6:32 PM Sunday, May 1, 2016:
Hi Aman
Where r u now?
The School open already.
to day the first day.
but U can come to School on next weekend.
I received this message from a teacher friend while sitting at a food shop in Khe Sanh, Vietnam with eight more days before I was to board a plane to return to Mae La Noi… Oops. It seemed that in the chaos that surrounded the start of the new school year my friends had forgotten to mention to me that school would be opening two weeks earlier than originally planned. This might have shocked me ten months ago, but after growing accustomed to constantly changing schedules and cancellations I almost expected it. So a week later, I left my hostel in Hoi An, Vietnam and after 36 hours and seven different modes of transportation I was finally back in Mae La Noi… just in time to teach my afternoon classes. And honestly, I could think of no better way to return to school: exhausted, confused, and having pretty much no clue what was going on - an accurate representation of most of my time here.
Regardless of my abrupt start, the first few weeks of this semester have been the best yet. I am teaching all of my classes 100% on my own and although I was first daunted by this challenge, I’ve really enjoyed it so far. I teach six different groups of students in grades 10 and 12, two of which I taught the previous school year. Each week I am only scheduled to teach 16 hours, but in reality my free time typically fills up with being asked to help out other teachers with a class or club activity. Many classes have also been cancelled, which is always frustrating, due to beginning of the year assemblies and activities. For example, one Friday afternoon the students were released early and the teachers had a seven-hour meeting, part of which was spent watching a live broadcast of Thailand’s Prime Minister giving a talk about the state of education. I understood maybe ten-percent of what was being said. And that’s being generous. Another Friday afternoon all classes were cancelled so that each and every student could plant trees all over the campus. While the initiative by itself was great, I was disappointed to miss yet another two hours of class time.
My teaching schedule for the new semester
Students spend their Friday afternoon planting trees around campus
An Apple a Day Definitely Doesn’t Keep the Doctor Away
It finally happened. After nearly ten months in Thailand I finally became ill enough to go to the hospital. Now before anyone freaks out, you need to understand that in a small town like Mae La Noi the only real (if you could call it that) medical facility is a hospital. So regardless of whether you break your leg or have a runny nose, you’re going to end up in the same place. For me, it was a case of strep throat that sent me there and although many people would shudder at the thought of spending any amount of time in a non-Western medical facility, I love it. There is no better way to understand a country’s medical practices and procedures than to be a patient yourself. And I have to say, Thailand has truly impressed me - mostly. Upon driving up to the hospital I saw a waiting area filled with people and prepared myself for a long wait. To my surprise the whole ordeal happened in record time. I checked in, filled out some forms, had my blood pressure and temperature checked, met with a physician, and received my medication in no more than 30 minutes. And the entire visit cost me less than $3 - meds included! I must admit that two of the three medications I was given were to relieve symptoms I did not have, but what can you expect when you never learned any medical vocabulary in your Thai language classes and the doctor’s English is exhausted after saying hello and asking your name.
Being sick also reminded me how much I am cared for in this community. I stayed home for two days to recover and during that time a full hour would not go by without me receiving some sort of visitor. Everyone seemed to want to know how I was doing and was eager to offer their personal advice on how to get better faster, even though it was rarely understood from what illness I was actually suffering. Fellow teachers even brought me soup and fruit and other foods and scolded me when I said I wanted to drink soda or anything below room temperature. After two full days of this, I can now say that I am confident in offering medical advice for a handful of different illnesses according to common Thai remedies.
Left: A picture my friend took of me in the hospital and then proceeded to send out to the entire Foreign Language Department;
Right: Medicines from the hospital, only one of which was for a symptom I was actually experiencing
The Final Stretch
The start of the new school year also means that the end of my teaching fellowship is fast approaching. With around two months left, I took some time to reflect and have come up with a list of goals for the remainder of my time in Mae La Noi:
Empower my students. Encourage my students to be confident, not only in their English abilities, but also as individuals. Create a comfortable and open environment in which students feel free to approach me any time they have any sort of question.
Experiment more. Implement more out-of-the-box activities in the classroom. Push students (and myself) out of their comfort zones in order to appropriately gauge what type of teaching approach works best.
Identify need. Survey teachers and students to find out where Mae La Noi Daroonsik is lacking. Form ideas for potential projects that the next fellow might start and/or continue.
Become better educated. Learn more about the history, political and religious structures, and cultures of Thailand, as well as the history and relationships between surrounding nations in southeast Asia. Use this knowledge to create lessons that better connect with students and highlight their strengths.
None of these goals will happen overnight, but hopefully by the end of my fellowship I will have them all in some capacity, leaving my students even more empowered and confident in their English skills than when I arrived.