Economist

Dear teacher, clear teacher, good teacher, and my very favorite--teacher sir; I answer to all of the above. My classroom is small, and is usually full by the time that I get there in the morning. But, that does not stop an additional 10 students from filing in the door after me and standing around the walls. In all I have around 40 students (half named lobsang, the other half named sonam or tenzin) a room that is no bigger than 15 X 20, one feeble white board marker, 40 huge smiles, and about a million questions. It is a lot of pressure, really. I spend most of my days preparing material for the class. The first day I thought I would read them a short article, pick out vocab words from the article, and then break them into small groups to discuss. I choose, foolishly, an article from the Economist about deforestation. My bad. 15 minutes of reading and I looked up and saw 40 blank smiles. I needed a back up plan, I did not have one, and so I faked it. This is my forth day and I am starting to get the hang of teaching, or maybe my students are getting used to me... I don’t know but there are not as many blank looks exchanged anymore.