Teaching English
I initially had some qualms with the concept of teaching English. The last thing I want to do during my travels is spread American values to the places I visit. But there are a lot more opportunities for somebody who speaks English. There is really no way around that fact. The children I was teaching all said that they want to be doctors, engineers, or dentists. If they ever want to leave Thailand, which none of them do, speaking English will be incredibly beneficial for them. Being proficient in a language can’t ever be a bad thing, so I embraced my mission and entered the classroom. It was not even close to what I had expected.
During most classes the students would interview me about my hometown. They weren’t familiar with the names I would give them as answers so they would ask me to spell everything. I wasn’t helping them with grammar or pronunciation like I had imagined, I was practising spellings of my local landmarks. A couple times I tried to get the kids to talk about stuff that wasn’t on the interview list. That just really frustrated them. They wouldn’t get off the interview questions until they were done taking my dictations. Sometimes I just wrote down all of my answers so that we could get to more pertinent things. Usually there was one speaker for each group of students. The students would tell them what to ask me in Thai and then the speaker would translate my answers. These kids had all been studying English for over 10 years, so it’s not that they weren’t capable of talking to me directly, they are just really really shy.At the school I was volunteering at the kids all wear uniforms and have regulated haircuts. They have to say hello to their teachers every morning at an assembly before school starts and most of them have classes over the weekend. Despite these rules that seem strict to us the classroom setting was chaotic. Kids were on their cellphones, listening to ipods, playing guitars, all kinds of misbehaving. Being understanding of the contradicting characteristics of the school was tricky. The school actually is a fairly accurate portrayal of Thailand as a whole. This country is like a non-stop festival, a festival where nothing is ever on time, you can’t drink the water, you can’t find a dry bathroom, everyone is friendly, and there is music and food on sticks and garbage everywhere.
Back to the students. If I was going to be of any use to them I had to get them to warm up to me. This process was different with every class and every student. Most of them were reachable through one of these techniques; ask about their boyfriends/girlfriend, ask what they want to be when they grow up, ask if they love the king. Everyone in Thailand loves the king, most of the students have a good goal for the future, and none of them ever wanted to admit that they have a significant other. If none of these questions worked I would ask them to teach my the “Nobody Nobody but You!” song. This song has a dance that all of Thailand knows and the students can not resist the urge to get up and dance at the mention of it. Surprisingly, the boys who got up to dance had way better moves than most of the girls.
Homosexuality is handled a little differently here. If a boy wants to dress up like a woman that is just fine with everybody. I know that we say it’s just fine in America too, but in Thailand it is way more prevalent. I was in a tiny school in the middle of nowhere and we had a good handful of “ladyboys.” The boys that dress up as women are incredibly gifted make-up artists and very dedicated to their imitation. Some of them are just plain beautiful. However, these boys are not allowed to dress up at school. So to express themselves as women they ladyboys that I met would talk in comically high voices and prance around. It’s amusing.
Girls who would rather be boys here are called tomboys. This is a little different than in the US where a tomboy is a girl who plays sports and doesn’t wear make-up. Before I knew of this new definition one of the girls asked me if there are a lot of tomboys in the US. I said, “Sure! Lot’s of them! I’m a tomboy.” Well they looked pretty confused because I had already admitted to having a boyfriend. I went on to say that there is no reason a tomboy can’t have a boyfriend and that just made the confusion worse. Later on that day I was hanging out in the International Teacher’s lounge and the couple from South Africa got a kick out of the story. They set me straight. Ha!
In the advanced English classes my group and I would play charades and pictionary with the students. The best charade we had was for “eating noodles with chopsticks on a bouncy bus.” Although the one for “falling asleep while cooking a Thai omelet” was pretty good too. If you ever need some good ideas for charades just let me know, there’s more where that came from.I had four or five classes everyday for a week. I think that I probably helped a few kids with some technical aspects of English and I definitely tried to help lots of them with pronunciation. For the most part I was just there to help them break out of a fear of speaking English with a native speaker. There were some students that didn’t even try to learn from me. They just weren’t interested in practising English. There definitely a lot of travellers who go to Thailand and never make an effort to learn Thai, so I can see their point.
All in all I’d say that if you really want to make an impact working with children you need to be there for at least a month. I am looking forward some other volunteer efforts on the horizon that don’t involve teaching English.