While I’ve devoted much of this blog to sharing what I have learned about Thai culture, with my service winding down I figured I would give a short round-up of some of the recent projects I’ve either spearheaded or had the chance to be a part of, to give you a bit more insight into what being a Peace Corps volunteer in Thailand entails.
Thai Youth Theatre Project
This is the big one for me right now. I have written before about the Thai Youth Theatre Project and last year’s Thai Youth Theatre Festival. It’s that time of year again for the festival and we are collecting donations through the Peace Corps Web site (We were funded! Thank you!).
TYT has been described as the “ultimate English camp” in that students must prepare ahead of time to attend and thus inspires year-round English learning. Students from rural schools from all over the country come together to learn theater skills and perform a short play in English.
I’ve been a member of the planning committee for the past two years as a part of my service here and seeing the looks of pride and excitement on the participants’s faces is one of the few ways that I have been able to actually see my impact here.
Once again, I’ll be bringing a group of students to participate, the same kids that went last year actually. They are going to perform Cinderella. I’m not going to get into the hoops and troubles I went through to get these kids to go this year, but just know that there was a small cheer that went up among them when I got to tell the a couple days ago that they will get to go.
English Teaching Techniques Conference
Let’s travel back in time a bit, to the end of October last year. One of the major parts of what I understood my position here to be was as a teacher trainer, which I have interpreted in a stricter sense than others. As a part of this, I have strove to work closely with the Primary Education Service Area Office (PESAO) that my school is under. Thankfully, I have had wonderful support from the director of English programming at the office (known as a saw naw).
So when I decided that I wanted to do a conference-style training, he saw the value in having the training and found a way to make it happen. It was not within the office’s budget to support another training, so he suggested that the participants pay to attend. This is unusual because most teachers get paid to go to a training, not the other way around.
What was special to about this was that I was given control over the scheduling and topics for this training. Which meant that instead of having mandatory lectures for everyone or rotations, I was able to set up different rooms with different topics being taught in each room, during each time slot.
A total of 24 different lessons were taught over two and a half days reaching approximately 60 English teachers in the district. The teachers were empowered to choose their own topic for each learning session, which was a highlight for many. I was also able to implement part of the plan my saw naw and I made when we attended the Student Friendly Schools workshop in August 2013.
The preliminary post-test results were promising and I’ll be sending out a follow-up to the attendants as soon as the national test has been completed this weekend. I’m cautiously optimistic about it.
Christmas Day Camp
Last year, I had the pleasure to help out at my friend Jill’s Christmas Camp at her site, which gave me lots of ideas on how to share American culture with the students at my school for this last Christmas (known as Peace Corps Second Goal).
My co-teacher was cautiously excited about the idea as well, but worried about getting support from the rest of the teachers and administration. Unfortunately, no other Peace Corps volunteers were able to come help and sweeten the deal for the staff at my school, but the donation of supplies from my parents certainly made things much easier.
For this camp, I planned six rotations and had other teachers help out at each station. All 200 students made holiday cards, decorated a Christmas tree (paper cut-out), played “Pin the Nose on Rudolph,” learned a Christmas carol, made a cinnamon ornament and made snow flakes. We ended with a dance party to some Thai pop songs while enjoying snacks and candy canes. All of the students said that they had fun.
Bike Event in Non Sang, Nong Bua Lamphu
In December 2013, my friend and fellow volunteer Mike invited me to help out a bike event in his village. He had been planning to have several more last year, but a lot of restrictions were put on students in that province. A principal who was driving some students had a seizure and crashed, which killed some of students. After getting lots of support from adults in the community and working with all different parts of the bureaucracy, he was able to schedule another bike event in January, which I was delighted to help out at again.
Some of the students started off in town with some local government officials and all of the Peace Corps volunteers. We then biked about 17 kilometers, stopping at a couple of other schools to pick up more students along the way. All of us ended up at a park along the reservoir where local women taught the kids how to make different traditional snack, a category known as ขนม(kanom). We played some games and then biked back to town.
Get to Know Uncle Sam Camp with the U.S. Embassy
Several times a year, throughout the country, the U.S. Embassy’s Information Resource Center (IRC) hosts a camp in English about American culture for Thai university students. Nothing too serious, it’s centered around exposure to American cultural aspects and sharing ways to study in or go to the States. Seeing as how this is a great embodiment of Peace Corps’s Second Goal, and hearing from other volunteers about how fun and inspiring these camps are, I took the opportunity to facilitate one in Ubon Ratchathani last weekend.
The students, from three different universities in three different provinces, were mixed up into 5 groups and each assigned a state. They competed in a Statue of Liberty contest, ate s’mores, chips and salsa, peanut butter and jelly, watched an episode of Modern Family, created tourism skits for their respective states and did some short English skill rotations.
I was in charge of the listening station, and at the recommendation of Keith from spongeandslate.com who teaches listening to university students, led an activity to make a paper airplane and for them to interview each other about various topics [first date was a big hit!].
I was not only supremely impressed by the students English skills, but also their confidence, which only grew over the weekend, and desire to learn more about American culture and English in general. Hanging out with those students for the weekend showed me that there are some really excellent future leaders of Thailand.
World Map Project
This project is just now in the very beginning stages but I’m already extremely proud of it. The World Map Project is one that has been undertaken by thousands of volunteers around the world since 1988.
When a Peace Corps staff member came to visit me in September, we met with my school’s principal. He was new, not the principal who went to the Peace Corps conference when I swore in. I wasn’t sure of his understanding of my position or what his level and of support was.
Turned out that he wanted to make sure that I had the opportunity to reach my goals for the school and even said that he wanted to have something at the school for people to look at to remember me. So I proposed the World Map Project.
We decided on a wall and in that process, he said he wanted it to cover the whole wall. One problem though. The wall is too long for just the world map to cover. This was quickly remedied when I suggested doing an ASEAN map on one side and he excitedly suggested a Thailand map on the other. Perfect.
We bought the paint last week and the students painted a white base coat. One day, some students even came looking for me after school to volunteer to work on it some more. The staff at the school is excited about this. The kids are more excited about it. What my more could I ask for?
So there you have it. A small look into some of the work I’ve been doing here. Some days it doesn’t seem like much, but really, that’s not what it’s all about anyway. Right?