10/25/2001 - Work & River Tour

Picking up the story where we left off last time, our official work position here in the Peace Corps is to help primary school teachers (particularly English teachers) to improve their teaching techniques. Observation #1: Just walking past classrooms at a school here, you hear each class reciting in unison whatever their lesson is - this is not conducive to learning English (or any other subject really). Our students understand the English word "today," they understand "How are you?" but they're stumped by "How are you today?" because they rarely engage in any sort of conversation (or creative thought outside of art class). To that end, we spent much of our time from June through September directly helping English teachers in their classrooms. We have found this to be both rewarding and challenging. Rewarding because we get to work with some teachers who are really excited about their jobs and want to become better teachers, but challenging because some teachers see us merely as surrogate teachers while they go have coffee.

Here in Thailand it is extremely common for a teacher simply to leave the classroom during the school day to conduct personal or professional business, or to simply chat with other teachers. Remarkably the students generally stay in the classroom and don't destroy things. Thailand has no substitute teacher network, so if a teacher is absent, it places a burden on the other teachers to leave their own classrooms and check on the teacher-less classroom. One of the teachers Lisa works with missed over 50% of his appointed co-teaching sessions because he was attending trainings. Observation #2: Thailand has the most over-trained population in the world. There are trainings about English, Boy Scouts, Buddhism, Math, Science, Art, brushing your teeth, using computers, reforming education, re-writing local curriculum, filling out government paperwork, and even trainings about trainings. Each training gives out certificates and it seems that teachers are promoted based on the thickness of their training certificates portfolio.

While we think that training is overdone here, and that it is DEFINITELY done too much during the school year, we also get to reap the benefits of being a trainer. We visited the Khmer ruins (in the previous update) while at a training, and we got to visit the beautiful mountainous northern part of Thailand at another training (next update).

In August and September there were national teacher and student competitions in subjects ranging from English and Math to pumpkin carving (but not the Jack-o-lantern variety, they were carving traditional Thai designs on the surface of the pumpkins). We were co-opted to help with the local English competition, and the national English competition was put together by fellow PCV's.

In the midst of our teaching schedule we had some meetings in Bangkok, and decided to take a tour on the Chao Phraya River there before we came back home. The view from the river itself was not very exciting, but we had fun anyway. This first picture is in the middle of Bangkok - they are building a new suspension bridge across the river, except they are only suspending it from one side. (We think it's a pity, though, that this cool bridge is not being built in an otherwise picturesque location).

This was the typical scenery along the river - occasionally we saw a factory or a Buddhist temple, but mostly it was houses built on stilts out over the water like this. The plants in the foreground were floating around in the river.

The main stop on our trip was at a palace near the former capitol of Ayutthaya. The palace and surrounding grounds date back a few centuries - certainly older than most everything in America, but also clearly new enough to be influenced by trading partners. The key attractions at the palace were two temples - a Chinese style Buddhist temple that had been a winter home for one of the royal families, and a Gothic style temple (shown here). Yes we were in Thailand, and not Europe. The Gothic temple was striking; Buddhist temples here in Thailand all have a particular look to them (red roofs, lots of gold, see update #6), and this is NOT it. This temple looks like it has been plucked out of Europe - stained glass windows and all. Even the decor inside looks European, with subtle cross imagery all over the place, but a Buddha statue at the altar. Hmm.

Our parting shot here is a pretty pavilion on the grounds of a modern temple/park in Bangkok. Parks are uncommon in Thailand - it was nice to see this little stretch of beauty in the midst of the otherwise industrial and residential river scene. We hope everything is well with you and your family. Denny & Lisa Wells