The Kids of Ko Tao

So although I am starting to get into my diving (Eleanor here) I am still keeping my fingers in a few other pots. I'm trying to go to as many yoga classes as I can (about 3 per week at the moment) and I have certainly re-gained a lot of my flexibility. Mira, my flat-tummied yoga teacher, is really fun to work with and is really encouraging (although she is no Veronica!).

I am also working at The Secret Garden, a community conservation project-cum-bar that organises beach cleaning 3 times per week. It takes 4 people about 1 1/2 hours to get about half-way along the beach and it is quite depressing how many plastic bags, bottle tops, wrappers and other random items are discarded or find their way onto the beach (I found a pair of lacy knickers the first time - luckily I was wearing my rubber gloves!).

The guy who runs Secret Garden, Bee: an Italian, tattooed dude, is also running a summer camp project for the primary school children on Koh Tao. These kids actually only go to school for 4 months of the year and so Bee is running a project for 6 weeks during their summer holidays consisting of a 2-hour English camp during the weekdays, plus one day on the weekend of games and sports - all conducted in English. If they can get a good grasp of English it gives them a much better chance to do well in life as they can work in the tourist industry that Thailand is almost wholly dependent upon.

I did two days this week and was basically the English teacher for a small group of 9 kids between the ages of 6 and 12 who all spoke OK English. To start with we went though alphabet, numbers, colours, etc. and although their vocabulary is quite good, their grammar and sentence-building and understanding is poor. This means that just doing basic vocab is a bit boring, they don't really understand the more complex concepts. For example, they know the words for plastic bottles, glass bottles and cans, but they don't understand when I talk about recycling.

As a total novice teacher with zero training and literally no idea about how to structure the class it is a very exhausting 2 hours. The kids have attention spans of about 2 minutes and keeping them interested and learning is really hard. Even though they are keen and sweet and well-behaved: it makes you realise how much discipline is instilled in us in school these days.

In any case it is immensely rewarding and I hope to be able to work with them for one day a week or so and do my bit.