Patch Blogger: Three Village, Thai Style

Students at the local elementary school are given an extraordinary amount of autonomy, but I could tell that something was off when I walked into a classroom and found 18 kids lounging around chatting with their friends and drawing. Their teacher was sick that day so there was to be no lesson. The sub list was pretty thin – in fact, there was only one name on the list, and I was very surprised to learn that it was mine.

So now I'm standing in front of a room full of 18 kids who had never even met a foreigner before, and they are sitting in front of a teacher who has never taught a class and whose command of their language is extremely weak. We passed several awkward minutes staring at each other and then I found some chalk, and on the ancient blackboard scrawled the first ten numbers. The class I was teaching was 6th grade, and they had already had some English instruction, so I figured I'd just review all the numbers, colors, days of the week, months and all that stuff. That was the theory. In practice, I was so awful that we spent most of the time laughing. 

One thing that was interesting, but not that surprising, was that when I called on kids to tell me an answer they got very nervous. I think that most of the time they repeat their lessons as a group instead of one at a time, so I had to modify my "teaching" to accommodate that. We spent a good bit of time practicing some of the sounds that we commonly use in English but not in Thai, such as the "v" sound in seven or the "th" like in birthday. In the days that followed I continued to stop in to the school, and whenever I saw any of my kids in the village I would ask them to say one of the words we practiced, a game they loved. Sometimes if they saw me riding by on a scooter they would yell "Seven!" at me. Another notable thing I discovered during the "When is Your Birthday Lesson" was that of the 18 kids in the class, there were 4 who did not have birthdays. Their date of birth was simply unknown, and this was accepted matter-of-factly by all the kids in the room.

Once when I wanted to do a little lesson on geography, I was very surprised to learn that there was no map in the entire school.  Teaching materials in general were pretty scarce; there were two kids to a book, and the books looked like they had been around for a while. Still, the children did take very good care of what little they had, carefully packing their erasers and stubby pencils into little pouches before going home. Their uniforms were also in very good condition, and it was clear that they had a great deal of respect for their school, their teachers and for the learning process. 

The kids go home for lunch and then have recess. They got into groups and played marbles, badminton, football, a game that's sort of like hacky-sack and some other fun stuff. They were spread out all over the grounds, including under the school which was built on stilts. There was little or no adult supervision, and there seemed to be no need for it. After recess it was time to work tending the garden and the animals. The kids weeded the garden, picked and presented me with some cabbage (which became part of my dinner that night) and watered the plants. They collected eggs from the hen house, looked in on the fish and frog farms, watered the cow and fed the ducks. Once again, I was amazed to see that they performed all these tasks with no guidance or supervision from their teachers. 

At the end of the day, I was asked to sit in front of the building to see how they end school. The kids went up to the music room to collect their instruments and then lined up to march and play. They bigger kids carried drums and cymbals, and the smaller kids carried an instrument which was a small keyboard with a blow tube on top. There were a couple of other instruments as well, and the kids enthusiastically marched back and forth playing the school song and the national anthem. Then they all lined up in front of the flagpoles where four kids took down the Thai national flag and the yellow Buddhist flag. There was a brief prayer, some announcements and then they dismissed one class at a time. The whole thing from beginning to end was completed with almost no teacher guidance.

Once the kids were gone, I sat with a few of the teachers to talk shop. I was still kind of shocked at how self-sufficient these kids were. Even first graders were mostly unsupervised outside the classroom. I asked them about fighting or bullying, and they said that it didn't really happen, but if there ever were any problems they would just tell the parents and that would solve it. I should note that corporal punishment is permitted here, and one time I saw some of the older boys getting a bit wound up during class. The teacher simply went to her desk and retrieved a thin, short length of bamboo, the appearance of which had a profoundly pacifying effect on the boys. So that was that.

One other thing which gave me a real laugh: the village I am staying in is actually three separate villages which have grown and now push up against each other. The local school services all three of them, and although they do not refer to it as such, the school is actually the three village school! When I told them that our school is called Three Village, they thought this was a very lucky coincidence and expressed an interest in building a friendship between some of our classes and theirs. So if any teachers are reading this and you'd like some pen pals in rural Thailand, I've got the hookup for you. 

When the day of my departure finally arrived, I was overwhelmed by the kindness and love my hosts showed me. They staged a full-blown bi-see-soo-kwan ceremony which included an altar handmade for the occasion, candles, incense, fruit and rice offerings, gifts, and dozens of villagers. People continued to stop by all morning, and I could not believe the sweet affection they showered me with. By the time it was over I had a huge bag of homemade gifts and string bracelets covering my entire forearm, each one tied with a blessing. As Ajan Suwannarat and I sat on the 12-hour bus ride back to the city I found myself touching those strings on my arm and could feel them tugging my heart back to Isan where they had been knotted.