Teacher Mark’s Reading Room

I’m sorry I haven’t added anything to the Reading Room blog in a long time. I’ve been very busy substitute teaching in other classes for teachers who have been sick, gone on visa runs, or decided to leave our school. In addition, I’ve also been teaching as much of my regular Reading (and ESL starting next week) classes as possible where they don’t conflict with the fill-in lessons.

Over the past two weeks I’ve substituted in P1, P2, P3 (homeroom including English, Science, and Maths), and M1. The only levels I have not taught in yet are Kindergarten, P6, and M2. For the next couple of weeks (at least) I will be teaching most of the English classes for P1 Red until the school can hire a new homeroom teacher. Yes, it’s been a very hectic schedule which doesn’t leave me a whole lot of extra time to mark assignments, prepare materials for upcoming lessons (the way I’ve redesigned P3 Reading this year does take A LOT of extra prep time), catch up on paperwork, write mid-term exams, etc. But somehow I do manage to get everything done with a minimum of stress.

I am paying more attention this week to HOW MANY hours I’m teaching — my contract calls for 20 teaching hours per week. Last week, I went over by six hours!! I didn’t even realize until I wrote all of the substitute lessons onto my regular schedule (I’d only cancelled two P3 Reading classes last week). You can’t exactly get compensation for working over what you’re supposed to — overtime pay, I believe, is nonexistent in Thailand. At least a number of coordinators and other staff members are aware of the situation and are concerned that I might become over-stressed. But I tend to handle that sort of extra work easily and I’m not worried about burning out. My only worry is that I may not be in the Reading Room when a student needs my help (I have an open-door policy that if any student doesn’t understand something on any of their English assignments, I’ll sit down with them and try to help them as best I can).