6 Months to go.............

Yesterday my M6 students left, I hadnt realised until the time came to say goodbye to them, and see them venture out into the great wide world, just how much they’d come to mean to me. At the begining of the year, I found it difficult to imagine myself ever enjoying teaching, I couldnt see it as anything more than a job that I had to do in order to be in thailand, but now Ive come to realise that it is so much more than that. It does still feel odd when on occasion I am stood at the class and due to some miracle there are a classfull of students staring at me with rapt attention, a classfull of students of roughly the same age as me as well, but I no longer dread going to lessons, and I look forward to spending time teaching the kids that actually want to learn.
  One of the M6’s who has just left came to me a few weeks ago for my help, She had an interview for a uni place but the interview was to be held in english and her ability isn’t quite up to the standard I think that they would probably have been expecting, So I spent a few hours a day with her, Preparing introductions and answers to questions that we thought might come up, and I was so genuinly suprised and impressed when she came in to tell me that she had gotten in that it made all the bad classes I’ve ever had to teach all seem somewhat worthwhile.

  There’s now only one week until the long summer holiday begins, and I find myself feeling that it’s a shame that they had to come around so quickly and afraid that this represents the begining of the end for my gap year as when we return there’s only three months of teaching left.

To anyone out there who’s thinking of taking a year out but worried about how huge a period of time it is, It’s really not, and at least for me, It’s going by at remarkable speed.