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Should I Teach in Thailand?

       
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A BRIEF INTRODUCTION


          Today's post will deal with the biggest problem I've encountered teaching here in Thailand: disorganized and unprofessional working conditions caused by a lack of communication. 

         While my overall experience has been positive (The Trials and Tribulations of Teaching in Thailand), I would be remiss if I didn't mention the biggest downside. Communication at my school has improved drastically these past two semesters compared to my first semester, when unexpected 'surprises' occurred seemingly every week. However, recently there have once again been a number of unexpected and stressful events sprung on me at the last minute. 

          Although I see many benefits to the 'mai pben rai' lifestyle (Thaikuna Matata), I must admit that sometimes I can be pretty high-strung. In my personal life, I have more of a devil-may-care attitude. However, as a teacher, I'm a perfectionist and very goal-driven when it comes to my students' progress. Sometimes this attitude motivates me to spend a lot of time on classroom props, worksheets and individually helping students who are struggling. Other times it leaves me feeling exhausted, disconnected and unable to give my best performance. This tendency towards malaise is exacerbated by the informal, spontaneous and to be frank, often unprofessional work environment in Thai public schools. 

          Many people will no doubt find the following events trivial, but at the time they caused me a LOT of stress. I've been waiting for the right time to write this post because after one of these 'incidents' occur, I always feel as if I should wait to cool down before writing about it. I want to be honest in my appraisal of my time here because I think it's important for people to hear both sides of the story before they come to Thailand. 

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Just when you thought you had it figured out....

          A few of these occasions had me in tears, experiencing a panic attack, contemplating quitting and even thinking very dark thoughts about my self-worth, my competency as a teacher and my position within the school. I also questioned the feelings of the Thai teachers towards me and my co-worker and wondered whether we were purposely being slighted or encouraged to leave! In hindsight, I do not believe that the treatment we received was due to malice, simply to cultural differences, but at the time, it felt like a devaluation of my professional objectives and efforts. 

          This is a warning for the faint of heart that if your ego is easily bruised and you can't roll with the punches, Thailand may not be for you! The following are some examples of things that happened to me while teaching in Thailand that might happen to you as well. Maybe you'll think they're not a big deal, maybe they'll leave you feeling sympathetic but unmoved or, if you're like me, the thought of these things happening might cause you some anxiety and discomfort. Looking back, they don't seem like that big of a deal, but many of these "surprises" left me feeling very stressed.


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Blah


THE "SURPRISES"


-Tomorrow your classes are cancelled. You will perform an interview with your Mathayom 6 students in front of teachers and parents to test their English abilities (this was told to me at the end of the day and the event was scheduled for the next morning). The names and number of students are not known; you will make up the interview questions yourself; and, you will judge them on a numeric scale. Also there will be some random elderly German man who will also judge the students, except he keeps scoring them out of 35 points instead of 30 and his English is very hard to understand and he keeps trying to do the interviews only with the female students and touching their hands, arms, and shoulders, standing really close to them and so you have to literally, physically stand in between him and your students to protect them.


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Why WOULDN'T you want to speak in front of the entire school
on a random topic without a speech prepared?

-Several Thai teachers will be using your classroom for the foreseeable future three times a week even though the recruiter told you that you had your "own" classroom. Surprise! You need to move all your papers and stuff from your desk and re-write everything on your board each time the other teachers use your room. While they use the room, you will be in the teacher's lounge at a cluttered desk with no air-conditioning and several other teachers, one of whom may be watching a Thai movie without headphones on a laptop. Good luck!


But why?
But... why?

-Tomorrow you will go with a group of teachers in a van to neighbouring schools to meet teachers and give a talk to the students about studying at our school. You will write the speech yourself and are given no direction as to what to say, nor is it going to be translated into Thai. You are giving these speeches despite the fact that you're not renewing for the next semester because they want to (and, I quote), "show them we have foreigners". The Thai teachers will give presentations in Thai and you will sit around waiting and doing nothing while they do this. You will visit 7 schools per day for the next four days, leaving no time to complete any work you had been planning for the week. (This happened to me and my co-worker, but I was able to get out of it after Day 1; see below for details.)


Farang
A Canadian!

-You will help the students create a performance (a play, a song, or whatever) for the Christmas concert, which is in two weeks. You will do this in addition to your classes, meaning there are very few times when both you and the students are free to rehearse, except after school hours. You are given no props, costumes, or directions. Some students drop out at the last minute and those who do show up to volunteer do not take the rehearsals seriously. (This was the second Christmas at my school.)

-Today classes are cancelled. Instead, you will watch a Christmas concert. You will also give a speech which you were not warned about and have not prepared for. Your speech will follow your co-worker, so there's nothing left to talk about by that time. You will also judge a singing competition where you will hear the same version of 'One Call Away' sung five times in a row. There will also be highly questionable dances performed by the students.  (This was the first Christmas at my school.)


Clones
Seriously? The same song five times in a row? Who signed off on that?!

-In two days you will go to an English camp, with ? number of students of ? age whose English abilities are ? and perform ? random games which you will prepare to be played possibly indoors or outdoors with unknown supplies. You will be the only foreigners there and the teachers from your school are not going. You do not know if the teachers at the school you are visiting can speak English or not.


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Whaaaaaaaaa...?

-Today the Thai teachers will use your classroom for the students to write a test and completely trash it. You will come back to find the desks askew, garbage on the floor, the items on your desk displaced, some on the floor, posters ripped and destroyed, gum stuck to the bottom of desks, fingernail clippings in a desk, random Thai documents strewn about the room (which no-one ever comes to collect), your notes on the whiteboard for the next day erased or smudged. This happened every time someone used my classroom and I always had to clean it up or ask the students to help me during class.

-Today the students will use your classroom as a changing room for some parade and will completely trash it, use all your tissues and they will eat your soup packets. They will move all the desks to one side and not move them back.


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Welcome, students!

-Tonight the students will use your classroom to sleep in overnight and will completely trash it, leaving refuse, a broken comb full of hair, broken tweezers, used tissues and q-tips on the floor. They will move all the desks to one side and not move them back. One of your classroom slippers goes missing as well as a key-chain of sentimental value and a necklace. (Lesson: don't keep your personal belonging at the school even if you have your "own" classroom because the school will use it for whatever whenever.)

-In three days you will go to another English camp on a Saturday (which you were supposed to be informed of 7 days in advance, but weren't). Even though you asked for an itinerary, no itinerary is provided. Despite the fact that you have to submit lesson plans each week, MediaKids, the company who contracts you to the school, doesn't find it necessary to have the camp coordinators provide you with any kind of summary or timetable for events that you will be expected to participate in.

-Today, classes are cancelled because another teacher instructed the students to randomly clean the school (BUT NOT YOUR CLASSROOM) even though you have scheduled their final exam for this day and there's only one week left in the semester for you to finish grading them. (This happened TWICE.)


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uhhhhhhhhh......

-This morning you will pose for photos with the students who won a contest you were not involved in and have no connections with. You do not know what the award is for, nor the names of the students who won. (Expect this to occur several times.)

-Tomorrow, classes are cancelled, and you will sit outside in the hot sun playing games with the students. (I didn't mind this the second time around because I had gotten used to the heat, but the first time I had to go back inside, as I could not stand it.)


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Nemesis

-Today, classes are cancelled and you will go to an un-air-conditioned assembly where you will sit in uncomfortable chairs for hours listening to speeches that are completely in Thai, which you cannot understand. This happened at least 3 or 4 times.

-This weekend you will go to an English camp. It is your first month teaching and you are exhausted. You are scheduled to be paid the day after the camp and you are running low on food and water. You are exhausted, hungry, miserable and very hot. Even though the weather is scorching hot, you must wear pants and closed-toed shoes to the camp (obviously you wear sandals and dare anyone to say something).

-Today, classes are cancelled and the Thai teachers will use your classroom for some test or other. You will have to move all your work things into the teacher's lounge where there are several other teachers working,  it is sweltering hot, there's no air conditioning, there are piles of paper everywhere and someone has left a plate of half-eaten fish, which the flies are at.

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Pungent.

-Due to the frequent cancellations and absences, you are now missing half your Mathayom 6 grades, about a third of your Mathayom 5 grades and a quarter of your Mathayom 4 grades. There are only two weeks left and all the Department Head will tell you is, "don't worry about it". What does that mean? Will you have to stay after the contract ends to finish? Will you be paid? Will you be fired?


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1. She's not going to make it; 2. Where are her shoes?

-People take random photos of you at all times in the school. Even when your hair is still wet from your morning shower or it's the end of the day and you look absolutely haggard or you're sick or clearly having a bad day, people will take photos of you. For some reason, it's really hard to say 'no, thank you,' to be being photographed or videotaped in a public setting; it seems unthinkably rude to decline. Thai people love taking photos of every school event no matter how mundane. The company reps are also required to take photos of you to prove they visited your school. Staff will sometimes take photos of you during the morning talk or gate duty. Sometimes it feels like you're a 'real' teacher while other times, you will feel like an exotic circus animal being paraded around to be gawked at and photographed.


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It sees all.


AN ANALYSIS IN HINDSIGHT


         The thing that probably bothered me most was all the unexpected events I was involved in where I wasn't granted enough time to prepare, because I was embarrassed in front of my students, coworkers and strangers. I knew that I was unprepared and that made me nervous which made me anxious and frustrated, which led me to do an even worse job, which in turn made me feel more embarrassed and unprofessional, which made me even more upset. It was a vicious cycle of failure. Each unscheduled event made me recall the previous one and compounded all the bad feelings time after time. I didn't like that the Thai teachers, instead of seeing me teach successful classes and interact in a fun way with my students and dedicate my time and energy to helping them, were only seeing me perform in these bizarre, ill-conceived, poorly prepared farces which made me look like a nervous wreck.

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Feeling overwhelmed.

          Many times, I tried to explain, as politely and professionally as I could to my company that the lack of notice about activities was causing me a lot of anxiety; however, I was simply told that this is the way it is in Thailand. A staff member at my company, MediaKids even told me that if I didn't like it, I should quit because it was never going to change. She even low-key accused me of being culturally insensitive because I had suggested the idea of a weekly meeting with the Dept. Head to check in about school events. She said that the Thai teachers would consider it an insult if the company suggested it and insinuated that I was not allowed to suggest the idea myself to the school directly. 


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          Due to an abysmal lack of communication between the company and the school and between the higher-ups in the school and the teachers and between the Thai teachers and the foreigners, things that should be easy are made almost impossible. It's pretty frustrating trying to do a job and being denied the tools, knowledge and time to do it properly.


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          In some ways, having all those cancelled classes was kind of okay, but rather than being relieved that I didn't have to teach, I usually found myself annoyed and distraught that my lesson plans were going to be off-schedule and that I would have to skip certain classes in order to finish on time. At first, I had a really difficult time adjusting to the random cancellations and at the end of my first semester, I was missing a lot of grades. I was freaking out because I didn't know what to do about all the students who had missed assignment and tests. 


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A visual representation of my stress-levels at the end of my first semester.

          At first, when the former Head of the English Department told me that the missing grades didn't matter and "mai pben rai" and all that, I didn't know what to think. I vacillated between wondering whether my class was even a 'real' class or just some kind of extracurricular activity to worrying that I wouldn't get renewed to lamenting the hopelessness of trying to teach classes that were constantly cancelled to feeling upset and bewildered. It seemed like the Thai teachers didn't seem to care about cancelling my classes, so they must have a very low opinion of me. This wasn't actually true, it really is just the way things are there. But I didn't know that going into it!


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Just a sad clown.

           As I got used to working in Thailand, I realized that frequent student absences are expected and tolerated in this area especially during harvest times, since many students are required to help their parent's on the farm or with other labour. The rural area where I teach is a rice farming region where the majority of families practice agriculture and/or rear livestock such as water buffalo and chickens.


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          In the end, I had to get over the cancellations and learn to be more flexible with my lesson planning and grade rubric. But that doesn't give me back all those hours and days spent worrying about incomplete assignments, being uncertain of my job security and feeling demoralized by the lack of progress and the seeming insignificance of everything I had tried to accomplish for my students that semester. Before you come to Thailand, make sure that you are capable of being extremely flexible with your schedule and dealing with the unexpected, especially spontaneous speeches, ceremonies and activities that you may not have sufficient time or information to plan for. Some days it can feel like you're pouring all your time and energy into a bottomless pit. Just when you start to make progress with a group, their class is cancelled for two or even three weeks in a row and by the time they get back, they don't remember the last lesson you taught them. It seems like a lot of work for paltry results.


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What am I even doing?

          Also, to be fair to the Thai staff, most of the time, decisions that are made by the Director are not communicated effectively to the teaching staff, who are given instructions with very little notice. We also don't have staff meetings. Even if we did, we'd have to have our own separate meetings because there are only two English teachers at my school.  The lack of interdepartmental communication is a huge problem in the Thai school system and the Thai teachers seem to be at the whim of the Director who may be receiving directions from the school board.

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Message not received.

          Perhaps most importantly, I was able to speak with the Head of the Department about the most recent of these surprise events and she was very understanding and supportive! After the first day of  the provincial school-tour we were not informed about in advance, I told her I wasn't comfortable with it. I explained how I didn't really understand the purpose of speaking with the students to encourage them to come to our school seeing as I wasn't renewing for next semester. It's not that I don't want them to come to the school, but it seems pretty misleading if they think I'm going to be their teacher. I feel that the foreign teachers are not interchangeable. I can't recommend that students come study English with teachers whom I haven't even met! I'm sure the new teachers will be fine, but they and I have nothing to do with each other except that we're foreigners. 


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Interchangeable?

         To my incredible relief, the Department Head was very understanding and accommodating. I actually can't believe that I was worried she'd be angry with me! The Department Head at my school is a really kind and sweet woman who has always been very understanding. I guess my own anxiety and feelings of helplessness and being overwhelmed got in the way of seeing the simplest solution, which was just to talk to her. After the first day, I did not continue with the school tours, although my coworker did. I can't tell you how relieved I was that I didn't need to continue with it. Even just one day was exhausting and emotionally draining.

          I hope that this post doesn't discourage people from teaching in Thailand. It is meant to prepare you for unavoidable eventualities like class cancellations and unexpected school events. You are in Thailand to teach, but you're also there to be "the foreigner", to provide a lure for school enrollment, to lend legitimacy and prestige to the foreign language department and to be photographed. 


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Who, me?

         Personally, I can be pretty camera-shy at times and I often get nervous when people take my picture, especially strangers. I also find it pretty weird to pose for photos with people I don't know or at events I would rather not be forced to attend. Even if you don't understand Thai, there is a certain expectation that you will just 'be there' at school events and it can get really frustrating and boring because sometimes you do feel like it's a waste of time or you have other work you could be doing. But that's just the pessimist in me talking. If you handle heat well, don't mind being photographed, and understand some Thai, you may find these school events a pleasant break from the usual teaching schedule. 

          Also, one time I found a scorpion in the classroom.

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Literally WHAT is this picture?! Thank you Pixabay, I am dead. ^-^


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Comments

  1. lol. as someone who has been teaching in thailand for a year now i had a really good laugh at this... i dont know why... probably the shared misery aspect of it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. hahaha Glad you enjoyed the article! It definitely can be harsh sometimes out there! How long have you been in Thailand? :D

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  2. After three years teaching ESL in training centers in China I have an offer to teach in a rural school in North West Thailand, in a school setting quite similar to the one you describe. This post was very helpful. Thanks a lot, (PD: I bet you did not have as much fun in the Middle East as you had in Thailand :)

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