I arrive to mass chaos in my Prathom 4/1 class in period 7. This is how it is every day. All of Prat. 4 just has a lot of energy and they are finally at a mental level to enact their mischievous plans. So I get them riled down and sitting in their chairs. All sixty of them.
So we begin our lesson today on pizza toppings. It is the last real teaching week of school, since next week is more like review and saying goodbye. I teach them the English names for toppings (and no, papaya does not go on pizza) and teach them how to order specific types of pizza. They are working on their worksheets, when I start to smell smoke.
I turn to my co-teacher to see her walking out to the hall. The kids are starting to get up and go over to the outdoor hallway that faces the inner courtyard of our school (the school is shaped in a 'U'). Everyone is prattling on in Thai and the smell of smoke is getting stronger. You see, I know that smell very well. The smell of a building on fire is very different from a cooking fire or a side-of-the-road-burning-trash-and-yard-waste fires.
My co-teacher talked to the housekeeper in the hallway and began walking back and forth in the hallway talking in Thai. I followed her repeatedly asking what was happening. I needed to know the school procedure for a fire and where exactly the fire was, since I couldn't tell which classroom it was in. My school has four stories and many classrooms on each floor, so the fire could have started in any of them. It took me five minutes of repeatedly asking my question before she finally told me what was going on.
Here I just want to tell everyone that you should always tell the farang when something bad is happening, especially if they are a teacher in charge of sixty students. And even more especially when they have been in a fire before. Just saying.
So I finally, I find out that one of the rooms on the other side of the "U" and a floor down from where we were, had a fan catch fire. Of course, I am not sure if only one fan or multiple fans, or even the extent of the damage or if it was contained to just the one room or not, since they don't tell me things and it took me five minutes to get the "6/1 fan and fire." I look over the banister in the hallway and see that half of the school is in a mass cluster in the inner courtyard in what could be called a fire-escape-plan-Thai-style.
My co-teacher then just walks away and goes over to the teacher next door and stays there to talk to her, leaving me with sixty kids who have clustered over to try and see what was happening. So I use a voice that I very rarely use to get my kids back into the classrooms and their chairs. You know, the voice that says "I will be obeyed because it is my will and there is no other option." Not angry, not nice, just is a fact. It takes a few repetitions but the kids listen. I could tell they were a little shocked at my tone since they haven't heard anything like it probably from anyone ever. I didn't even tell them to be quiet and they just were.
But I got everyone to their respective desks to see who was and wasn't there. This was one of the only times in my lives where I wished more of my students skipped school. Every single student was present except for one. That was a lot of kids. And me, someone who speaks little Thai, and them, who speak little English. Honestly, I think my tone got them to obey more than my actual words. Stupid kids wanting to go watch.
So I take them through the fire procedure and I kept them in tight rein. There WILL NOT be mass chaos from my kids. I keep my kids safe, even from their own idiocy about wanting to get closer to the fire. And when it is time to hand my kids off to their next period teacher (though, I am not even sure if that is what she was. I just gave them over to a Thai teacher) and I did so gladly. The fire is out (more on that later) and I go back to the English office. The other teachers are in there trying on clothes, curling their hair and laughing. I almost lost it, but I went over to my desk, put in my headphones and put the volume at full blast.
There was so much wrong with what happened yesterday. I know there was a fire in the building by smelling smoke. I could barely get information about what was going on, even though I was in charge of kids. They don't even know what a fire drill IS over here. I was ONE teacher in charge of SIXTY kids. There are no fire alarms. There is one fire extinguisher per floor and it is at the very end. The fire truck doesn't have a siren. They were trying to put out an electrical fire with WATER. There are 300 students per floor, with four floors and two stairwells, which is not good enough. And finally, one does not mai pen rai fire and go about getting pretty afterwards!
I know I am overreacting a bit. As far as I know it was a small fire (though again, I haven't been to that side of the school since and I don't know how many rooms were affected), and my kids all turned out fine and were in no immediate danger. But how would you like to be in charge of sixty lives when inside you are having flashbacks to the other fire Thailand gifted you with? I kept myself together until after I handed off my kids, but let's just say I went and got myself a pint of beer immediately after school was over and I was finally allowed to leave. I don't even know what happened to the kids and classes that were on that side of the school. For all I know, they let those kids play or go home. Who knows? So much over here just doesn't make sense to me.
Last of all, if you want to understand why an electrical fire doesn't surprise me one bit, I have included two pictures taken by one of my Thailand friends. There are 10 ceiling fans in most classrooms in my school and the wiring in Thailand commonly/always looks like the pictures below.
No comments:
Post a Comment