A Trained Person is an Excellent Person

By Matt

So reads the sign outside of my school, Sriwittayapaknam (say “See-wha-tee-ah-pack-nam”).  Thai teachers primarily use rote learning to deliver their lesson plans.  As you may know, rote learning requires repetition and memorization instead of a critical thinking approach that is more commonly used in the States.  Because of this, my students are more advanced in English grammar rules than I am, but can’t speak what they’ve learned in everyday communication.  Awhoops.  I’m sure there are plenty of other drawbacks to using rote methods for every subject, but one perceived benefit is that my 40-45 kids in each classroom are incredibly easy to teach.  Which is nice.  A few examples of everyday classroom/school life:

1)  Each class starts and ends with all students standing, wai’ing (bowing), and saying “Good morning teacher, how are you?”  Students aren’t allowed to sit until instructed.

2)   If I drop a marker, eraser, or paper, there are 1 or more students that pick it up and hand it back to me. 

3)   Students tend to stay on task when work is assigned and don’t complain or talk back, no matter how awful the assignment.  With that said, sometimes the assisting Thai teacher will encourage the student to get back to work by beating the crap out of them with a ruler or stick.  

4)   The kids go wild for any sort of competitive game, but cheer on the other teams and don’t seem to care who actually wins.

5)   Many students of the same sex walk around the school holding hands.  This applies at all the grade levels, from Kindergarten to 9^th grade.  You’ll see grown men and women holding hands around town as well.  Might sound weird, but it’s not my culture to judge.  Actually, I kind of like the idea because I think it feeds into how kind/generous people are here. I enjoy the school itself, the administration, and most importantly, the students I teach.  Sriwittayapaknam is a private school; parents pay 12,000 BHT (~400 USD) a semester for students to attend.  Doesn’t seem like much, but that’s a typical Thai teacher’s monthly take home.  I make 21,000 BHT a month because of the specialized skillz, which is nearly double what an average Thai teacher makes. 

Each student attends core subjects of Math, Science, Thai, English, and Chinese courses.   Yes, you read that right.  Three languages, all of which begin at the Kindergarten or 1^st grade level.  In addition, students are required to participate in Thai dance, Music, PE, Religion (Buddhism), and Scout activities.  Every Thursday is Scout Day, and all 1,500 kids dress up to take part in activities such as marching, knot tying, or sewing. 

Shot of the school from Building #2

Scouts marching on Scout Day 2011 (Matium 1-3 = 7th-9th grades)

With all of that schooling, you’d think most of these kids would be regular Doogie Howsers.  However, not the case.  I’ve decided this is because of two reasons:  1) all of the additional activities take away from time that should be spent in core subjects and b) a general lack of motivation, especially when compared to other Asian cultures. 

A few of the rather cute kindergartners getting ready to give gifts to each teacher
on Wai Kruu Day (Teacher Day)

And the wai (bow) to the teacher before presenting their home-made flowers/gift.  All classes present gifts to the teachers on the same day.

You would think with all that tuition money that the school could afford to install air conditioning in every classroom.  However, only the music room, computer center, and kindergarten classes have A/C.  That means 17 of my 21 teaching hours are spent in a room with revolving fans in 90-95 degree heat and humidity.  There’s really nothing like standing in front of 45 kids that don’t understand a word you’re saying and sweating through your undershirt every day. 

For the aforementioned 17 hours, I’m teaching the equivalent of 5^th-9^th grades.  The remaining four hours are spent in after-school kindergarten class.  I’m able to recycle my lessons for the 5^th-9^th graders with some moderate changes. 

Students pretending to enjoy my chef/customer dialog in the Food unit

Some of my primary 6 (6th graders) practicing music in the hall

Foreign Teachers (English Dept) with School Principal. 

Time with the kindergarteners is mostly spent playing games (the intro to London Bridge in my class is known as “Rondon Ridge is farring down), teaching basic vocabulary, coloring, and singing songs.  It’s a pretty entertaining, but a draining way to end my Mondays thru Thursdays.  There are two other English teachers at school, Kai and Alyssa.  Kai has been at Sriwittayapaknam for over a year and teachers 1^st-4^th grades.  He’ll be leaving after this semester to open his own tutoring school outside of Bangkok.  Alyssa is a new teacher and fresh out of college in Indiana.  She is the dedicated Kindergarten teacher and also has some 1^st grade classes.

The preferred mode of travel to school...motorbike.  This photo was taken on a particularly dry day.  Those with a sharp eye may have noticed the election sign in the background.  Thailand recently elected a majority of the Pheu Thai party into Parliament.  Their leading candidate, Yingluck is lined up to be Thailand's first female Prime Minister, if confirmed by Parliment.  Thailand politics are difficult to understand with 26 different parties.   More on that in a future post.

The school has a small cafeteria/eating area that is always stocked with Thai snacks and light meals.  In the morning, I grab a Pad Krawpao Moo (Fried Pork with holy basil, chili, and rice) and throw a fried egg on top.  For lunch, food is brought up to the classrooms.  Students eat in their rooms as the “cafeteria” area is too small for everyone to sit at once.  Side-note: students stay in the same room all day; teachers are the ones that move back and forth.  Depending on which of the two buildings you’re in, lunch is either noodle, rice, or soup based.  Most of the meals are good and it doesn’t hurt that you can always throw on more chili, sugar, vinegar, or peppers.  Thais love their spices and it’s not unusual for me to see the 1^st graders dumping chili flakes and sugar on their pork soup.  The sugar thing is better than it sounds.  There is also a mobile fruit cart lady that strolls by the school around 11am with a couple hundred pounds of fresh pineapple, mango, watermelon, papaya, apples, and other tropical fruits.  A small plastic bag full of whatever you want sells for 10-15 baht ($.30 or $.50 US).

A typical day at school with a visit from a costumed Milk spokesperson.  Our contact at the school (same guy that's been there 18 years) has mentioned that since the school instituted a milk drinking policy for all kids, there has been a significant height increase over those 2 decades.

My Mondays-Thursdays end after the kindergarten sessions at 3:15.  I’m typically exhausted Mondays and Tuesdays, which are my days with 5 classes each.  Wednesdays and Thursdays are a bit easier with 4 classes each and Friday I wind down with 3.  I can take off at 1:30 on Fridays, and I usually am heading out of town on a bus or mini-van to meet up with Shelly for our next weekend trip.   

Even though I really do enjoy Sriwittayapaknam, I will be transitioning from Sriwittayapaknam to Shelly’s school for the 2^nd term that starts in October.  The traveling back and forth to see each other for such a short time over the weekends is taking a toll and we’ve decided it’s best to be in the same town.  So with that, I’ll be heading to Phanom Adun Wittaya (Shelly’s school name) in a few months.  For more on her school, check out the below!

Reading, Writing and Canceled Classes

By Shelly



First Day of School: Clay, Dan and I

On my first day in Phanom, we went to my school I would be teaching at called Phanom Adun Witthaya to get a brief tour and our schedules.   My schedule consisted of 3 Health, 4 P.E., 6 Computer and 1 English class.  I would be teaching in the English program where all subjects are taught in English, but are not necessarily “English” classes.  

Most of my classes fell under this program with the exceptions of my English class, M4 (10^th grade) P.E. class, M6 (12^th grade) P.E. and Computer class.  I am guessing that they assigned these classes based on my resume.  This should be rather interesting since what I know what to do on the computer is not exactly what they want me to teach.  I will have to be at least one step ahead of my M6 computer class as I am teaching them Basic Design.  (Yup, that is what the curriculum has me teaching!)  The Thai school system is a little chaotic at times.  I didn’t actually receive any of my curriculums until the second week of school, and was still receiving my curriculums up until this morning, 3.5 weeks into the semester!  Wait, no, there is still one computer class I have yet to receive a curriculum for.  The motto here however is “go with the flow” and “be flexible. “  Those are both understatements in my opinion.  Nonetheless, here we go! 



Me and Sharon with my M1 students on Waikru Day



Since I am teaching all different levels for different subjects, that means multiple lesson plans.  For example, my M1 Health class will be learning all the different body systems (digestive, excretory, respiratory, skeletal, muscular, cardiovascular, ect.), M2 will be learning personalities, self-esteem, managing stress, emotions, dating relationships and STI’s/AIDs (kind of intense here!), and my M3’s will have learned all about advertising and how it affects us, marriage/family, and something else I can’t remember.  WHEW!  (I’ll let you in on a secret: I actually LOVE teaching health!)  I left it up to my P.E. classes to choose which sport they wanted to learn and play during the semester, so I will be learning AND teaching handball to my seniors with a little yoga thrown in, and basketball to my other 3 levels.  I’ve already started my basketball classes on doing squats and holding squats with squat hops to get their defensive position in check JIt is fun to have the ability to teach them whatever I want, which has already started out with what a warm-up / cool-down consists of and the different types of stretching you do for each.  Next will be the F.I.T.T. principle!  :) Computers I have decided to teach them how to make a webpage and have them create their own for their school projects, ect.  Thank you YouTube /Google! 

In the first week of school, the students bombarded me and the other new farang (foreign) teacher with questions such as “What is your favorite color,” “When is your birthday,” and “Where are you from?”   They were very curious to know everything about us.  Now, I get self-esteem boosts almost daily with the girls complimenting me with “Teacha, very beautiful today!”  I’ll have to admit that at first I was a little suspicious of brown-nosing, but upon living here longer, I have realized that Thais are very good at complimenting when they see it.  I’m not going to lie, it’s pretty nice J 



Kluay and Pang



Memorizing the kids names (and these are just their nicknames) has proved to be more challenging than anticipated since there are repeats of some names in different grades, and I have maybe two normal names;  John and Nick.  The others consist of names like Book, Earth, Tiger, It (poor kid!), Phat (pronounced Pat), One, Frong, Atom, Eye, Ink, and Dodo. One of the kids’ names is Kluay, pronounced “Klu-eye” and means banana, but if you say it phonetically, it means something very different in Thai (pardon my french, but it means "dick").  Needless to say, after a few mistakes and a lot of giggles, we all tend to stop midway through saying her name to think about which way is the right way and sometimes just let the kids finish the name.  I do however tend to remember the boys names more since they are typically the ones who need reprimanding.

 

M2 Students with Sharon, Eunice and I on Waikru Day

 Other challenges include going to a class and having none of the kids present.  Usually if you wait around 10 minutes, they will show up since they might be coming out of another class late.  This could be in part to classes ending and starting at the same time.  There is no “5 minutes between classes” like we have in America.  Other times though, a class just simply will not show up and you will find out after waiting around those 10 or 15 minutes and checking with the English department that there is something else going on and class is canceled for that period. 

Oh my.  Such is life here in Thailand.  Mai Ben Rai!