My school experience in Thailand
when I first came to Thailand, I didn’t know anybody, and there were many other foreign visitors pretty much like me. I had heard that there were people like me who got jobs teaching English. I had had quite a bit of training in teaching English (including at the State Department) and some experience too.
So I met somebody who was a recruiter for those native English speakers to get paid to work at Thai schools. And I did that for one semester. I guess that was about six months. I don’t remember that very well.
But it was not in Bangkok It was in an outlying (suburban) area of Bangkok. I lived about a block away in a modest apartment. The school was highly respected, or so I was told.
I was told that parents would come with their children and see how attractive this school was, and they could pick that school over other schools. It was a public school not a private school. But it looked nice. It had some big, beautiful trees around the large field where everyone in the school would get together every morning for a big meeting.
Sometimes those meetings seemed to go on longer than I ever expected because I wondered whether they should be in class by then. It was interesting that there was a teacher, always a sturdy young man at the front as students came in checking to make sure that the students met some sort of dress code. Okay. None of my business. The primary building was either 3 or 4 stories tall and there was an elevator. Students had to climb the stairs . The elevator was only for teachers. I always took the elevator.
Classes were often large. 25 or 30 students maybe. But the classrooms were a shock to me. Large black boards, and by blackboards i mean the old-fashioned slate style. Some of which had noticeable cracks. Tables and chairs were old. Surfaces of desks would often have carvings of people’s names and things like that. I had one large girl sit in a chair and it almost collapsed under her.
In another building there were as I recall, four classrooms with air conditioning white boards and better furniture. And I was told that students who could go to classes in those rooms had parents who paid extra for that.
As I said they used to have big gatherings in the yard for that purpose. I, of course, was there along with everyone else -all the students, all the teachers, and all the administration. And there would be people, usually the man who I assumed to be the principal of the school, would always surprise me with how much talking they did. Maybe it was inspirational.
I really don’t know. Sometimes, but not all the time, some students were called out for breaking some rule or something. I don’t really know. And there was a designated male teacher with a healthy size stick who would handout corporal punishment. Maybe it was only one swat at a time, but I don’t remember all that well. Maybe more.
But I had seen enough so I contacted the man who hired me. And I asked if this normal And he was very clear that corporal punishment was illegal in Thailand at that time and it certainly was also illegal in the suburban school system where this school was located.
And I, being me, a lifelong liberal, I walked up to the swatter, the guy with the stick, and I took the stick out of his hand, and I broke that stick and threw it down. Nobody said anything, nobody applauded or showed anger toward me for doing that. There were no repercussions against me for doing that. I met with my contractor, an English speaker with years of experience in America who was not associated with the school. and he explained that I made a big mistake. It may be against the law to paddle students, but the parents are in agreement. If the school wishes to do that that, parents were supposed to be in full support. WoooW!
After watching this kind of thing go on for quite a while there were only a few days left in that semester. I” worked” “although at no point was ever expected of me”. That was when I quit that school
Let me tell you about a common classroom situation that I think is worth sharing I was told that I was teaching senior classes, all these people were supposed to have had two previous classes in English. And all I had to do was be the person who spoke English to them . I had no book, no instructions or training except that I was told to do something to teach English. Okay. So of course, I had to add Lib doing something because I was getting about 30,000 baht a month from this school to do that.
So, I would have a class of maybe 25 students in front of me and I would try to ask some very simple questions like “What is your name and how old are you?”
And almost without exception I would get this reaction. The student to whom I asked the question, would glaze over his face as if he had no idea what was going on. He/she had no idea what I asked. Next that student would start spinning his head left and right looking for someone who would give him the answers.
And other students around him would explain what he was supposed to say. For me this was almost comical. These people, who had already had a couple of classes in English and were getting ready to leave this school, and had no idea what was going on in my class. We were all just playing dumb until the time was up.
In a similar situation I tried to compete boys against girls to answer some simple questions like that. This went well for a while. And I asked one person a question and several people laughed. Ones who could communicate some in the class, explained there three genders in the class and I asked a ladyboy.
This drill was a competition between boys and girls, I just asked a ladyboy. Remember there is a dress code and boys and girls looked the same. Later So I was able to recognize the ladyboys soon enough because they might add some lipstick or other changes after coming into the school.
But there was one other surprising difference. I have often thought of myself as an amateur sociologist. Always paying attention to the people and the businesses around me. And in this case, I came to realize that this ladyboys often seemed like the smartest students in the classes. They were alert and paying attention and they were often the ones that the ones with stupid looks on their faces would turn to the get the answers. Later on in life when I met ladyboys in other contexts and this impression this held up very well.
So. I could probably say more about that experience at a highly relatively respected school in the suburbs of Bangkok. I suppose my memory might hold other interesting experiences from that time in my life, but I’ll stop right here.
Did you each English anywhere in the world? if you did tell us about your experience
