Last Week of Classes

My last week of classes.  I cannot believe it!  The year went by so fast.  There's a part of me that wants to stay on as Miss Lia at Sri Racha School, and see my students grow up through the years.  But, it is time to move on to a new adventure.  I will get to that later - when I change the title of my blog - but, for now, I just want to focus on the almost 1,000 students that I've spent five days out of the week with for an entire school year. 

Monday morning, the beginning of the end - morning assembly runs overtime, and there's 10 minutes left in the first period.  I rush to class, hurry the slow-moving students in, explain my plans for the next few months, share contact information, and frantically rush to take photos of the class.  After the class group picture, I say 'goodbye'.  The students just sit there.  I say 'goodbye' again, and they look confused.  I then notice the Thai numbers on their student shirts, which are labeled with their class section.  Oops.  This is 4/3, which is my second period class.  4/6, my first period on Monday morning, never showed up and must've went straight to their second period classroom.  Here I was, rushing the students into the class ten minutes before we were supposed to have even started, and now I've already said my rushed 'goodbyes'.  Once I realized, I apologized for my silly confusion, and continued the class with a game.  I am sad to have not been able to properly say goodbe to 4/6, but some of the students tracked me down on Friday afternoon (the end of the end) to share contact information and pose for pictures.

Thursday afternoon - I have M1/5.  These are 12-13 year olds.  1/5 gave me a lot of problems in the beginning of year, way back in May and June, but after a talk with their homeroom teacher, our relationship developed into a promising one.  In fact, over the year, I've grown to love this class in a special way, and they completely turned around 100% by second semester, stepping up to become one of my favorite M1 classes (out of twelve).  That is... until the very last class.  And I want to stop right here and just say that I regret what happened, and feel really sad about the whole situation.  But, it's over now, so I suppose dwelling on it won't get me anywhere.  Here's what happened:

Many students crawled in 5, 10, 15 minutes late.  Half the class could not sit still in their chairs for more than five minutes.  There was a lot of talking and shouting.  They wouldn't listen for two minutes while I asked them which game they would prefer to play: BINGO or Hangman.  They didn't care to listen to my 'goodbye, I love you, I will never forget you' speech.  And then, one boy suddenly popped up out of his desk and went full fist-thrusting at another boy.  Nearby students pulled the two boys away from each other, and they sat back down.  Tentatively.  I could see that at any moment, it could flair up again.  So, why I should have put a stop to the situation right then and there, I instead was overcome by sadness that the class was not feeling my 'goodbye' class activity and was not listening to me.  So, I said 'forget the game', took some pictures, and walked out of the class.  I sat on the bench just outside of the classroom.  I could hear the students yelling at each other to 'shut up'. 

Then, all of the sudden, there was an intense raucous coming from the classroom, and desks were being shoved aside amidst shouts.  The Thai teacher whose office is below the classroom must've heard all the uncontrolled commotion (of which, essentially, I had just run out on), because she came stomping up the stairs, walked straight into the classroom, and in a very Thai teacher manner, put the class in its place.  Within two minutes, she had sent four students outside of the classroom on their knees - two of which were the boys whom had just started beating each other up again, and the other two were A+ student girls who were only trying to take control of a situation that I should've been there for).  Within two minutes, she also had the entire class push aside the desks, sweep and clean the classroom floors, wipe down the chalkboard, and have the trash taken out.  After all the desks were put back in an orderly fashion, and all the students were submissively and quietly sitting in them, she invited me back in.  Yikes.  She took away the four students, and here I was left with 45 very apologetic twelve year olds, and fifteen minutes left off class.  I passed around the BINGO sheets, and had enough time to get through one round.  It took a few minutes for the class to get their personality back, but once they did - it was love all over again.  The four students returned, got on their knees and deeply wai'ed to me and apologized.  One boy could not stop crying. 

I later found out why the two boys, Tel and Nat, had gotten into a fight.  Nat had been talking about how he wanted to have his picture taken with me and was excited to play the game.  Tel made fun of him for it, and called him a "ladyboy".  And it escalated.  Apparently, when Tel and Nat were brought to the office, Nat could not stop crying, for all he wanted to do was say goodbye and play the class activity.  He was extremely upset that he didn't get to be there for the last class. 

Now... imagine how I felt after hearing that.  If I had known what the argument was about, I could have put a stop to it.  If I had been just a bit more patient and understanding, I could've handled the outbreak in a more diplomatic way, at least, so I feel now. 

Moving on...

I have over 400 pictures from my last week of school - probably all of which will mean absolutely nothing to you, but you can pretend by scrolling through the album anyway: Last Week of School.  And because I can't help myself, I'm also posting some photos of me with my students below.