Festivals, Camps, Trips, Performances, Birthdays, Conferences, and Hot Weather...This is our Peace Corps life.

The past month has flown by yet again. It seems like the longer we are here, the more time seems to speed by. Once again, my lack of regular blog posts is a testament to how busy we’ve been here in Thailand.

Annual March Festival (in February)

view from our porch

From February 7^th - 9th, the same festival that took place during our site visit last year (which typically takes place in March) was underway again. Our rental house is right across the street from the wat (temple) where it takes place, so our weekend was full of music and activity. The music blasted all weekend from around eight in the morning until five the following morning, then would start up again at eight. The conditions weren’t the best for quality sleep, but with earplugs we managed just fine.

Whereas last year we were taken to the festival by our then new counterparts, this year Zack and I just went by ourselves. We knew many of the people there and walked around, casually playing the carnival-like games and chatting with students. I won an umbrella, just like last year! We bought a round of “ammunition” for a cap gun shooting game and had a pretty epic shoot-off with our students.

Zack and I also made merit at the wat. It felt good to do it independently rather than being guided through the steps by someone else. It seemed like doing it ourselves also allowed us more opportunity to make it meaningful. We definitely blended a lot more than we were able to last year. We didn’t have to get up on the stage to introduce ourselves, and there were more people who greeted us than there were people who stared at us. We’re making progress!

Sex Education Camp

For the week leading up to Valentine ’s Day, Zack worked with our local health clinic to organize a camp about reproductive health for the youth in our community. Each day, they did the same camp with a different group of students. All of the 7^th and 8^th grade students from the two largest schools in our tambon (village) participated. Zack’s main role was to work with the public health officer to make sure the event flowed smoothly. Now that they have facilitated this camp, the health officer seems much more confident and is likely to continue facilitating the same camp with middle school students every year. Zack is doing so much wonderful work here and is so dedicated to working with the youth and local leaders.

Valentine’s Day Weekend

It's not Valentine's Day without Valentine cookies!
I made these for the staff at my school.

Valentine’s Day happened to fall on the same day as Makha Bucha Day, which is a national holiday in Thailand. Since it was a long weekend, Zack and I traveled to Nong Khai, where we met up with some other volunteers and spent a relaxing weekend by the Mekong River. At some point we hope to travel to Laos, but for now we just wave at it from the other side of the river J

There's the Thai-Laos Friendship Bridge in the distance!

Trip to the Zoo

It's not a real trip without karaoke!

After our long weekend, Zack headed to the Korat (Nakhon Ratchasima) Zoo with with a group of students from our community. The SAO (Sub-district Administration Office) where Zack works funds the program with the intention of providing additional opportunities for disadvantaged youth in our community. Most of the students in the group do not live with their parents and come from homes that are financially unstable.

watching the show (seals, snakes, parrots and more!) 

Somehow this family of gibbons got a hold of some chips.

Thai Youth Theatre Project

practicing the week before the festival

From February 21^st through 23^rd Zack and I were in Lopburi province at the Thai Youth Theatre Festival. The festival is an opportunity for students from all over Thailand to come together and perform plays for one another in English and participate in English-based theatre activities. My students had been preparing their play, “Snow White” for several months leading up to the event. I wasn’t really sure how we were going to get to Lopburi or how a lot of things were going to work out, but true to Thai form, everything seemed to come together and work out just fine. It’s just further confirmation that I don’t have to always take control and do things “my way” in order for everything to work out.

cheering on a teammate

My students had performed a couple of times at the school for various events, but were still so nervous! They got through their dress rehearsal just fine, and even though a couple of students were really homesick and nervous the first night (it was the first time away from home for some of them), they seemed to be really excited about their performance.

The next day, Kru Charoensri (my middle school co-teacher) and I taught lessons on singing along with another volunteer/co-teacher pair. Zack taught the same lesson in another classroom with another volunteer/co-teacher pair. There were also lessons in dancing and mask-making. By the end of the last lesson I was a little worried that my voice might not make it to the end of the day! We spent the afternoon watching other schools perform, which really seemed to get our students excited for their performance the following day. It was great to see them so engaged and committed to something that they had worked so hard on. Up until that point I’m not really sure that they understood why we had been working so hard. That evening, we played games and had an epic dance party.

The following day, we taught sword fighting and shadow puppetry in the morning. My students performed their play in the afternoon. It was wonderful! There were a couple of little mishaps, but they were all great learning opportunities. Everyone is already talking about what play they should do next year. All-in-all, the Thai Youth Theatre project was a huge success and a really great opportunity for our students and our school!

Check out the entire performance!

Genki English Camp

The next big event we had was a Genki English Camp in Chaing Rai province hosted by another volunteer. This is the same camp that I attended last August that completely changed how my co-teachers and I were approaching teaching English. Once again, it was very well organized and super fun. Now Zack and I are in the process of organizing our own Genki English Camp in our community.

We also got to spend one night in the city of Chaing Rai, thanks to our gracious host. We went to the night market and found…a French press! Every day here just gets better and better. It was also really great to spend the time with our PCV friends, sharing stories and playing games. I think we value time with friends more than we ever have before.

Zack’s Birthday

Then along came Zack’s birthday on the tenth! Hard to believe it’s the second one he’s celebrated here in Thailand. The staff at the SAO made it super special for him by bringing over blaa pow (grilled fish) and kanom jeen (a type of Chinese noodle dish), a favorite at most Thai events. They also had a special cake made for him. It was nice to have people at the house celebrating with us, and their thoughtfulness made the day a really special one.

Counterpart Conference

Kru Joy (my elementary co-teacher) and I worked really hard to prepare two sessions for group 126’s counterpart conference in Suphanburi province. This is the conference that is held for new volunteers and new counterparts to introduce them to working together before volunteers leave for their permanent sites. Our session was on March 18^th, but we arrived the evening before.

It was really fun to take a little road trip, just Joy and me. On our way there, I joked that she might want to trade me in for a new volunteer, but she quickly assured me that she wouldn’t do that, thankfully.

We led a session on "co-teaching" and a session on "lesson planning." Preparing for the sessions really provided us with a great opportunity to reflect on our past year together and create goals for next year. I was so proud of Joy for having the confidence to do this with me. I was also so grateful to be able to share our experiences with the new group. I wanted everyone to see how it is still possible to have a great relationship and teaching experience with your co-teachers, even if communication is difficult. It’s a process that everyone has to go through in their own way, but I was glad that we could at least be encouraging and positive.

On the way home, Joy and I stopped
in Lopburi to see the monkeys.

Open House at Chimplee Wittaya School

Joy and I rushed back to site the morning of the 19^th so that we could prepare for our school’s open house which took place on the 20^th. What a whirlwind! Even while we were in Suphanburi, I was working on and emailing files to a print shop so that we could have a big vinyl banner for our booth in time for the exhibition.

The opening ceremony was elaborate. Each school that attended had multiple performances, mostly involving singing and dancing. The school band that Zack helps with performed as well. They’ve improved a lot since the Christmas Day performance and the Children’s Day performance. All of the schools set up booths displaying their biggest accomplishments. After the several-hour-long opening ceremony performances, the VIPs walked through the booths asking questions and sampling products while the MCs broadcast all of it across the school grounds. At our English booth we displayed our TYT trophy and showed a video of the performance. We also displayed some of our classroom materials and played a game that involved popping balloons and answering questions in English. This segment lasted for about half an hour. The booths were then quickly torn down and packed up.

Kru Charoensri introduces some of
our methods of teaching English

The open house itself went really well. My only complaint was the heat and the fact that our school director had required that all of us (staff) wear our school suits, which I’m pretty sure are made of wool. Wool and nearly one hundred degree weather do not mix well at all. As soon as I could, I went home and promptly showered (It’s a mid-day requirement during the hot season) and doused myself with prickly heat, a cooling powder. Then I found a fan and didn’t move for quite a while…

mingling with the VIPs

And with that I am now caught up on our latest activities.

Next week Zack and I are off to our Peace Corps Mid-service Conference in Bangkok, and then we are hoping to take a little bit of vacation time before getting back to work on some summer camps. I’ll keep you posted!

Click HERE to view the entire photo album.

Unreasonable Expectations

Yesterday was a particularly hard day. It stemmed from the fact that we have been forced to focus all of our time with our sixth grade students on drilling for the O-NET, a national standardized test. The test carries a lot of weight for schools and students alike, so it is taken VERY seriously. While it’s really difficult to describe all of the challenges and the roller coaster of emotions I experienced yesterday (and most days these past few weeks), I’ll try my best to describe the atmosphere for you:

My co-teacher (Joy) and I walk into the meeting room where the sixth graders have already been doing O-NET drills for the entire first period. It is the start of second period, and Joy and I are going to embark on yet another hour of test drills with the students. Each hour is a different subject, but the activities are all the same…drill, drill, drill. We have both of the sixth grade classes at once. Normally we have one class first period and the other class second period, but for some reason the students are all lumped together and we only spend one hour total with them. It gives us an extra hour “off” in the morning, but makes the room extremely unruly because we now have to try to manage about fifty students rather than our usual twenty-five. Joy starts going through practice test questions one at a time, mostly directing her attention towards the students who seem to be paying attention.

Our session is not even a quarter of the way through and students are already hitting each other with their rulers, banging on their desks, pulling chairs out from under their friends and being so loud that it is difficult to hear Joy despite the massive sound system she is using. I can’t believe that we have to strain through another forty-five minutes of this. I make it even worse by trying to sit near some students who are being ultra-rowdy. It works for a few minutes, but they soon realize that there really isn’t much that I can do about their behavior in this context. Within those few minutes they have already begun singing karaoke and dancing together, making comments that are probably not appropriate. (I don’t like to assume, especially when I still barely understand any Isan, the local dialect they are speaking amongst themselves.) One of the students I’m sitting near shouts at Joy, “Dtong bpai kii!” (“I have to go shit!”) Joy continues with her current test question. I slink back to my spot next to Joy, feeling defeated. Only forty more minutes to go…

Sitting here rather than actually teaching is torture. I feel a huge range of emotions including anger at the students for not having more self-control and desire to do well. I start thinking about my general day-to-day relationships with the students.

Is it possible to convince every single one of them how important it is to try their best? Should I be doing more day-to-day to instill the value of self-sufficiency when it comes to their learning? Do they rely on me too much to make every single thing fun and engaging? Could I teach them skills that would help them handle situations like this one better? What could I do differently?  

Despite my frustration I can also see how truly awful this is for the students. They have to do these “drills” for every subject, almost every hour of the day. They are also required to stay for an extra hour of school every day so that they have an extra hour for… can you guess? That’s right, drills! Our students are literally spending seven hours per day going through practice test questions. On top of it all, we are now in the third or fourth week straight that they have had to endure this crazy schedule. All I want is to get back to “normal” teaching in our normal classroom where the expectations are consistent and reasonable.

Yesterday also happened to be the day that the students had “English drills” for their extra hour at the end of the day. At that point they had already sat through six hours of drills. Joy asked me if I was ready to head to the meeting room. I jokingly told her I needed to “dtriam-dtua gon” (prepare myself first). We tried to be light-hearted with one another, but I could tell that we were both just as weary. She told me that it would be okay because she had told the students they needed to “greng-jai” me. I smiled at her encouragingly, but thought that telling the students to “greng-jai” me was a lot like telling them that it would hurt my feelings if they didn’t behave. I still need to write more about “greng-jai.” It’s a word that is difficult to translate into English and can vary slightly depending on the context it is used in.  It’s (very) basically a concept in Thai culture to be considerate and put others’ needs before your own.

The next hour-long drill session began at 3:30. This would be the seventh hour that the students had spent that day doing O-NET drills. As soon as I walked into the room I could feel that the atmosphere was literally one hundred times worse than it had been that morning. Joy sat patiently, waiting for the students’ attention, but they never gave it to her. She started to present a question several times then stopped because there was literally nobody paying attention. Her next approach was to try to turn up the volume on her sound system. By then there were about five students out of the fifty paying attention. Those five kept complaining that they couldn’t hear. In the meantime, the classroom was absolute chaos. Objects were flying through the air, a couple students were standing on chairs, several games of what seemed like a more violent version of “tag” were going on and there were still students wandering in and out of the room. After about five rounds of Joy turning up the sound system, it was at its maximum volume. A few students were still complaining that they couldn’t hear. Joy raised her voice even more and tried to get everyone’s attention one last time. Nobody seemed to notice that she had said anything. At that point, I could have sworn that I felt something snap. Joy’s tone changed and she started to yell at the students more forcefully. To make it even worse, many of the students started to laugh at her. It was like everything beginning from that morning had just continually escalated, bringing us to our current, awful situation. There was only one other thing that my co-teacher could think to do. She took out her bamboo stick and didn’t seem to hold back at all as she hit the nearest student, first on his hand, then across his back. She apologized to me, and then sat back down. The class regrouped for about three minutes before it was chaos again. The stick stayed out on display, but was thankfully not used again that day.

My co-teachers and I have discussed different approaches to classroom management and have agreed to never resort to corporal punishment in our classroom. While I am not at all saying that what she chose to do yesterday was appropriate, I can definitely sympathize with her desperateness. In order to effectively manage a classroom, the expectations must be reasonable. It is not reasonable to expect students to take practice tests for seven hours per day for weeks on end, nor is it reasonable to expect the teachers to teach in overcrowded classrooms full of students who have been forced to do the same activity for hours, days and weeks straight. The nature of the situation sets up teachers and students alike to have negative experiences, and it’s so discouraging for everyone involved.

Peace Corps has made it clear to participating schools that our presence at the school will not necessarily raise test scores and that this should not be a motivator for requesting a volunteer. Peace Corps supports us if we choose to not be at the forefront of O-NET activities. Some volunteers have no involvement while others host camps or trainings geared towards skills that would help students on the O-NET. At first, I was hoping to not be involved (mostly because I anticipated the above experiences), but I also came to the decision that my top priority is to support my co-teachers. If they are expected to do O-NET drills, I feel like it is my responsibility to help them in any way that I can. That’s why I have chosen to be present in those jam-packed rooms full of burnt-out, unruly students. There have been countless times that Joy and I have just looked at each other, shaken our heads, and laughed resignedly because there was just nothing to do but laugh at the ridiculousness of the whole thing. No mature how discouraging it is, it’s worth it for me to be there if it makes the experience just a little bit easier for her and helps to show that I care.

With all of that said, I cannot wait for O-NET season to be behind us and for our “normal” teaching to continue. Hopefully the negative experiences from the past few weeks do not carry over into our classroom. In all likelihood though, we will probably have to take time to reteach expectations and rebuild relationships. Normally, the students are engaged, they are learning and they are ENJOYING learning. That is enough for now, despite all of my questions and fears about how to be a “good” teacher. I am taking one day at a time and trying to instill a joy of learning rather than a dread of it. I can only hope that, given time, other important life skills and values will follow.

HERE is a link to the first in a series of interesting articles about Thai Education, including O-NET testing.

English Camp and a Bpai Tiao!

Click HERE for this week's album

                All week both the YinD (Youth in Development) and TCCS (Teacher Collaborator and Community Service) programs worked together to put on a mini English camp! The focus of the camp was “ASEAN,” which stands for Association of South East Asian Nations. ASEAN is a huge deal in Thailand right now because Thailand will become a member of the ASEAN community in 2015. This is also the main reason why the focus of our program (TCCS) has been designed around collaboration with Thai English (as a foreign language) teachers. The Royal Thai government is currently working towards reforming education to become more student-centered and also wants students to become proficient in English to meet ASEAN requirements.

                We spent Monday through Wednesday preparing for the camp, and it actually took place at a local school on Thursday. Since we had really limited time to prepare, it was shorter than a typical camp would be (one day instead of two). All of the Peace Corps trainees worked so hard to make it happen, and it ended up being really successful! The students seemed to have a really great time forming friendships and learning English. The volunteers did a great job creating student-centered, participatory learning environments for the children, and I continue to be so impressed with how creative everyone is! The purpose of planning a camp during training was to give all of us some experience with organizing a camp. Peace Corps volunteers often put on various English and/or Life Skills camps in their host communities during Peace Corps service (as requested by the community) and also travel to the sites of other volunteers to help teach and support at camps in other communities. It sounds like TCCS volunteers tend to organize English camps, while YinD volunteers organize English camps and/or Life Skills camps. I really hope this is something that Zack and I are able to do at some point!

                On Friday we had a wonderful guest speaker at training, Venerable Phra Anil Sakya, a Buddhist monk. He spoke to us about Buddhism in Thailand and was not only interesting to listen to, but also had a really great sense of humor! Here’s a link to an interview with Venerable Phra Anil Sakya if you are interested in learning more. I am so impressed with Peace Corps staff for being able to connect us with someone so open and knowledgeable about Buddhism in Thailand.

                Saturday we went on a “bpai tiao” (trip)! We rode a “rot song-taao” (the same mode of transportation we used to visit the vice governor our first week) to Wat Kae, the National Museum of Suphanburi and the 100 Year Market in Saam Chuk. It was one of the most fun days that we have had yet, and I definitely felt like a tourist for the first time since being in Thailand. Check out all of the pictures in this week’s albums!

                I think that’s it for this week! Today we find out where Zack and I will be for two years in Thailand, so plan for big news in my next post. We also get to go visit our permanent host site at the end of this week, so I probably won’t post a new blog entry for a couple of weeks. Best wishes to everyone back home! <3