Teaching English in Thailand as a Filipino teacher in year 2021

Covid-19 has yet stayed in year 2021. This month is already July and in spite of government’s efforts to lessen the cases, this pandemic has just begun.

School year started late. Schools were supposed to open in May, but the Ministry of Education postponed it in June. Unfortunately, because of many people are going back to their provinces, it is impossible to control new cases.

In fact, in the province where I live now, covid cases are increasing and measures are getting stricter. All schools are closed and teachers and students are having online classes.

In our school, only students are staying at home. Teachers are still need to be at school and conduct online classes there.

Everyday is a struggle. We, teachers, can’t control students’ attendance and class focus. In my classes, sometimes only 4 students attend out of 20 students. This is very sad but understandable since some of our students don’t have their own internet connections or they don‘t know how to attend Zoom meetings or use Google Classroom.

Explaining and teaching are very challenging because of many factors.

First, sometimes internet connection is laggy. Students can’t hear me when I say something or they miss what I am saying, so there are many interruptions on the learning w.

Second, sometimes I teach without my co-teacher so it is very challenging to explain hard vocabularies to my students. I know some Thai words, but some words are really difficult to explain even in English, so sometimes I act some words or translate them immediately in Google translate.

Lastly, we really can’t make sure if the students do their assigned tasks or understand the lessons.

Hopefully, everything will be better soon. Honestly, even though technology has been always helpful, I think on-site teaching is more effective both for students and teachers.