The end of the year

Greetings!

Today marks the last official day of class for the 2549-2550 (2006-2007) school year. As of 3:20 today, I have officially completed my second semester of teacher and will not teach again until May 14 when the school year starts up again. It really is just now hitting me that this is the end of the year. Earlier this week, I was frantically putting together my final tests. I have to create six different tests for the students to take this week and next. Half of the tests are knowledge-based tests (i.e. a test of what the students have learned this semester) and they will be given next week and half of the tests are reasoning tests (i.e. a test of how the students think scientifically) and I gave those this week. I have learned a lot about creating tests in the past year and am proud of my final tests, particularly the reasoning tests. For those of you who can remember the ACT, there was a science reasoning section and my tests are very similar to that (in fact, I adapted several questions from a sample ACT problem). I have already given these tests to the students and they did really well. I was worried that they would get anxious and worried since they couldn't use a dictionary or study for this test (and many were), but in the end they all did great. The class average was actually higher on this test than on any other test of the year. And I've become sidetracked again...the point of this post was the end of the year. So, today is the last day of classes and I've spent the past few days reviewing with the students and so today was simply our last day together. This morning I spent time with my M3 students. In Thailand, the students are grouped into classes and they stay with that class for three years. They become a class during their M1 year and that class stays together for the next three years. So my M3 students have been together for three years. After the M3 year, the students are rearranged and the classes are changed. Some students will leave Bunyawat and go to technical colleges and others will go to more rigorous specialized schools for math, science and technology and others will continue their studies at Bunyawat. And so the classes are reorganized and after spending three years together, these students will no longer be in the same classes. A tradition has developed here that is similar to the yearbook tradition in the US. About a month before the end of school, the M3 students start to create a scrapbook of sorts. It's their own creation and they can include whatever they want. Mostly it's a chronicle of their time spent at Bunyawat over the past three years. There are pictures and drawing, poems and stories, and of course a section for their friends to write messages and notes. The books have been floating around for a while, but this week they have come out in force. Today during class students had me write in the books and others had brought in their school uniform and were having students write messages on their uniform. So I spent about an hour this morning writing in books and signing uniforms and it finally hit me that the year was over. The atmosphere in the classroom and the school was very light and celebratory...you'd almost forget that the students had exams next week. But for the moment that didn't matter and they are simply enjoying being at school and being with their friends, and I was happy that I was included. And so the students are here and simply enjoying that before going home and having to get back to work and study for their finals. But they all know that after Thursday of next week, they are done for the summer. As for me, I will head off with a group of students for an end-of-the-year camp to different parts of Thailand. It really is simply a sightseeing tour and we'll see some really neat things (more to come on this) and that'll take place from March 2-6. After that, I will take the GRE in Bangkok on March 7 in preparation for my eventually return to graduate school. The following week (March 12-16), I'm back at school and am teaching the incoming M1 students a week of summer school. It's designed to get them used to us before classes actually start and should just be fun and relaxed. After that, I'm free. There are rumors that I have to stick around until the end of March to sign in each morning, but hopefully can get around that and then I'm off traveling to who knows where until I have to show up for school on May 8. I'll be sure to keep you posted as to where I end up.

At the brink of yet another transition,

RM