English Comprehension

Being a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand as a teacher is really hard. My program is designed so that we work with teachers to teach them about student centered learning. To do this we co-teach in English classrooms. The problem with my program is we usually work with more than one teacher and in several schools. I work with 6 teachers in 3 different schools from grade 1 to grade 9. Only one of those teachers do I actually get to see more than once a week. Thus, I am not with any one student more than an hour a week sometimes not more than an hour every two weeks. Now the problem. The problem is there is no follow up with my students. I cant give my students homework because they have a whole week to do a homework assignment and they generally forget to do it or have forgotten the lesson by the following week. Homework is not counted for points in the grading system, like at many schools in Thailand, and a lot of times I have no idea if my co-teachers actually go over the homework or collect it at all. For the most part, the teachers I work with try to seem interested while I am with them but then when I am away don't continue my lessons and go back to their old teaching methods, thus never actually learning anything new. I know this because the students I work with never remember anything when I am back in their classroom the following week. Your question for me may now be...then why do the teachers you work with want you to teach in their classroom with them if they dont actually want to use the method you are trying to show them? This is because if a teacher can manage to get a foreigner at their school it will boost their order in the hierarchy of things, hierarchy in Thailand is very important. Thus, it doesn't matter what or why I am in the schools, only that they have this smiling caucasion face working at their school. I do have one great co-teacher that I have continually taught with two days a week for the past two years. He is genuinely interested in my work and actually finds importance in me working with him. I have watched him use a lot of my methods, which shows me he is actually listening and finding use to the student centered method I am trying to show him. I am prefacing my excitement with this knowledge to show that I generally don't get to see many results, it is very frustrating for me, and I often feel a lack of use as a teacher and Peace Corps volunteer. Today, I had not one... but two amazing things happen to me with the co-teacher that actually finds importance in me. Usually when I ask my students how are they, they just say "I am fine". This is what all Thai students are programmed to say when asked this question in English. A few months ago I had taught my students about being sick and what to say if you are sick. I have one little student in 6th grade I absolutely adore because he is always trying and always has a big smile on his face. Today, he came in and said "how are you?" to me...like he always does. I said "I was good" and asked him how he was and he said "I am sick". I asked him why and he said "I have a cold". Not only did he say something other than I am fine, but he gave me a clear answer to my question of why he was sick...which shows English comprehension. Then, in the same class, we were working on creating sentences. I had been reading about new techniques on how to teach this last night, as it wasn't really working last week, and had come up with a new method of making the sentences for the children... only scrambling the words and have them put them in an understandable order. Not only were they able to do this, but I watched several of them write a sentence, read it to themselves, and then self correct themselves. This is absolutely amazing! Self Correction is a very good sign of English comprehension. Then after a few goes, I gave them the word butterfly and had them make a sentence using their own words. Almost everyone in the class was able to make a sentence on their own. I feel like such an amazing proud teacher today!! I had to share this information with everyone because this is one of the first times I have actually felt validated in my primary program objective as a Peace Corps Volunteer.