Teaching Frustrations

Teaching in Thailand, as Margo likes to put it is “like an extended vacation.” We have lots of free time, but don’t get me wrong; teaching in Thailand can be frustrating at times. Here is a list of frustrations (the other Farangs seem to agree on these):
-I only see students once a week, so they tend to forget whatever they learned the week before and also tend to forget their homework
-I have over 870 students, so there isn’t much of a personal connection with the majority of the students and not to mention a lot of grading.
-Students come late to class all of the time (sometimes as late as 20 minutes) and there is not much I can do about it
-I sometimes get the feeling I’m talking (or shouting) to myself in class because students either don’t listen (I’m sure that happens everywhere) and/or can’t understand a word I’m saying. They nod along but when I talk to them individually I realize they have no idea what I’m saying.
-Unless students actually drop out, students can’t fail. They are passed onto the next grade no matter what, which is hard when students don’t come to class and therefore have no grades.
-In some classes hardly any of the students can understand what I’m saying (and I have upper-classmen!) so I sometimes have to have one student translate for me when something is important, but since I can’t speak Thai I have no way of knowing if he or she is translating correctly
-The most frustrating thing is that the concept of cheating does not exist in Thailand. We are told to ignore cheating because, unfortunately, it’s an integrated part of the Thai education system. So I’ve found that if a class (or at least a group of students in a class) does well, the whole class does well. If a class does bad, the whole class does bad (with some exceptions of course.) Out of 21 classes and 2 listening tests each, I had only one class that actually stayed quiet for the entire test. It happened to be one of my top classes, so they didn’t really need to cheat anyway.
Aside from these frustrations…I have some great students who I really enjoy teaching. Even in the tougher classes to teach (the ones that can never stay in their seats and never pay attention), there is a sprinkling of students that I can see are actually paying attention, so I just focus my lesson on them. They are the ones that actually come to class to learn (obviously every teacher dreams all of their students were like this.) Out of 870-something students, I do recognize most of them and know at least a few names from each class. I always like seeing them outside of class and off-campus. I have become closer with the girls on the volleyball team, a few are my students.
Last Thursday a group of my students asked me if I was busy Sunday night. They said they wanted to tell me about Thai culture, so I thought we were just meeting at the school, but when Phin (one of my students) got there, she had me follow her on motorbike where we met the rest of the group. They took me around the night market, buying me drinks and snacks I’ve never tried before. We (5 of my students and I) painted pottery while talking about Lampang, Thai culture, and American culture. I can definitely say that it was my favorite Sunday evening in Lampang. We walked around while Beauty (another student) took pictures (they took me around as a project for their other English teacher). Klaw (yet another student) said “people must think we are super-stars because she is taking so many pictures of us.” I met Phin’s parents and little sister. They gave me a Chinese cake and “pocket money” since it was Chinese New Year’s Eve, they are Chinese, and they own a Chinese bakery. The majority of the better English speakers among my students take a “special class” after school and/or on the weekends. Talking to some of my students, I realized that a few of them take an extra class (in various subjects) everyday of the week for about 2 hours everyday!
The big assignment I gave to my students is to write and perform a movie of a genre they had to pick out of a hat. They’ll be performing it next week, so I’m really excited to see the results. Judging from the scripts, some of them will be pretty funny. Cinderella “with a twist” seems to be a common theme. By a twist I mean, instead of losing her shoe, she loses her wig (and gives the whole town lice when all the girls in the town tried it on) and in another version, she loses her underwear haha.
School ends in 1 month. After that I have about a month before I head to China with Margo and Apple for 12 days from the end of March to the beginning of April. After that I’m not sure what I’m doing…I guess it all depends on money at that point, since China will be draining a lot of my funds since the visa alone cost 150 USD. It will be Apple’s first time out of the country, and its bound to be an awesome trip. We still got some planning to do. The month of March is also still a mystery. At this point everything is up in the air for me since I don’t want to make any major commitments until I hear back from the Peace Corps (I recently sent in my full medical package and said June 2009 was the earliest I could leave.) Otherwise, I may stay for another semester. My friends seem to think I may never come home, but don’t worry I’ll be back soon enough.
Just a short story I’d like to share:
I was out with Margo and Maprang (one of the young Thai English teachers at our school) at a club on Saturday night. It’s a friendly gesture for someone to come up and cheers glasses. A guy came up to me and “clinked” glasses and said something in Thai a couple times. All I could make out was “len footbon! Len footbon!,” as he pointed towards himself and then me. He continued talking and said “Len footbon at lampangkanalaynee” and pointed to Maprang and I and said “teachers.” I finally understood what he was trying to say- that I had played football (soccer) with him at our school…and that he’s a student! I was a bit surprised, not exactly that a student was out at a club (he claimed to be 20), but that he actually came up to me at the club and announced he was a student. Now I wonder how many students saw Margo and I when we danced on stage at another club a few months ago!

Frodo Baggins is the Capital of New Zealand

The past three weeks, we've done a lot of traveling. I would say we've had about 7 days of actual teaching in the past 3 weeks. Our first little trip was for New Years to Chiang Mai. Margo's sister Mariana and her two friends Bri and Andrew arrived on the 29th. They came to our classes to observe us teaching. After school we left for Chiang Mai, where we met up with Margo's friend Mike who teaches in the south. New Year's Eve day those of us who had never done any of the sight-seeing in Chiang Mai (basically everyone except Margo & Apple) went to a mountain village, Doi Su Thep Wat, and a palace just outside Chiang Mai. For our New Years celebration, Margo, Apple, and some of her friends reserved us a table at a club called "The Monkey Club." To get a table, they had to get there at 5ish. We arrived at around 8 after polishing off a bottle of Sang Som (Thai rum) on the songthoew ride over. Not a very tasty choice. The rest of the night was spent dancing (even though Thai people don't normally dance) and drinking.
The 2nd, Ba Oy (Margo's aunt) who was visiting from Copenhagen came to pick us all up in a giant van. All of us except for Apple headed to Chiang Rai to stay with one of Ba Oy's friends. Their house was situated on a golf course outside of the city. Their house is beautiful. I didn't even feel like I was in Thailand. We arrived to have BBQ prepared for all of us and every meal we stuffed our faces because it was so delicious and there was more than we could possibly polish off. After being pampered until Sunday morning, we headed back to Lampang so Margo & I could get back in time for teaching on Monday. On the ride back, Atlas at hand Margo tried quizzing on the capitals of the world. None of us were very good at it expect Ba Oy who works for UNICEF so knew almost all (if not all) of the ones we asked her. When Margo asked "What is the capital of New Zealand?" Andrew answered "Frodo Baggins" (Thus the name of this post.)
4 days of teaching followed before more traveling begain. Friday, I had to head to Chiang Mai to extend my visa and catch my flights to Phuket. I spent 3 hours at immigration to find out that I had to make it to the Labor Office in Lampang by Monday morning. After freaking out for a few minutes thinking I wouldn't be able to make the trip down south, but I called my consultant who called the Labor Office to let them know I would be there Thursday. Margo, who left after her classes, and I barely made it to the airport in time to check-in, but fortunately we made it! After a short flight to Bangkok and then another to Phuket, Ba Oy picked us up and drove us to Krabi where we were staying at a hotel that Ba Ahe (Margo's other aunt), the architect, designed. Saturday was full of island hopping, swimming, snorkeling, monkey watching, eating, boating, and tanning (or burning if you are Bri.) The water is amazing and the white sand so soft I just wanted to roll in it. This is a picture of Maya Beach on Phi Phi Island...This is where the movie "The Beach" was filmed.


After a long day on the motor boat island hopping, we were all so sore from the waves that continually compressed our spines (or as Margo described "Made our stomachs reach our throats"). Sunday we did a little more island visiting. We stopped at two small islands, which during low tide are connected by a sand bar. That afternoon, we headed to a famous wat where we climbed 1,237 steps to reach. Parts of the climb were almost completely vertical and a bit unnerving on the way down (especially for those with a fear of falling, like myself). I am still a tiny bit sore from the climb and its been quite a few days!

Monday we headed to Phuket, where we stayed at a resort for free (thanks to Ba Oy who knows the owner), and spent more time on the beach. Tuesday was about the same, until our delightful vacation came to an end when Margo & I had to fly back. We actually missed Monday and Tuesday of school, but had to be back Wednesday for a festival at our school. In order to save money, we decided to take a bus back from Bangkok. Little did we know it would take 3 hours to get from the airport to the bus station (due mostly to traffic), and the only bus left stopped outside Lampang, so we had to hope there would be a songtheow to take us back to school at 6am. Luckily there was. We had enough time for a short nap before waking up for school.
All in all, it was a fantastic trip, I just wish I could have stayed in paradise a bit longer.


The green marks are where we were during the past 3 weeks...a lot of traveling