School Daze

School has been in session for a few weeks now, and I'm loving it so far. It's a little hectic, and there are still some kinks to be ironed out, but for the most part, I'm happy with the way everything is going. As a Youth Development Volunteer, my role is to work with youth in the community, and with the community itself, to help the upcoming generation develop skills and habits that will help them to mature into healthy, productive, positively contributing adults in society. I felt that the best and most effective way for me to connect with youth would be to meet with them in their schools since that's where they spend most of their time. All of the schools in my community have welcomed me with arms wide open, however, despite having explained my role several times, I'm mistaken for an English Teacher and tasked to teach English (the biggest kink), but one step at a time. 



I attended an English Camp with some of my high-schoolers

 

I've gone from basically just going with the flow of everything around me to having a very rigid schedule. I spend Mondays and Fridays at the Sub-district Administrative Organization (SAO, which operates as the City Hall) working on my lessons and/or participating in community events/activities with my counterparts. Tuesday through Thursday, I work at six schools in the community, five primary schools and one secondary school. I spend a half day at each school (three to four hours) and so far I've been doing a combination of teaching English as it relates to self identity and emotions, and just general English vocabulary, and having the students do activities or have mock conversations using the vocabulary. As time goes on, I will incorporate more activities pertinent to youth development.

 

 

As much as I'd like to distinguish and work in the capacity of my true role, I appreciate and enjoy the level of respect shown to teachers here in Thailand. There is even a tradition near the beginning of the school year when every student makes little floral offerings for their teachers and present them in a near reverent ceremony for Wan Wai Kruu, which is basically Teacher Respect Day.  

 

Here is a video another Peace Corps Volunteer made of the Wan Wai Kruu ceremony at her school

 

 

Here are a few pictures from the Wan Wai Kruu ceremony that I participated in

 

All of the students assembled together with their mini bouquets

Every student comes on stage to present their individual tokens

A representative from each class presents teachers
with an arrangement made by the class

A couple of the mini arrangements that I received



All made by the students 



One made by each class, from Pre-K to Sixth Grade





Aren't they cute?

Outside of this special day, teachers are very highly respected by students and community members alike. A couple other cultural contrasts I've noticed are that Thai students do not challenge or question teachers, at all, the answer to "Do you have any questions?" is always "No" while the answer to "Do you understand?" is always "Yes" (which is not always the truth), and the response to corporal punishment (which I do not practice) is a wai/bow and a thank you. I try to make my time in the classroom fun, and I encourage the students to ask questions and give opinions and suggestions (although I don't always have the language to understand or respond).

 

Here are some photos from an activity that I did with one of my classes. We did an English lesson about animals (which they requested) after which, I challenged them to demonstrate their comprehension through a little competitive game of "telephone" - this is how it went:



The students lined up into two teams, they love boy vs girl
competitions, and I let em have it since it's near equal



I whispered an animal name to one person from each team,
then they passed the word along to the front of the line.

The person at the front of the line runs to the board to draw the animal

Points were first awarded for speed and then for accuracy.
No surprise when duck turned into dog,
but somehow elephant became telephone :-/

I did the same activity at another school, I'm also learning as I go,
notice the less jumbled chalkboard?

After the activity, they wrote their "Today I learned about" sentence





I think I'm settling into my schools quite nicely, and I believe that sooner than later, I'll be well settled into my role as well. For right now though, my school days are off to a pretty good start.

Moving Right Along...

It's been about a week since the military assumed authority of Thailand. Since my last post, schools have resumed their normal activities, most television stations are back on air, the curfew has been relaxed (now effective from midnight to 4 am vs 10pm to 5am), and the king has endorsed the new leadership. Thai people have great respect and reverence for their King and "no coup in Thailand has succeeded" without his blessing. I'm glad that schools are back in session, and since I don't really watch Thai television and I'm in bed by 10pm every night anyway, I was personally unaffected by the restrictions.  As far as military presence goes, there was a check point and armed soldiers on the way to a sporting event that I went to earlier in the week, but that's extent of what I've seen so far.

 



Military tank. It was lunch time.

 



Soldiers on the corners of major intersection

As most of the movement is concentrated in Bangkok, there is (thankfully) very little to be seen in my neck of the woods, and the same is true for the majority of the country. As it has been established that news sources (print, television, radio) are being censored, many people have taken to social media for real coverage. Although it's common knowledge that social media is also being censored, there's still a lot to be seen across this medium that will probably never make it to any official news source. This was shaken up yesterday when Facebook was temporarily unavailable across the country. The incident was supposedly a glitch or a misunderstanding, and life was back to "normal" within a couple hours thirty minutes, according to censored official news sources.

  

In other news, I finally have a routine, and although things might change, it's nice to have an idea of what will be happening from day to day. If you know me well, you know how important it is for me to have structure in my life, and honestly, that has been lacking for the past month or so. So from famine to feast, moving forward, I will be working in six schools. Mondays and Fridays are my hub days where I plan, debrief, do paperwork, and/or activities with my SAO (Subdistrict Administrative Organization/City Hall/Hub). Tuesday through Thursday are my school days, where I will spend four hours at each school doing activities. I'll get into this more in a subsequent post, but I'm loving every challenge, except maybe the exhaustion of my thirty minute bike ride in 102º weather, but hey, I'll take it. Saturday is my day of rest, and I'll be tutoring on Sundays.

  

 


At a sporting event with my hub workers and our cheerleaders :-)

 


One of my classes. I came to observe fifth and sixth grade, but I ended up teaching fourth through sixth graders English.
Good thing I had a couple PowerPoint lessons prepared for tutoring sessions!!

Life seems to moving right along, even with Peace Corps Volunteers remaining on "Standfast" status (which might be lifted soon) it can be easy to forget that the country is under military rule. This status basically means that I'm not allowed to leave my community, and as I'm now settling into the routine of schools and everything else, I can't think of anywhere else that I'd like to be. I'm not oblivious to what the country is going through, but Facebook incident aside, it hasn't consumed much of my thoughts since the initial announcements. I continue to pray and hope for the restoration of peace in this country, and I hope that you will do the same.

Current Happenings

Thanks to all who have expressed concern regarding the political situation here in Thailand. It's headline news that there has been a dramatic influx of political activity over the past few weeks and that the military has most recently launched a Coup D'état taking over The Government of Thailand.  Peace Corps Thailand has once again activated a nationwide "STANDFAST" which means that volunteers are to be vigilant, remain in respective communities until further notice, and make preparations to leave at a moment's notice if necessary.

Under conditions of the coup, the country has been placed on a curfew from 10pm to 5am, the constitution has been suspended (don't know the full implications of this), schools are closed, all television programming has been suspended, and political gatherings of more than five people are banned. There has been talk about censoring or even banning social media and shutting down the internet, but this has been deemed an impossible feat due to the fact that many ISP's are outside of the country and many social networks are global and easily accessible via said ISP's. Even so, there is no internet at my site, and I am currently accessing the internet from my mobile network (which is spotty, due to network overload).
  

Otherwise, things are relatively peaceful in my neck of the woods, I am twelve hours away from Bangkok, the nation's capital where all of the "big action" is taking place. There is virtually no military presence in my community and the greatest concern that I've heard is basically an annoyance of not having TV or internet. Peace Corps is sending us updates periodically, and in doing my part to remain vigilant, I am also keeping my eye on the Bangkok Post and BBC News.

Here's a quick clip from BBC about the coup:

In other news, it has been a little while since my last post and honestly, life has been a series of roller coasters the past few weeks. For a moment, I felt like things were getting on a steady track, but you know, here we are. So we'll see how this goes and how long it lasts. I hope to be back soon with another update, meanwhile, please keep us in your thoughts and pray for   the restoration of peace in this country.