School

I am teaching in a private school that is pretty typical for Bangkok. Grades P-6 on 2 campuses across the alley from each other. There is the typical mix of new and veteran teachers, a male director and female administrator.

English is started in grade 1, with a "native speaker" 1 hour a week, so we are busy all day and and a central part of the program. Imagine if we offered Chinese or Spanish that way! Teaching is primarily the typical Asian model of lecture and rote repetition without meaning, but there is an effort to be more experiential and conversational at the upper levels. Missing are the typical ways of teaching rhyming words like say, day, way, but perhaps that requires conversation ability that our kids have when they begin to read.

There is a Thai alphabet song but it takes about 7 minutes to sing! If you are washing hands to it you will be really clean.

Everything in Thailand is very clean, partly because the rain keeps it washed and because the Thai are personally very clean people. So the children's uniforms are spotless but wrinkle proof and shoes come off before entering any room.

Bathrooms, sidewalks, public areas are clean and people of all ages are modestly dressed in Western clothes. In Bangkok, there are 10M people but relatively little shoving or bumping. They tend to be small so lots of us can get into one train. But the taller volunteers do feel a bit Gulliver!