The most exciting thing to happen to my village since I’ve moved here is happening! The dirt soi (side street) that connects the area with the secondary school and Sub-District Administration Office (SAO or aw baw dtaw) and the village with the primary school is being paved.
Dear Future Peace Corps Thailand Volunteers,
You may have found the Facebook group* already and had some of your questions answered. You may not have found it, and are heading over there right now to get your questions answered. I’ll wait here for you to come back. You may have seen the common response from those who are currently where you will be of “Don’t worry; just relax; enjoy the States!”
more “Open Letter to Future Peace Corps Thailand Volunteers”
Because my house is essentially a garage, my front door is a big rolling door with a small gap when closed. Additionally, one of my co-workers recently brought me a kitten when she found out that I was missing my cat. So, when a crab scuttled underneath my front door, the kitten had a fun new toy to play with. Check it out.
In Thailand, a bpai tiao is a trip of any length. I’ve written about some of my more significant bpai tiaos to tourist destinations here, to be used as travel ideas and tips.
On Tuesday in the wee hours of the morning, I made my way to school. The fourth, fifth and sixth graders were to go on their end of semester field trip and rather than spend the day sitting at school in an empty classroom len-ing Internet (playing on the Internet), I decided to go with them. This was the quintessential Thai trip.
Last week, I attended a Peace Corps workshop called Student Friendly Schools. This was the second time ever that Peace Corps did the Student Friendly Schools workshop; the first time was in Malawi. This is a new global initiative of the Peace Corps. Myself and 14 other volunteers along with Thai counterparts attended a two-and-a-half day workshop to learn about gender-based violence and school-based gender-based violence. Then we started working on a plan to implement what we learned back at site.
Way back in February 2012, I had my initial interview for the Peace Corps. I remember being asked about a multitude of things, but one question I remember distinctly asked me what I thought I would struggle with the most if I were to go on to serve. My response was gender roles.
As I’ve mentioned, most learning in Thai classrooms is done through rote memorization. My job is as a teacher training, and I want to help my co-teachers to learn more student-centered teaching techniques. Part of that has involved introducing fun and games into the classroom. It hasn’t always been easy, but thankfully my co-teachers are willing to give it a shot. Check out some of our classroom activities!
After my conversation with my co-teacher about critical thinking and watching how schools work here in Thailand, I feel comfortable saying that learning, in the Western sense of being curious about a topic and wanting to learn the why and how of it, is not valued here. Learning in the sense of memorizing and reciting is valued. Which brings me to tell you about how I have spent my time after school for the last couple weeks.
When comparing eight of the countries that are a part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Thailand ranks eighth. The two countries that were not included were Laos and Burma, which are widely regarded as low performing. That means that children in Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, the Philippines, Cambodia and Vietnam were more proficient on the test. And Education Ministry officials are “stunned.” However, an honest look at the Thai education system reveals lots of room for improvement.
I was over at my co-teacher’s house last week after buying furniture for my garage and we made some dinner together. Yom is a kind of Thai salad, as yom literally means mix. The featured ingredient for most Thai salads is not usually raw vegetables, but frequently meat or noodles. The yom that we made featured some wonderful glass noodles and really complex flavors. I thought I would share the recipe with you to make at home.