dow and her sisters and some of the other students got to perform their dances on the stage and then we all mooched around soaking up the festive atmosphere. I had such a great time!
Tired today though, especially seeing as it was an early start yesterday and then today we had to be at TFH by 7am because we went to a garage sale at a local international school to try to make some of the money back that we spent on the celebrations! After finishing this I am going to treat myself to a nice relaxing herbal steam sauna and a nap, then it's off the the jazz bar again for a fundraiser, before waking up early tomorrow to get to a road just outside the old city by 6am to watch 12,600 monks line up to 'give alms'. Not entirely sure what giving alms is yet, but I guess I'll find out tomorrow!
Lots of love,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Do you think the black text is more readable?
ReplyDeleteThanks for Christmas baubles - very pretty!
Lots of love Dad XXX