what we taught

Somewhere between being famous and being embarrassed we have been teaching. We teach three classes a together a day and the age of our students range from 12-18, except on Fridays when we teach in the primary school where the students 8-11.
We started out a little rough with introductions. We were nervous and the students were shy so it was tough to get them to participate. However, we quickly learned that Thai students are really competitive so board races became our "go to move". It is important to note that when we say that we "taught" English (pahsat angrit, see we are learning to speak a little Thai!) it is more accurate to say that we played games with the students that were centered around English words. The most important thing for the students was to hear native English speakers talk and we left the grammar lessons to the teachers. We tried to think of lessons that they would have fun doing and to teach them words that would help them to extend their English vocab. Our next lesson idea was "Simon Says." We taught them verbs ranging from run and jump to dance and sing. This was certainly a hit with students. Once we had taught this lesson a couple of times to different classes we decided to spice it up a bit by adding "high five". Needless to say this resulted in ending many classes with a high five to one of the students and random high fives being thrown our way throughout the school day.
Another lesson that we taught was "Daily Activities." We taught students how to say things like brush your teeth, wash the dishes and shampoo your hair. They ended up teaching us how to say these things in Thai as well. After we went over all the phrases we would have board races where students would act out the phrase and the other students would have to say it in English while one person on the team wrote it on the board. This resulted in the following reinvention of daily activities:
"brush your teets"
"button your shit"
"shampoop your hair"

Amongst others. Each time we tried to keep a straight face while we corrected them. However, I can't tell you how many times Brian took a shower and said "I am just going to shampoop my hair."

We really loved our students and we like to think that they actually learned some English from us being there. There were a few students who would sometimes find us during the day and just sit and talk with us in order to practice their English. Learning English is really a means of leaving their tiny village of Ban Kram and some students saw it as their only way. We really hope that it was these students that we were able to help the most.