January storytelling

Hello, my name is Leon, 18 years old, from Austria (not Australia)

My first month at RPK 50 School Khon Kaen is hard to sum up in a few words, but I will try anyway. The truth is at the start I was not sure how to feel about my “new life“ in this completely new environment. There were still many uncertainties to figure out in the first one or two weeks. As a result, I ended up not finding my classroom at least three times, walking straight past students with whom I actually had a lesson at that time once, and moving to another accommodation which was also a bit chaotic – all in the first few days. Despite or maybe because of these difficulties I feel like I have been learning and adapting every day since I got here and I can now humbly say that I have already grown immensely as a person in such a short period of time with nine months more to come.

My time also could have been a lot more challenging if it were not for my lovely volunteer-colleagues Mia, Nele, Loleen and Rudi. They immediately took me in like I was their new little adoptive child, and I am very thankful for that. I frankly do not know what I would have done without them. We met in Bangkok, while I had my on-arrival-training and they had their midterm-meeting and afterwards we went to Khon Kaen together.

Can’t find the classroom – just call Ludi and hope he answers. Don’t want to go to 7 alone – just ask at lunch if someone wants to join. It surely adds a great amount of comfort to know that you are not “on your own” and can always ask the others when a problem comes up.

Apart from my colleagues, how do I like the school in general? I like it. It cannot really be compared to any schools in my home country. If my informations are correct, there are around 800 students, similar to my former school, but mine was only a middle and high school, while this one also has a primary school. The students live on campus, as well as the teachers (including me). Within the school area, there are also a shop, a coffee shop and of course a canteen, where we get food twice a day – lunch at 11:30 am and dinner at 5 pm. The students have free time after dinner and often play basketball, volleyball or football or do other sorts of activities at the sports courts. School really is almost the whole life for these kids until they graduate.

So, I try to help making the students’ everyday school life a little better, while teaching them some English. That turned out challenging, because it was not easy for me to find the right teaching strategy to fit the English level of my students (I teach grade 3,4 and 5). But over time I learned how to connect with my students and that is probably the most important aspect of my job here.

In conclusion, I am really looking forward to further improve my teaching and I hope I can have fun while doing that.