Painting and Photography

Saturday was my first day of really teaching!
I spent the morning with  a group of vivacious, charming 9-11 year olds ( with two four year olds joining us as well). These students live in a sharecropper's village, and are all going to Thai school in town. Their village is just off the main road (which is full of restaurants, 7-11,  and guest houses) and down a few dirt roads and all of a sudden the houses are just bare bones thatch huts, kids are running around after chickens, the families are not present, except for some men grinding corn.

The parents in one village all work in the river - picking up rocks from the river floor to be sold for building houses in town. I didn't see them working but it sounds back-breaking.
The kids were sweet and energetic; grabbing mangos off the tree, and ripping into them with their teeth, and then giggling and chasing each other around the village.

We started class by writing our names on whiteboard sheets (a really handy teaching tool ). The kids got into decorating the posters and kept on asking me to spell "I love you" so that they could write "I love you Lizzie" and giggle.
I showed them a slideshow of my family, what I like to do, and lots of pictures of snow in Pakistan- they loved looking at it all and calling out the colours of everything.
We then moved on to tackling nature, and learning about leaves/trees and flowers. Each student had to write the word on their board before drawing it. And before they could move on they all practised speaking. I found that they were really eager to draw the leaves and trees, and that they got really into adding more elements.
I felt like Mary Poppins as I pulled out my paints and handed out huge sheets of paper. They paired up and began painting natural elements on their sheets. They were really into it for a while until they somehow collectively remembered that they had some white plaster figures that needed painting. They all rushed out of the hut and disappeared for a minute. I was very confused. But they soon returned and eagerly started painting their bears, ducks and motorcycles. I hesitated and wanted to ask them to stop, but how can you resist when the creative energy is flowing?
After they had finished their plaster figures they returned to their paintings.
Ten minutes later they all got up again and began washing the brushes and cleaning the floor of the hut.
I, of course, had much bigger plans involving pastels and presentations in English. But it seems like here the kids run the show!  

What a treat to finally be painting with the kids, and to see their creative sides!

1st class : Introductions with art and English

I met my first class yesterday, at The Banyan Center. The students are the oldest group, aged 12 to 14. Yesterday there were three boys and three girls in the class, and all of them were very polite and eager to chat.
Since class started late, we did a simple introductory art making activity with some English conversation tied in.
I had the students use coloured pencils to draw one thing about themselves, or one thing that they liked.
After drawing, the students introduced themselves and explained their drawings. It was a really nice simple way to start getting to know the students and sharing interests.
Following this, each student was told to ask me one question in English, and I would ask them the same question back. This was a fun way to encourage conversation and to build background about each other.

One student in particular was a strong character. Instead of drawing on his paper, he spent the ten minutes fake drawing in the back of the room. When it was his turn to present, he showed his blank paper and said " Hi! My name is ... And I like Paper, because you can do anything with it, like draw, and write". Very clever, yeah?
And when it was his turn to ask a question he was the last student so all of the easy "where are you from?" "How many brothers and sisters do you have?" questions were all gone, so he was at a loss. He kept on asking "how are you?", but we wouldn't let him off that easily so my coteacher let me ask him five of my own questions, which he did very well at answering. Apparently he has "many"  girlfriends and his favourite colour is black because its dark. :)
Here are the photos of their drawings of things they like and their explanations
1.  " I like trees!"
2. " I like computers and playing video games"
3. " I like birds" (picture of him with his bird in a cage)
4. "I like cars and fixing cars. I want to be a mechanic when I grow up" ( picture of her in the car shop)
5. " I like listening to music"
6. " I like paper..

7. My coteacher: she likes her baby!

8.Me:  I like being outside!