What I like about you...

I love kids. And not just the good kids. To tell you the truth, I find the good kids kind of boring. They're not really challenging, and they'll do anything you want just because you've established yourself as a figure of authority, even if all you've done is shown yourself to be taller and stronger. The difficult kids are so much more rewarding to me because when I get through to them and create some interest for the subject, I know it's because it's something that they actually want to do and not because I'm threatening them with a stick.

In Thailand, I love my kids, even if I can't understand a lot of what they're saying to me. They have a lot of those qualities that kids all over the world have. They're curious, ask a million questions, follow me around, and try to help me with my work. There are a few great ways in which they differ from American kids, though. In no particular order:

Qualities I love about Thai children

• They respect their elders. As this is a society where age is still held in high esteem, for the most part, Thai kids speak politely to those older than them. They do a pretty good job of listening and following instructions and will basically run the weirdest errands for teachers, including going in some teachers' houses to get stuff for them. I think this may be a bit much, but such is the case here.
• They are so inclusive. We have a number of students here that have some learning disabilities, but unlike in America, they are kept in the mainstream classrooms for the most part. While I think that this means that they're not always getting the help they need, I also think it gives other students the opportunity to befriend and help them. There is a student here that never speaks a word and yet he still has friends. In America, I think disabled students may get more assistance but are often alienated from their peers.
• They're helpful. I always have students volunteering to help me carry my things and bringing me things.
• They have a high tolerance for boredom. So many things are achingly boring here, including a lot of things that are supposed to be “fun.” I went to an English camp for fourth through sixth-graders, and the kids would just sit patiently waiting for activities to start. We also played a number of so-called “games” that I would've considered an instrument of torture in other settings, but the kids just rolled with it. Their patience sometimes far outdoes my own.
• They can be trusted to be left on their own. Sometimes teachers don't show up to their classes, and yet the kids can always be found sitting at their desks. In America, I don't think most teachers can even leave to go to the bathroom during the day.

Qualities that I can't stand

• Painful shyness. Painful for everyone in fact. When I first started teaching English here, and even now when I go somewhere that people have never seen a foreigner before, I have to deal with this, practically begging the students to talk. Beginning in the early years, students are reprimanded if they can't read something correctly, don't write beautifully enough, can't remember certain facts. And this reprimanding is usually accompanied by a swift hit of the stick. Even as I sit here right now, I can hear a teacher spanking his students. If that happened to me every time I spoke incorrectly, I'd shut the hell up too.
• Inability to do things without the most explicit instructions. I'm pretty sure this relates to the first one. For fear of doing anything wrong, students really don't like starting to do a worksheet or an activity before the teacher has explained it and then checked over everyone's work to really make sure they're doing it right. Which leads me to...
• Lack of creativity. I think Thailand will have a difficult time really making an impact in the world we live in today because they don't have the spirit of innovation. Deviation from the norm is often seen as a bad quality, so why would anyone take a leap by doing something that's never been done before? Cheating is rampant here, and students often lack the confidence to be able to do things on their own.

America has a terrible habit of blaming teachers for poor student performance. Here, all of the onus is placed on the students, which I think is equally unfair. So many times my co-teacher has called all of the students lazy and stupid. I'm not saying that the student should bear no responsibility for how well they do in school. At some point, they need to decide that getting an education is important. However, I don't think elementary school is the appropriate time to say, “You need to study because you're going to need to get a job to support your family when you're older.” Bitch, please. That would be akin to suggesting a first grader start putting his money in a 401k because “you're going to have to retire one of these days.”

I also don't want to see Thai kids turn into American kids. There are a lot of admirable traits that they have that I wish more American kids had, but it would be nice to see teachers step away from the stick and come up with some different ways to foster learning, preferably one that doesn't include invoking fear. 

Great Expectations and Equally Great Disappointments

I've been feeling a little less than enthusiastic lately. I guess it's what happens when you've been somewhere for a while. It would probably be a little different if this whole Peace Corps thing didn't have an end date, but it does, and what may have seemed shiny and new 17 months ago has started to show its age and lose a bit of its luster. The coffee sucks, the Internet is worse, bugs continue to eat me up on a regular basis and I don't know that anything I've done has helped my students learn English. The somdtam still tastes pretty good though.

From what I've heard, the year mark is a rough one for most people. We're not the new kids on the block anymore; in fact, we've been around the block, and it's filled with terrifying dogs and people that yell, “Foreigner!” at you, even after they know your name. When I first got to Lansak a little over a year ago, I was so excited about how much I was going to be able to develop the English program at my schools and all the projects I was going to do in the community, teaching about HIV/AIDS and the environment, really helping these people, you know. I might as well have put “cure cancer” down on my to-do list.

One year later, and my expectations have changed a bit. Honestly, I feel like I could walk away from this satisfied, if I know that my students at least know that the letter ‘a’ has two sounds. That would be an accomplishment.

I started this project out with two schools: Anuban Lansak and Banbongsamsip. Anuban Lansak is huge. For grades 1-6, there are over 700 students. Plus, there are two years of kindergarten. For each grade, there are only three teachers, meaning some classrooms have over 40 students. It’s a more urban school, which means that most students attend every day, compared with Banbongsamsip, where the parents of most students are farmers, so sometimes they’re called to help in the fields. The classes are smaller, less than 20 students per class, which was nice. I say ‘was’ because we had to part ways unfortunately.

There were a number of issues at that school. More times than not, classes were canceled because the lawn needs mowing or kids need to practice dance or the teachers weren’t there. I would sit in the office of the principal (who was never there, so why would he need it?) for hours on end. The school is also 20 km away from my house, which wouldn’t be that bad, if you didn’t add the computer I bring, no shade from 100 degree sun at 7:30 in the morning and rabid dogs all while biking uphill. Both ways. Through the snow. I had a teacher from the school that I would meet, and she would drive me up in her truck, but that too could be unreliable. Sometimes she wouldn’t go, and we’d have to find someone else to come and get me. It just got to be too much. I would’ve dealt with all of that had I felt like I was accomplishing anything there, but I just felt completely unproductive and in the way.

Now, I teach at Anuban Lansak four days a week. I started this school year so fired up. I thought that I was going to be able to do twice the amount of what I would’ve done had I still been coming here only two days per week. My original co-teacher was doing well, and because I’m here for double the time, I’ve started working with the teachers in grades 1-3, so they can teach English next year in their classrooms when I’m not there. Yeah. In my dreams.

I again had let my expectations get the better of me. I guess during that month and a half break I developed amnesia about what really goes down here. I figured that everyone would be dying for me to come into their classrooms and show them what communicative and student-centered teaching really is. Because, you know, everyone just loves being told that they’ve been doing something wrong for the past thirty years.

The first week of school was a definite struggle. I feel really uncomfortable going into other people’s classrooms and running the show while putting them in a supportive role. Most of these people are older than me, and in a society that gives such respect to the elders, I felt awkward “bossing” them around. There were a few teachers that just checked out of the lesson completely, leaving the room to go grade papers or eat, and I gave my co-teacher the unfortunate task of telling them that they can’t do that because I’m not a teacher per say, but a trainer/collaborator, and I’m here to give the teachers the knowledge and ability to carry on this English thing by themselves next year. Again, in my dreams.

But, there have been some successes. All of the third grade teachers stay in the room with me and are really active in helping me deliver the lesson. There is one teacher in particular who I know is going to be a great teacher and who I know will definitely continue to teach next year.

I used to not even count these small accomplishments. For me, if the whole program wasn’t working out, then it was just a failure, plain and simple. Being here has changed my perspective on all of that dramatically. I told my mom last week that there were a lot of instances where I want to pull my hair out, but all that will do is leave me bald, and it won’t actually help change anything, besides increasing my love of hats. This time last year, it was all about me: what can I do here to make things better. This year, it’s been and hopefully, will continue to be about everyone else, finding people that see a weakness and want to change it. That’s the thing about trying to change the world, I guess; you can’t do it alone.