School in Thailand

Spending days at a half private/ half government funded school has been quite an eye opening experience. First of all, its seems like kids here change schools frequently, hoping to get into schools that have better reputations and advertise their abilities for getting students into the best upper schools and universities. For a majority of the students, these are empty promises meant to secure more students and therefore more tuition dollars. Now the truly government run schools are free to the students of Thailand and education is mandatory to a certain age. However, they are frequently the poorer schools. Private schools (meaning the school is funded by another source other than the government) walk a fine line between accepting students because they will do well in the school or because they need the revenue additional students will bring in. Because of that, policies such as attendance, arriving to class on time and being prepared have little consequences when ignored. This appears to be especially true for English. English can be viewed as a joke subject, a necessity for graduation. Students are passed from one grade to the next without always receiving passing marks. But education is a business; it is better to allow the kid to move on than risk him changing schools.

On a more positive note, the school I am volunteering at has had a great up swing in enthusiasm for English, mostly because the English teaching program works and the kids are appropriately challenges and rise to the occasion. Today we found out that the school has been chosen to participate in an English competition. The topic is ASEAN Nations and the school chose to do Laos, as the capital of the country, Vientiane, is directly across the river from the school. So my current assignment is to reseach as much as I can about Laos to help the three chosen student give a five minute presentation, complete with stunning visual aids (ideally :)) The students will then travel to Nong Khai from their school in Si Chiang Mai (about 50 km away) to compete against two other schools in the region. If they win then the students will compete in a larger regional competition. This competition helps to bring prestige to the school and the head of school is very excited that her school was chosen for the competition. The English teacher and I have our work cut out for us but he has some very talented and enthusiastic students and I think we have a a great time. I'm excited that the competition is in the town Isara is located, so hopefully I can convince some of the other volunteers to come yo the competition with me to support the students.

I've also discovered another type of street food today -it's like a crepe made in a griddle with a sweet custard inside. You also have the option of putting in hot dog (go figure), pork, and/or egg. It is very popular among the students.

Today was another beautifully sunny day without a drop of rain. Unfortunately that means it was also unbelievably hot. I'm not sure how people survive the hot season!