A Week in the Life of a TEFL Teacher in Thailand

I’m a TEFL teacher here in Bangkok. Maybe you’re thinking of coming here to work and want to know what a typical working week is like. Maybe my working week isn’t exactly “typical” but it should give you a guide as to what teaching is like here.

This is my last week working in a Thai high school, I’ve also just written about a week in the life of a language school teacher article you can check out too!

Monday

Mondays aren’t fun. After the weekend I have to wake up at 6.30am to be at school for 7.30am. I only live five minutes bus ride from my Thai high school but it’s still a struggle to get there on time. I meet the other TEFL teachers a the lobby in the apartment we all live in. Everyday we have to sign in at school by 7.30am or we get a chase up call by an angry head of English.

Every morning there is an assembly but on Monday it’s longer than any other day. All the students and staff have to stand outside for around 45 minutes whilst the national anthem is played and teachers give speeches and make the kids do mini activities. Everything is in Thai and it’s hot. I usually try and find an excuse to leave early but today the principal is talking to us so no escaping it.

My first class starts at 9am and I have 15 minutes in the teacher’s room before classes. I always do my photocopying the week before but one of my colleagues is going a bit crazy as she can’t get the photocopier to work.

Each class I teach today is 50 minutes long but in reality students will be late to every class and we will only do around 35 minutes of “learning”. My first class is with the oldest students in the school and they aren’t fans of Monday mornings either. We get through the class and by the end everyone feels kinda awake.

The one benefit of Monday mornings is that I teach the same level twice in a row. I teach the same materials but this class all love English. They are all waiting for me and we have a general chat before getting into things. Today the class do a great role-play activity where one person is an angry customer and the other is a customer service officer.

Lunch is from 11am to midday at my school. I’m not really hungry but that doesn’t matter as the food isn’t great. The one benefit is that teachers get a private dining room with AC. I keep saying that I’ll bring my own packed lunch and today’s offering of fried rice with “chicken” makes me wish I had made my own sandwiches today!

On my way back to the teacher’s room I pick-up a Cornetto from the on-site shop. I’ve been in this shop every day for the last three months but the shop assistants look like they’re going to shit themselves when they see a foreigner coming in. I walk into the teacher’s room and see ten or so students standing at my desk. It turns out their Thai teacher couldn’t explain the grammar in their textbooks so he sent them to ask me….. thanks.

After lunch I teach the youngest students, aged 11 to 13. Again I have two periods with the same age group using the same materials. I’m supposed to have a Thai assistant teacher for these classes. She isn’t in the room. I look outside the window and see her helping the dance teacher train a small group of girls how to do Thai traditional dancing, I guess that’s more important than helping 55 kids learn how to speak English…

These two 50 minute classes drain me. with 50 odd kids per class it’s a nightmare to try and keep them under control. I hear the Thai teachers keep them disciplined but I just can’t seem to do that. I tell them to be quiet and take points away from their teams but nothing works. In the end I just focus on the students who really want to learn.

By 2pm I’m finished but I can’t go home. Literally I can’t go home as the gates are locked until 4pm. I have to wait until then to sign out at the end of the day. I use this two hour period to plan my classes for the rest of the week. I try and watch a few shows on Netflix but the school WiFi is terrible so I give up.  During the rest of the afternoon other teachers finish and we end up chatting about our day and decide where to go for dinner.

At 4pm everyone is straight out the door and into a taxi to take us to the next town to eat. After getting home we have a beer together and then off to bed by 10.30pm

Tuesday

Tuesday’s assembly includes a performance by the school band. They’re pretty good and it turns out they’ll enter a local competition next month.

Tuesday is probably my favorite day for classes. I teach five periods but all the classes are great. The first class are continuing a project about the environment and we finish a class wall display and finish with a class debate about how to protect animals in Thailand. The second class we role-play a restaurant booking and ordering food.

Lunch is another forgettable affair. I decide to get an imitation Magnum ice-cream on the way back to the teacher’s room, it tastes terrible. In the teacher’s room the head of English is waiting for us to talk about putting on a Christmas performance. Turns out they expect us to sing and dance….

After lunch I have three classes. The first class we do a reading activity about schools in America which the students find interesting. Next up I have to teach past tense grammar which the class finds hard. One or two of the students get it and help me out by explaining it in Thai to the others. The final class starts 20 minutes late as they have been doing a special project in another class and didn’t finish in time.

Although it’s been a busy day I’ve really enjoyed it. The students were all switched on and I feel like they’ve learned a lot.

Back at the apartment all the teachers get together to watch a DVD.

Wednesday

Wednesday morning and I’m just about getting used to the early start this week. I skip morning assembly on the pretext of planning for the Christmas show in a couple of weeks.

Four classes today means that it feels quite realaxed compared to the previous day. I only have one class in the morning which means I can relax a bit before lunch. I’m the only person in the teacher’s room so take advantage of the situation to do some photocopying and do admin work such as checking registers.

At lunch the head of English gathers all the TEFL teachers together to make sure we make “the most amazing” Christmas show ever.  She seems really into it, presumably because she doesn’t have to be in it. I try and let the others focus on the show and plan to do as little as possible.

After lunch I have three classes in a row and start to feel a bit tired towards the end. Teaching big classes and having to shout a lot to be heard is difficult. The only ray of light is that the last class is the English Program (EP) students as they have an AC room. Despite being in the EP most of these students aren’t really better than the rest of the school. The EP classroom does have a computer and projector which means I can actually make slides and use the internet in this class. I wish all classrooms had these as I could do so much more in other classes.

After school on Wednesday I stay to play sports with the students and some other teachers. None of the other TEFL teachers at my school are into sports. The students are pretty scared to tackle me when we play football and because of this I look like half decent player despite being overweight , un-fit and out of practice! I stay until 6.30pm when the sun sets, it’s the highlight of my week at school.

After playing sport I get invited to eat with the Thai teachers at a local place. I try to learn some Thai with them and help them with English.

Thursday

Thursdays mean I have to go up in front of all the students in assembly and speak in English to them. “GOOD MORNING, HOW ARE YOU?”. Maybe 25 people out of the 2,500 respond. Next I have to teach them the 12 months of the year. Either the students know these already or it’s way too difficult for them to learn in the 4 minutes I have. I end up sweaty, red faced and the students use this time to chat and play on their phones.

I have two classes before lunch and two after today. My classes are the worst behaved of the week. At around 13 or 14 years old the students aren’t scared of foreign teachers and aren’t mature enough to understand that learning English is important. This means that they go a bit crazy in class.

Today, the entire back-row of one class decide to make paper planes and try to throw them without me knowing who did it. In another class a group of boys think it’s fun to shout swear words in English during the lesson. In the end I just focus on the students who want to learn. With 55 students in a room and no assistant I don’t think I can do much about it.

At lunch the principal said the students didn’t understand me when I was teaching the months of the year at assembly and I should try something different next week. I appreciate the feedback but I don’t know what should be expected in a five minute speech when all the students aren’t concentrating.

The afternoon classes are not too bad. A few of the troublemakers don’t show up and there is some scouts event which means I only have around 30 students in the class. I do some good conversation activities with the older students and a reading activity with the younger class.

At the end of the day the teachers are made to stay behind to practice for our Christmas performance next week. We quickly come up with a routine and are out of the school by 5pm.

Friday

Friday is payday so our agency visit the school to give us payslips in the morning. Actually it’s just something they’ve put together on excel but I’ll leave it to them to sort out my tax etc.

Friday is evidently some kind of special day as the teachers are all wearing their official white uniforms. The assembly overruns as a lot of people give speeches. I get frustrated as a lot of the time the teachers can’t explain what is going on during the ceremonies so I just have to stand at the back with the other TEFL teachers.

My first class starts 15 minutes late. The students don’t settle and in the end we play a couple of games and they complete one worksheet. That is the classes’ only  period with a native speaker all week so I feel like they haven’t got the most out of it. The second class mostly has girls so they are well behaved. The boys are the ones who cause the problems usually. In this class we talk about travel and tourism and do a comprehension activity based on some hotel reviews I’ve created.

When I was at school Friday lunch was always the best, chips and nuggets with cake for dessert. Here in Thailand there isn’t anything to get excited about.

After lunch I’ve got two more classes before I’m free for the weekend. By Friday afternoon most of the students are dreaming of the weekend so it seems there is an unwritten rule that we’ll make things easy for each other. I prepare some games and easy activities and they behave!

For some reason there is always a senior member of staff in the teacher’s room on Friday afternoon. They always seem to have some task which delays you from leaving at 4pm. Today is no different. The head of English wants us to create exams for potential new students to take to test their levels. I say that I will do it on Monday when I have free time and she tells me the students will come tomorrow, can I stay an hour and do it now. She must’ve know for months that these students were coming so why wait until now to ask me? I tell her that I’m going to Chiang Mai and have to be at the airport in two hours so I can’t. If she wants to write it and send it to me I can look through it if I get time.

A Week in the Life of a TEFL Teacher in Thailand

So there you have it, my week as a TEFL teacher in Thailand. Pretty much every week in a Thai high school went like this. There were some really good parts of working there and some which I hated.

The early starts weren’t fun but in the end I got used to them. finishing at 4pm was nice and meant I had the whole evening to relax and chill out.

The morning assembly got tiresome pretty quickly and most days I tried to escape it as soon as possible. Classes were only 50 minutes and with students coming late, special events and walking from room to room most classes were pretty much only 30 minutes of learning.

The actual teaching part was quite fun. There are students in every class who want to learn. The problems came from my management and agency. The management would always ask us to do extra work and stay late, usually on a Friday night. A lot of the Thai teachers resented us TEFL teachers when we left home and said we couldn’t stay to do things. My agency were obviously pressured by the school and asked us to do these extra tasks and stay past contracted hours without extra pay. In the end I left the job due to problems from the agency.

I’ll be following this up with a week in the life working at a Thai language school soon as an alternative place for you to work here in Thailand.

If you have any questions or comments feel free to post them below!