Death of a student

Ms. Bpun, head of the Foreign Language Department, informed me today that one of my students had died last night. His nickname is "Hot" and he was in my M4/5 class, the class that I had the next period, right after she told me! He was fifteen years old. He died in a motorbike accident on his way home from school yesterday. He was run over by a car. Ms. Bpun told me that a few kids from Sri Racha School die each year due to motorbike accidents! Apparently, it is the number one killer in Thailand. I do not remember his face, but I did see from the attendance sheet that he was present every week.

M4/5 was the one M4 class that I have had many problems with, until today. The problems, however, were largely due to their room, in which students had to sit on the floor around large rectangular, low tables, which forced many students to sit with their backs to me. So, today, I moved them to another building where there was a free room that had actual desks. The class was 150% better today than any other past week. But, because of the death of one of their classmates, I had a real easy-going class. I did not take attendance, nor did I enforce participation. Many of the boys sat quietly staring out the window. After we finished going over the pronunciation and translation of the second vocabulary list (Jobs & Occupations), we played pictionary for the rest of the class. Actually, there really wasn't that much time left anyway, because the class started about 20 minutes late due to the room location change.