Humpty Dumpty

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.

I taught this Mother Goose poem to my Waldorf kids, which is great fun. We draw faces on hard boiled eggs, build a wall out of their wooden blocks, have Humpty Dumpty climb up the wall, and then fall...and then keep doing it until he breaks. Then we take him to the doctor (I put on my doctor mask) and we try to glue him back together onto a piece of paper. Then we eat him.

What I don't tell my Waldorf kids is that Humpty Dumpty is actually a metaphor for the system. We tried putting the system...every little local, cultural system, on the wall...the wall is imperialism. The system fell off the wall and broke. Which is why all the king's horses and all the king's men are trying to put it together again. All the king's horses and all the king's men wouldn't try to put a silly egg together again.

But no one can put the system back together.

Sorry, Mother Goose if I am misinterpreting Humpty Dumpty, but I think that's the only way it makes sense.

So we'll have to make a new system right? But let's try not to put it on the wall again.

Some Chapters of My Life

Wow. It's been awhile. The school year got busy, and now it's already on its way to wrapping up. I feel like I should write several blogs to make up for lost time, but instead I'll try making this one into chapters.

Chapter 1: An Inspiring Teacher's Exchange
Lukas arrived about when I started to slack off on blogging. He brought his mother for his first month here; she is an ESL teacher in America. Both Lukas and his mother were an absolute blessing to me, personally. Lukas's mom -- I call her mae in the Thai spirit of sharing family -- observed a couple of my classes and gave me great, constructive advice. Since then, I have re-focused my classes, making it a goal to teach reading first and foremost (besides the given goals of making English class fun, interactive, holistic).

When I first came here last year, I was disturbed by the culture of copying in the classroom. As far as I could tell, in every subject copying was the norm, and I couldn't tell what the teachers thought or wanted to do about it. In English class, I was told to always have a worksheet for the students, and always have the words with pictures on the board so that the kids who couldn't do the worksheet could copy from that. Usually the kids would copy from the board, if not each other. The root of the problem is that the students don't know how to read English. So, as Lukas's mom explained, they do not have confidence with the language, much less the ability to do the worksheets. I think the confidence aspect was illustrated to me last week, when I had my sixth graders line up according to what they felt their strength in English was: listening, speaking, reading, or writing. Most of the students lined up in reading, a few less in writing, not many in listening, and none in speaking.

Even more helpful, she gave the TTT and I some tactics for teaching reading. I think she made it clear that it can't be a side project, which is what I was attempting to do. It has to be the focus of at least part of the class.

Some of her other suggestions: publicize the semester's, and day's, objectives to the students; have the students journal about what they learned every class; pre- and post-testing; having a standard level 1, 2, 3 curriculum skeleton (for learning goals -- while process should be specific to each classroom); use paragraph frames when teaching vocabulary -- thus laying out a pattern of writing the students can see every class.

We're hoping to start a pen pal project between the KKEI classrooms and mae's back in the U.S., and she has agreed to help organize a Portland leg for the future teacher's exchange.

Chapter 2: Team Teaching at Nong Waeng
My Nong Waeng English classes went in 3 different directions, based on feedback I was receiving from the other teachers and observations about the students, and based on my teammates. Like a farmer wrapping up the season and about ready to start the next one, I'm looking forward to evaluating and deciding how to make the next semester more productive.

If I'm going to make a comparison to farming, I'll try carrying it throughout the Nong Waeng English classes. My sixth grade class had a drought. I'm not sure they learned anything. This was the only class for which I was left alone most of the time. This class pushed my comfort zone every Wednesday. I struggled to keep my temper, and usually failed. A learning environment was almost never reached. The only success I had was my 2nd to last class, when I had the students do a 3-legged relay race. I had them tie their legs together and then let them practice the reading they would have to do in order to race. I think due to the clear, immediate goal, and maybe a little bit due to the tied feet, most of the students tried and were focused. It felt amazing. So this is what I will need to try to re-create every class next semester. And/or, I was considering trying to set up a Montessori-style environment, where the kids could do whichever activity they wanted for each class, as long as they could successfully do each one by the end of the year. That, though, would take a lot of conceptualizing and creating in the next several weeks.

My 4th grade class is not a KKEI classroom -- however P'Leng the Chinese language teacher takes an interest in me and my teaching, and either her or another teacher is usually in the room with me. P'Leng is a supportive co-teacher (though rightfully taking a backseat role). She pushes me to speak one sentence in English and one in Thai. She probably has many more opinions about my teaching than she gives, but she has seemed to give me advice freely. Jennifer (the KKEI volunteer) was also a co-teacher during my second month of teaching the fourth graders. From the very beginning I have focused on the basics with this class. I think this was a very good call. My fourth graders will be late bloomers but I think they'll have time to bloom. I also think it will be possible to create a culture where they do not have to copy everything...though it will take imagination and careful intentionality to do so, since copying is such a solid norm.

I have mixed feelings about my 5th grade classroom. We did not focus on the basics, and I think for many of the students it would have been better to do so. On the other hand, quite a few students are right where we are. I successfully started teaching grammar (conjugation of "to be") and the "where" question structure, and I think for the most part it wasn't boring. The weeks built on each other and made sense as a whole. Half my crop is flooded, but the other half is thriving.

What I think could have helped this classroom is if P'Aom and I had discussed an optimum way to use co-teaching. As it was, she wanted me to take the lead, in both planning and execution. She usually served as my adviser. Though this made sense do to her seniority and my inexperience, and due to the other responsibilities she had to take on this semester, I think a more collaborative relationship between us could have been more empowering for us and for the students. Elementary school students are at a stage where monitored work is the most beneficial for them (rather than doing all their work on their own), and I think this is something classrooms in Thailand, including ours, lets slide too often. The norm is to explain and then give an assignment for the kids to do on their own. I think its best for the teacher to be as present as possible (to help) in the classroom, and if there are 2 teachers, more power to them. They can both be present to the many individual learning styles and levels before them.

As for the integrated afternoons, I am sorry to say we never really got out of our bored funk. We were passed down a curriculum from the Buriram school, which also prescribed how-to's. And though we probably should have put this in a drawer for the semester and thought from scratch, with those goals and how-to's in the back of our mind to inform, instead we opened their curriculum to ask, "what's next?" every week. I'm pretty disappointed with this, especially as it included the subject of climate change, a subject I would have loved to think about creatively. The integrated curriculum could also have led to dialogue about issues in the students' communities, and projects to address those issues. Considering the railroad communities are currently facing displacement due to national development plans, it's a crucial time for students to dialogue and for teachers to facilitate participatory and collaborative projects between the students, the school, and their communities. See a little bit more about this in the last chapter.

Chapter 3: Team Teaching at Non Chai
English classes at Non Chai started going well when we realized how much the most disruptive students in the classroom thrived and took leadership when we focused on cooking. It was really fun to play with different ways of presenting vocabulary through food, such as writing on eggs and potatoes. And this is where I started using paragraph frames repetitively. I'm hoping that the class can make a Chankra Cookbook, maybe even to sell in America. But it will take a lot more work to get them at that point. It could be the project for next semester.

I think, however, that we could have focused on the basics much more frequently, and thus gotten farther ahead. Gaolee and I had planned to split the class into 2 reading groups each English class, especially since each student is at a different level of reading. This might have happened twice. Most weeks, I felt that Non Chai had a difficult learning environment. There is too much going on at the school, and always something to distract the students and teachers from class.

I also felt ineffective on our integrated Mondays. I was usually the English word speller, rather than the teacher, as Gaolee would simply ask the students to use as much English as possible on their assignments, and send them to me for translations and how to write the words. We should come up with a better plan for how to integrate English into those days...except that next semester I will probably not be part of the integrated Mondays (see last chapter)!

Chapter 4: KKEI Activates
KKEI has a busy year ahead of us. We received nearly 300,000 baht to execute about 15-20 camps and events in the next year, including monthly English camps to help kids not fear the English language; a parents and guardians camp; a life skills camp; and teacher camps and trainings. We had our first English camp last week, where all 4 of our KKEI classrooms came together. It was a little chaotic, but good to see us all working together.

Chapter 5: Checking in on my Own Teaching Philosophies
I have been reading 2 books, which have started to inform the way I think about education and how to facilitate a good learning environment: 1) Democratic Schools: Lessons in Powerful Education and 2) Your Child's Strengths, by Jennifer Fox. Democratic schools highlights several schools' stories that embody democratic education, where the goals of alternative schooling are to create active participants in society, rather than creating better behaving students.

One of the stories was particularly inspiring to me, as it was about a fifth grade class in Chicago who, once their teacher facilitated a conversation about the issues in their community, decided their biggest issue was that they needed a new school. They had been promised a new school by the local government for six years, as they did not have a cafeteria or heating; their windows did not let any light in; their bathrooms were unusable; etc. Once the students identified the issue, the teacher facilitated a space for the students to strategize on how to solve the problem, and the whole school year revolved around solving it. They interviewed important people, they read about law, they created media and a website, they wrote letters, etc. The students, normally disengaged, found importance in their work. Even the teacher didn't know if they could succeed. By the end of the school year, they had not received a new school, but they had attracted tons of publicity and they had learned a lot -- on all levels, including academically. This was a truly integrated curriculum.

Overall, the book made me see that even though our KKEI classrooms are heading in the right direction and alternative relative to the mainstream, we have a long way to go before even our own teachers fully understand what it means to have a democratic classroom. First and foremost, we will need to create a culture amongst ourselves where talking about our core values, and pushing each other on our core values, is the norm. Currently, I feel that we have not created the space to do this, and we have not had fundamental conversations about our own teaching philosophies which are hopefully continuing to evolve and develop, even for the most senior of us. Thus, while I would like to live by the principles of democratic schools, I'm not sure how the other KKEI teachers would see this.

The strengths book has also been informative. The first part of the book lays out the different ways that mainstream schooling creates a weakness-based society and the potential that this crushes, even on an economic level. The second part explains what it means, concretely, to identify strengths and develop them into skills. And the third part gives tools and activities to do so. The author of the book leads a school using a strength-based curriculum, and she also shares that curriculum in the book.

Once again, the book lays out many steps towards developing strengths that are in line with KKEI teachers' stated philosophies: creating spaces of stillness and reflection for students, asking them questions about their preferences and feelings, etc. But I can't say that I've witnessed the core of this philosophy at work. The book offers great tools to use even within KKEI meetings -- as I think it will be important for us teachers to be able to identify, communicate, and use our own strengths in the classroom before we can successfully facilitate our students' strengths (or before we can even be speaking the same language about strengths, for that matter).

Chapter 6: Prospects for the Future
This is of course the most exciting chapter, since it hasn't happened yet and so there is all the room in the world for success and no failures yet to speak of. The prospects are big, however, and will seem too formidable until I find more Thai teachers to work with me.

1) Keeping the KKEI Spirit

Next semester P'Aom will be moving to Non Chai as their new vice-principle. I will be splitting my time between 3 schools: 2.5 days at Nong Wat School (not a KKEI member, but enforced by the new municipal policy); 2 days at Nong Waeng; and half a day at Non Chai. Unless I, P'Aom, and/or P'Noos can make something else happen at Nong Waeng, this may mean my only team teaching class will be held during the half day at Non Chai. Nong Waeng will still inevitably be a member of KKEI, but currently this does not require them to implement team teaching between the Thai teachers and foreigner. It will be ideal if KKEI can implement team teaching as a principle in the schools we work in.

P'Aom will continue to serve as a member of KKEI. Who knows how her new position will affect her on a personal and working level. Just will have to wait and see. I'm personally saddened and worried with the loss of both P'Aom and P'Dtu (the Kindergarten teacher at Nong Waeng that I used to volunteer with -- she will be the new vice principle at Non Thun). For me, I think it will be a matter of finding ways to step up in her place despite my foreignness, push the other teachers to step up, and work towards understanding concepts like democratic schools, little by little. I feel good about my relationships with a lot of the teachers at Nong Waeng, but I don't feel like I know how to function on a facilitative level within those relationships. I think I will need at least one ally...and I'm hoping I can find that with P'Noos.

2) Non-violence workshop

I contacted P'Ben about wanting a non-violence workshop for teachers, and if she knew of anyone who had experience facilitating them. She gave me a contact, and we are trying to work something out. I think it will make most sense as a KKEI event where we invite other teachers at our school, so I hope the other KKEI teachers see the same value as I do!

3) The Displacement of Nong Waeng Community

This is still the plan. You can watch a video and read an article about the double railroad tracks planned for Thailand to facilitate international North-South trade, and the effects it will have on slum communities all along the railroad tracks: http://isaanrecord.com/ (2nd story down).

Given that this development plan will displace most of the students at Nong Waeng School, and given the principles of democratic schooling (which Nong Waeng does not prescribe to, but which I would like to prescribe to), I want to figure out how to create a dialogue about the future between the teachers, and more than that, with the students.

Rather than asking other teachers to start talking about it, or at least in addition to doing that, I would like to serve as an example. But English class with a foreigner is probably not the most ideal place to start. Maybe with the help of P'Kovit (ngo) or P'Goong, we could organize an after school club that is naturally geared towards dialogue and action about this issue. So I think that's my next step.

4) Education Committees

Speaking of P'Kovit, he sees potential for developing democratic schools in Thailand through the Education Committees. Every school has an education committee composed of teachers, parents/guardians, political leaders, and people from the education department. As of now, education committees are untapped -- they serve as decision makers about buildings, he says. When someone wants to build something at the school, they go to the education committee. So no one, including the teachers and the education committees, themselves, is seeing the potential for developing education through these committees -- even though that was the reason they were formed. But P'Kovit believes that if we can develop relationships with these committees, and invite (or force?) them to go to alt edu trainings with us, then we can get them to force the teachers to change their methods of teaching.

It's a dream. I guess we'll see what we can do.

I will try for another blog update once KKEI has its retreat in a couple of weeks. I think that's when I will know how much of my dreaming in this blog can become reality in the upcoming semester.

The Power of Doing Things Together (Like Volleyball and Tie Dying)

My stomach is hungry for noodle soup from my "family in law's" restaurant. I used to eat there often and sometimes help bus tables, but now with school I can rarely go. Today being Saturday, I can focus on noodels, in addition to KKEI and lesson planning of course.

The training in Buriram was enjoyable -- they called it spa time for us. We mostly discussed and exchanged, watched short movies the school uses to inspire their kids, and they demonstrated some contemplative activities/songs for us. I explored some of their classrooms during one of the breaks, which was helpful. Unfortunately, we couldn't observe any classes since it was the weekend -- most of the other Nong Waeng teachers were able to do that during the week-long training last time.

I thought the most productive time for us as far as group building was when we sporadically decided to play a game of volleyball. Unfortunately I haven't played volleball outside of middle school PE more than a decade ago, but it was still a good stress releaser. We've started to use it with the 5th graders, too, laying our shoes out to serve as the net. It seems like it has caught on at Nong Waeng -- they are building a volleyball court in what I suppose is the gym area.

The next weekend after the Buriram training, KKEI had our Action Research training. After listening to our different teaching roles, philosophies, and styles, P'Ben suggested we each list our questions and issues, and from that, decide on individual research themes. I'll post my own questions and issues in another entry -- they might serve as a fairly thorough journaling update as far as teaching goes. Here are each of our research themes:

P'Tuk -- How to improve her relationship with 3 particular students in her class
P'Dtaeng -- How her class is different from the mainstream
P'Soryor -- Defining his teaching technique -- perhaps deciding between integrated curriculum and contemplative education
P'Aom -- Improving teacher relationships and the teaching team process
V (Me) -- Mine is the same as P'Aom's, though we are developing our proposals individually as my teacher-teacher relationships and hers have different contexts.

P'Gaolee, P'Noos, and Jennifer couldn't make it to the training so they don't have themes yet. P'Buoy came; she is a Non Chai teacher who doesn't actually see herself as a KKEI member but sometimes joins in for activities. But I didn't understand her theme, and P'Aom could not explain it to me.

One weekend later we presented our full proposals to P'Ben and she gave us feedback. My proposal is unique as it is autoethnography, she told me, whereas P'Aom's doesn't include as much of the cultural theme. P'Soryor decided to change his theme to following 5 of the kids who were put back into his classroom from Chan Kra (the classroom I teach in with P'Gaolee). They decided to return to his classroom after one year in Chan Kra, and P'Soryor wants to see how they fair and also see how it affects his teaching/his classroom. They are kids who have trouble reading/writing/following information (for example from a video clip).

We talked for awhile about P'Tuk and P'Daeng's troubled students. P'Ben is very wonderful and likeable and has a lot of good advice and stories from her Waldorf teaching, so it has been so valuable to sit down with her these last 2 weeks as a group. Unfortunately (for us) she's moving back to her home province, so we will have to keep up the exchange through e-mailing rather than in person.

I'm going to leave you with a teacher highlight now, rather than a student highlight, as I am also privileged to work with many wonderful teachers. Actually working with P'Aom is quite a privilege -- she is very talented and an award-winning teacher, so I can't say how lucky I am for this experience.

My teacher highlight was with P'Buoy. She teaches M3 at Non Chai (the American equivalent of 9th graders). Yesterday since the kids at Non Chai were all doing boy/girl scouts and planting trees in recognition of a national holiday, P'Buoy and I spent the morning tie dyeing cloth. While clumping and banding the cloth together, readying it for its boil bath in a leaf soup called bai kwaang, P'Buoy asked me about KKEI. "Is P'Aom annoyed that she has to do everything for KKEI?"

I didn't really know what to answer to that. So I just gave her a summary of the changes we are trying to make in the organization. When I mentioned alternative education she laughed and said, "Everything is alternative education. The municipality is putting us through so many trainings on all kinds of alternative education." It's true. And now I think all the teachers in municipal schools feel they are practicing some kind of alternative education.

P'Buoy went on, "But after we go to the trainings we don't actually change the way we teach." She pointed to the kindergarten class behind us as an example. "The teachers have been told to make the kids feel comfortable, to not force them to spell, but the teachers are still having them spell!"

So I told P'Buoy that I hoped KKEI could offer something different than the municipality by bringing an international perspective. She said yes, that would be different and teachers would enjoy trainings by international teachers.

The co-teaching KKEI is also supposed to provide could also ensure that teachers understand or at least evaluate and think continuously about new teaching methods they may have been introduced to during trainings. How could the municipality not love us?? :D

I think it's important, though, that we ITT stress the invitation to learn and implement new methods of teaching, rather than forcing teachers into it. This will also set us off from the municipality's forms of alternative education. As fellow teachers rather than experts or political figures, we have the power to impress rather than force. That is one thing to love about this job! Of course we also have the power to flop, and that is one thing to keep us on our feet.

Finding a Routine

I was just on a bus for a few hours with teachers from 3 schools -- Nong Waeng, Nong Wat, and Nong Koo. These are the 3 schools trying out the new kind of curriculum and school structure, as far as I can tell based largely on team teaching and mind mapping. The school where we are now staying models this methodology and is overlooking and training us. I'm not sure how I feel about it yet; I'm sure it will help to see the real thing.

The funny thing to me about his alternative methodology is the process by which it is being imposed on all of us. It's probably a great methodolgoy, but mind mapping for every element of a curriculum might seem excessive for some teachers. On the other hand I can't see how imposing team teaching could be a bad thing (as I alluded to in my last entry) -- I suppose because team teaching seems a less finite aspect, and should open doors rather than close them.

The effect the new methodolgoy has on my position at Nong Waeng is not so great, that's for sure. Not having the majority of my time to spend with my supposed teaching team, and not having one straightforward classroom is starting to wear on me in the context of everyone else having it. But maybe it will just take longer for me to become part of each teaching team and eventually I can be part of 3 teams, settled in 3 classrooms, and have a good handle on all 100 or so of my students. It would be awesome if I could follow my current P4 class all the way through P6. But that would take the 3 years everyone wants an ITT member to stay, and I'm not sure about that yet.

For now, I'm going to try spending my whole Wednesday with P6 and my whole Thursday with P4. That will only leave Tuesday for my Nong Waeng KKEI classroom, but hopefully after 1 month of this I will know and feel more comfortable with both the P4 and P6 students and teachers, and can return my usual time with P5.

I wish I could have been here to see the P5 classroom transition from being little monsters to the mature kids they are now. I don't know specifically what to attribute the changes to, and want to help ensure the other classrooms also have success leading the kids towards maturity. Is it simply the contemplative activities or are their other aspects to highlight and help the other teachers see and maybe adapt? This is actually P'Noos and P'Aom's challenge right now -- passing on their experiences to the other teachers at Nong Waeng.

KKEI is having an "action resarch" training next weekend, led by P'Ben from the local Waldorf school (which is who P'Goong was talking about last KKEI meeting). ...So the KKEI-Waldorf acquaintence continues. Maybe leading towards a partnership some day??

The great thing about P'Goong's participation in KKEI is her method. She asks questions to push people and provides resources to make for a feeling of moving towards sucecess. I hope I can develop my own faciliation of KKEI by watching and working with her. In fact, probably all of the current KKEI leaders could learn something from P'Goong, and thus we could develop more facilitators in the group rather than stepping over the potential ones.

I enjoyed planning and facilitating the last meeting with P'Dtaeng, but unfortunately I think I stepped over her at the end, as we were running late and she has a slower facilitation style. I haven't asked her how she felt about our faciliattion partnership yet, but should do so in the coming week.

Jennifer has decided to volunteer her time with KKEI teaching three days a week in P'Tuk and P'Daeng's class and one day a week with me and my P4 Nong Waeng class (the most difficult class I have). I think her Non Thun expereince will be a challenge, as she has yet to understand their philosophy and style. Additionally, when we did our last check-around it was clear that P'Tuk and P'Daeng, themselves, feel very challenged and heavy this year. Who wouldn't teacing 30 or so kids from levels P1 to P6 all at the same time...and when their last year was not the most successful?

The rest of our check-ins were more positive -- mostly wanting more of what we already have. Mine was a little less so, the major point of mine being, "I'm squished between top down policy and bottom up wants and needs." But I also shared this quote, which I will leave with you:

"The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn... "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins,...you may see the world around you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then -- to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the thing for you." --T.H. White, The Once and Future King

And the way I see it, everyone in the world is in some stage of depression, whether that's denial, anger, bargaining, or acceptance. So if we can create an environment of learning everywhere, including schools, that will be the first step to making the world a better place!

Before I really really sign off, I also want to share a couple student moments, since I am blessed to spend most of my time with kids:

1) I was happy to see Non from P4 improve 1,000% from last week's English class. He is the only student I was able to get to stay with me after class, sending him to lunch a little late. I asked him why he beat up the other kids and he said he lost his temper. So we talked about keeping our temper by counting to 10 and breathing in and out. And I asked him to help his friends, too, since they didn't stay behind to talk to me. I also told him he seems very smart and able to do the assignments but a lot of the kids who are trying aren't able to do it because he and his friends weren't creating a good learning environment, and that we'd have to stay on the basics forever if they didn't help each other.

This last class Non was totally keeping people in check and taking repsonsibility for himslef and others. I have to compliment him ASAP so I don't lose him again!

2) I want to adopt Pon from P5. I've always loved Pon. Last year his fatehr died, leaving his aunt (?) and neighbors to look after him. This year he seems very down and seems to have little energy to do anything, though he's intersted once he can get himself to do it. Last Wednesday he wouldn't go to Chonobot District to study silk with the rest of the class. He said he was too lazy to go. Before we left him behind, he asked me about America:
"Do people kill each other in America?"
"Yes."
"A lot?"
"Yes, I think so."
"People kill each other a lot here. A whole lot."

He said he'd do his English homework instead of go. And he watched the bus drive away from the second floor of the school, following us around the building.

I think silk just doesn't interest him.

Back 2 School!

The first week of school is over and I'm starting on my second. The old ITT are making their ways back to the States, along with the CIEE Interns. So basically, by the end of the next couple weeks, I'll have no white friends in Khon Kaen! Freak!

I feel surprisingly comfortable with the fifth graders at Nong Waeng. I look at their faces and simply absolutely love them. They have matured considerably since their first year in P'Noos and P'Aom's classroom (my first semester with KKEI -- see old blog entries). It's impossible not to notice that, and also, how they compare to the sixth and fourth graders this year. It is testament to the value of relaxed routine/discipline, steady role models/teachers, and deep student-teacher relationships. It may also speak to the multi-cultural teaching team, and how that affects their curriculum.

I suppose it could speak to many values cultivated by the intentionality of an ideal KKEI classroom.

Though I get to spend most of my time with these fifth graders -- which I love because such a classroom also cultivates a happy work enviornment -- I spend the other 60% of my time between 3 other classrooms.

Fortunately the municipality has instituted a policy changing all of Nong Waeng's classrooms to be more like P'Noos and P'Aom's, meaning each grade has a teacher pair assigned to them who will for the most part keep that class throughout the day. I'm happy for the teachers and the school because I think the policy leaves potential for a better working and learning environment for everyone. There will be a lot of challenges inherent in such a top-down approach, though.

And meanwhile my job has become more similar to how the school was before. English remains split between 2 teachers, so that I have to teach the fourth and sixth graders by myself one morning each per week. The greatest challenge of this is the number of kids and the behavior of about a third of them, especially when they see they have been left with "just" a foreigner. My first challenge is simply to get to know each of them, so that we can gain each others' trust and not spend the rest of the year bullying each other.

The fourth and final classroom I help take care of is at Non Chai -- 12 kids who don't do well in the regular seventh, eigth, and, ninth grade classrooms. So far we seem to be taking pretty well to each other and I'm excited to work with them on English. My co-teacher for that classroom (it is a KKEI classroom) is P'Gaolee. Unfortunately he's been off doing camps or something outside school about 50% of the time, so my Monday role with this class remains completely unclear. Friday afternoons after I teach English, I'll be teaching violin to one student...so I guess I have to brush up!

In general every challenge has seemed minor, probably because I am so happy to be back at school and at a "real" (and steady) job.

We also had our first KKEI meeting last week. Besides Lukas and me, I think KKEI is extremely fortunate to have two new volunteer members -- P'Goong, an organizer with experience in education, and Jennifer, a Philipino with experience in training and an education in psychology.

P'Goong has agreed to take on our KKEI "action research" as she knows someone who can help us structure it, and who can train us over a day. It was exciting to see all KKEI members leaning forward for that discussion -- a complete win!

I'm off to school; see you next week.

School Utopia

I've been in Kentucky exactly 3 weeks now, and now I'm balancing TWO blogs! So please check out our human rights blog for more updates on what I'm doing.

So I often worry that my life is leading me in too many directions and it's never going to come together and make enough sense. But after some time feeling worried about this, I'm happy to report that it's still all coming together. This is truly turning out to be a sabbatical. My time here is going to help me develop my purpose in life -- somehow.

I was taking a walk today and started talking to myself in Thai, explaining to myself my utopia of education. Here it is.

All of us would start to learn at a very early age about health, law, and learning and teaching. These would be taught in a manner that started with our cultural framework, so as to facilitate an internalization of our ancestors' values. Maybe in kindergarten we would learn gardening and first grade house building, in addition to really simple health, law, and how to learn according to our culture's values.

We would progress towards learning international law, health practices in various other cultures, and other frameworks for teaching and learning. So the teacher has this responsibility to instill cultural values in kids, and then shows them other frameworks that allow for developing students' creativity and critical thinking.

All of this of course is done through participatory learning, place based classrooms, teacher-student, student-teacher relationships...oooh utopia.

I also chose these subjects as a focus because through personal experience I believe that we should all -- whether we have access to higher education or not, be well-enough educated in these areas to not constantly feel we need to rely on experts, some of which only get richer by advocating for our continued and increasing lack of knowledge. So if everyone were educated this way -- whether they could read/write or not, my ideas is that the current societal structures would break down ... from the grassroots on up. The trickle up theory. Just imagine if all of us were lawyers!

Yours, Vanessa.

Coming soon: crazy old activist teachers -- prairie monk, BB lake restorer, mountain forest woman.

Sabbatical

I'm back in the States, and for 6 months not working primarily in schools...Since I'm still a student of life, however, I'll just keep this blog here and add to it.

I wrapped up my first semester with KKEI...really about 3 weeks ago. Since then I've been distracted by my friends Connie and Sarah coming to visit me. They both changed my life in Khon Kaen in their own ways. How lucky I am to have such friends!

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Through KKEI I learned that I'm good at organizing teachers. I'm not as good at being with kids. I hope my stamina and patience for the latter will improve. I should get a chance to find out this coming Fall when I go back to KKEI for another year and a half (first we have to request a stipend for 3, rather than 2, ITT members). I learned so much this first semester, but had little opportunity to apply it and test myself.

A lot of what I learned, though, was reflected in our KKEI Retreat, which was followed up by John and I totally redoing the KKEI website. Dut-da-dah! (Still not done...but cool anyways.)

If everything works out, KKEI teachers will be creating their curriculum before the school year starts, under "KKEI Principles," but as appropriate for each of their classes/schools/communities. If everything works out, teachers will come to the U.S. in October and connect to schools in Spartanburg, New York, New Orleans, and San Francisco. If everything works out KKEI will facilitate action research in the coming year to better define the goals of their own and others' teaching -- and problems that they face. If everything works out, KKEI will have a more concrete presence in the general public, through facilitating concrete, strategy-driven activities.

It's a lot to work out, and I wish I were there for all of it.

***

Rather, I'll be taking a 6-month sabbatical (haha) in Kentucky -- or however long my pocketbook can take it -- working on a human rights project with the Educational Network for Global and Grassroots Exchange (ENGAGE) and with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth (KFTC). This sabbatical may give me the opportunity to combine much of what I love: organizing, human rights, schools, and maybe even farming...? I won't really know what's up till I get there in early May. I hope I get to dance, too. I hope I find a totally integrated approach to life!

Introducing Some Sections

Section 1: School
P’Aom, P’Noos (pronounced like P’Newt, but not spelled like that), and I have really begun working as a team, planning every week, evaluating and modifying our plans every day, discussing education, etc. This transformation has been really exciting and helpful for my own mindset. I actually feel able to organize, motivate, and strategically create. For example:

2 weeks ago we had a big campout at the school with the third and fourth graders, and we invited the students’ parents and guardians to part of it. I had an epiphany. P’Aom hadn’t told me about this camp until the week before it was at first supposed to happen. Every week has felt put together this way, last minute…actually she probably knew in the back of her mind that this camp was going to happen, seeing as how they had one last semester, too, and this was a follow up. But shouldn’t the camp have been part of a larger picture? Shouldn’t we have been building up to an event where we invited the parents, and mixed with the fourth graders? There should have been some strategy that connected this camp to the rest of the semester, rather than just the rest of the days in the week. I’m actually considering bringing up units as a method to visualizing the semester, so that every week can build upon the last. And of course, we will need to map everything out before the semester begins!

But we are going to start looking a little more like CIEE Thailand in more ways than that…
Last week we took a field trip to a festival going on at the big lake downtown, which was about Isaan people and protecting resources in communities. We didn’t really prepare the kids much other than telling them that they were going to see some aspects of the communities in their dreams, and asking them to think about a few questions. The excuse for not preparing more was that we didn’t really know what the festival would be like…

I remembered working at the farmer’s market in Champaign, though, and having kids come up to me and ask me questions, filling out worksheets, so I brought this up at our evaluation of the field trip. Therefore the day after the trip we had the class make up questions that they would have asked the people at the festival, if they would have thought to talk to them (or if we would have thought to make them talk to them). Overall they participated in this activity, and we could see that if done multiple times, and more in depth, it would have been a great opportunity to build skills within the students. Also, all three of us were participating in this activity: P’Aom facilitated, P’Noos took notes on butcher paper, and I participated with the students.

Next year we will have sent the kids on the field trip having prepared questions to ask. This year P’Aom says we shouldn’t wait for another event; we should take the kids somewhere, anywhere, to use this strategy of learning.

So yes, in the name of strategy and building upon classroom experiences, I think we might be on the track to becoming more like CIEE Thailand, except with a third grade class rather than college students. This is not just because of me, though; I think it might be because we are using the same basic strategy: group process, goal-making, evaluation.

Section 2: Personal Direction
The books I’ve been reading have been drastically affecting my mood, passions, ideas, and goals.
First of all, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was really impressive…really, really. I just finished reading a book that compiled a bunch of his speeches and writings (the first book I’ve actually finished in awhile). Everyone should be studying MLK in school, examining his words, and using them as a basis for building a new society. I remember studying the “I have a dream” speech in something like early grade school, but I don’t remember how in depth we got, and I don’t think we ever re-visited other speeches or writings later in school. In fact, I wonder if I didn’t come away from that lesson thinking his dream had been somewhat made into reality, when in fact learning about the speech could have facilitated learning about oppression of all types, which still existed then and now, including oppression caused by a system built on racism.

Now I’m reading “Listening to the Land,” interviews by Derrick Jensen with a bunch of environmentalists. I put this one down before because the people he interviewed sounded a bit in their own, academic world. But I’m stomaching that for now, because they also have (some) very valuable things to say, which should be applied to small-scale situations such as the school I’m working in or the human rights project I’m hoping to join this coming May in Kentucky. For example we are now looking for ways to facilitate the kids knowing the strengths in their families and communities, rather than only focusing on issues…because education should support protecting those strengths in our local communities (David Orr).

Both of these books have thankfully inspired me in the past month.

They are both male-dominated. MLK was a man, but I’m still surprised he came off as male-centric to me. As for “Listening to the Land,” 8 out of 29 of the interviewees are men. 2 of the women are in the first half, the rest in the back. I’ve read one of the women interviews so far, and though I identified with many of the aspects the male interviewees brought up, it is astounding to me how much more holistically I was able to identify with what the woman said (Charlene Spretnak)…

So I’m realizing just as black people have had to seek out and create their own powerful role-models in a white-centric society, I need to start doing the same with women. Actually it’s not that I haven’t met and heard of many wonderful women role-models, but I’m not sure I have come across many speeches by women that have been taken seriously enough, by women and men alike.

Besides books shaping my personal goals, though the choices I’ve made so far since college have been very much based on intuition, they seem to be each in their own way lending definition to “what I’m doing.” I think with another 6 or so years that might be defined, or maybe never, which is fine as long as each day means something.

Maybe I’ll be on the path to becoming the first woman president...with a Thai first gentleman. Hah.

Okay it's been awhile, but I'm still here.

I haven't gotten lice, but I did cut off my hair and (sorry) dyed it black. The kids asked me "Why?! Now it's not pretty!" That's all for my personal life for today. Now to processing school.

Being with Thai 3rd graders has caused me to really want to go back to 3rd grade in the US, because I simply can't remember for sure what it was like. Was so much time wasted? Likely yes...

I've had a few flashbacks. For example, the other day I remembered doing something silly in 3rd grade, expecting a laugh from the teacher and instead getting a stare-down. Because that's just what happened to a poor 3rd grader here.

I remember, after a long time forgetting, that my dream community would have not had any money. More like my dream world. Everyone used to stare at me like I was crazy when I said that. Just like a 3rd grader did the other day when I told her -- she looked at me and said, "You wouldn't want to have any stuff??"

The kids made models of their community in their dreams. They came up with things like:

• no cigarettes
• no lying
• no gas, only energy from the sun
• lots of trees
• happy family
• no trash (many of these kids' parents scavenge for livelihood)

I can remember what it was like to wake up every day to a world I didn't want. Finally I decided I'd have to get used to it (about the middle school/high school/Georgetown era). And then I found an environment where people were hopeful for changing things, and had the energy to learn skills to do so. But I still hadn't remembered the community in my dreams until this assignment with the 3rd graders.

Sometimes I think I can tell that some of these kids are at the "waking up every day to a world I don't want" stage.

The most successful activity we've done so far has been acting. We were going to have the kids write scripts in their small groups but at the last minute decided to do it as a whole class. We've been searching for ways to get the boys to participate in class, as most of them basically won't participate unless they are drawing individually or they are using tons of energy. If the activity doesn't use enough energy they run off and play fight each other or something.

But the full-group play writing and acting worked out beautifully! Everyone was so into it, and wanted to do it again and again to practice. They evaluated their work well. And the activity used everyone's energy. So I think we need to work with this method to teach. Everyone wants to do it again anyways. It's also the first time I saw the teachers participating/"playing" with the kids in a facilitator kind of way, which is what every NGO around here will tell you you need to do to teach kids: play with them!

There are a lot of programs that integrate theatre into education in the US. These would be good to look into, too.

I have more, but again will stop for now. Forgive the delay. Maybe I'll do better next time.

Take THIS, Kristen: Blog Post #2

I have had a week full of processing, so let's see what I can share with anyone reading this blog...

To be clear, what I am here in Thailand to do as a member of the International Teaching Team of the Khon Kaen Education Initiative is "train" in the English language a teacher or teachers to which I am assigned. Training them in English is an activity to support our primary purpose: cultural exchange that relates to methods of education. Not that I have experience teaching in American elementary schools…but by virtue of having been a student for six years in an American elementary school, by virtue of my interest in education, and inherently through the task of problem solving – idea sharing and cultural exchange should be possible.

For me specifically, I will be working with P’Aom (primarily) and P’Newt. These women teach third grade at Nong Waeng municipality school (the poorest school in the municipality, which is often described as 90% kids from the slum).

This is the first school year that P’Aom and P’Newt have been able to teach only one grade – the same kids all day long. Usually the kids have to switch classes and teachers every period. This can be very confusing, especially considering that teachers often either don’t show up to the class, or are pulled out of their classes by the principal or even the municipality for meetings and sometimes preparing for activities that, unfortunately, have very little to do with learning! This week, at least one teacher from another school has been dedicating hours to preparing floats for a parade that is happening at the silk festival – an annual, 10-day, city-wide event. They are doing this because the mayor asked them to.

Note: there is no substitute teacher system in Khon Kaen. So for example, a few teachers from the school where my fellow International Teaching Team member (John) is teaching are leaving for a month-long training – it is unclear what will happen with their classes. Probably, other teachers will somehow have to absorb the task of basically babysitting them.

For P’Aom, P’Newt, and I, we hope to never leave the third grade class with less than two teachers. This is idealistic, though – the girl who had my place before me (Liz) would often end up teaching English class alone, even though it was not her role.

The kids in my class are overall very sweet, and because I am idealistic, I think at heart they are good kids. But they are also very naughty. I spent the last week observing, and what I observed was that it is very hard to teach them! Also, to top it off, copying is a way of life here. I watched more than half the class copy their assignments, and most teachers (including P’Aom) just put up with it and will watch it going on right under their noses without doing anything about it.

I’m not sure yet how many, but Liz said quite a few, of the kids can’t read, unfortunately not even having the basics down of the Thai alphabet, much less the English one. This isn’t specific to Nong Waeng school…and that is also one reason teachers put up with copying. A lot of kids just can’t do the assignments (well, not with their current level of literacy).

My only idea for this is that since I can’t read Thai either, maybe I could invite some of the kids to my Thai lessons (which I haven’t yet actually set up). We could learn to read together, and I’ll pay for the lessons??

It is likely that before the end of the semester, I will get lice and cut off my hair. So far P’Aom has spent at least some portion of the day combing out kids’ hair for lice/cutting their hair.

I’ve already had some ideas for teaching class, which I will share later, once they are tried, because this entry is getting long. I will also share later some of the different styles of teaching I have observed, and what a basic day looks like in P'Aom's class.

Some of my goals, I’ve decided are:

• Create activities that cause the students to take a role in transforming their environment (P’Aom is already doing this to some degree – a lot of what she is teaching revolves around creating a garden and she hopes to have the students start raising frogs to sell, too). I’m hoping to also carry this inside the classroom, so that students have visual reminders on the wall of what they’ve been learning. And the homier-looking this school gets the better. Why do schools have to look so bare?!
• Teach by sparking interest and investment in the students…anymore of that they can get the better.
• Encourage dialogue between P’Aom, P’Newt, and myself. Trying new things and then evaluating afterwords is going to be key.
• Connect as much as possible with kids’ families – maybe even finding ways to help kids do their homework on the weekends. Because if they don’t do their homework, P’Aom has them do it in class – and then they just copy off each other!

As for me personally, I am finally moved into an apartment, and so I have unpacked! I’m going to hold off on getting a motorcycle, and use my bicycle from last year. And, I'm really uncomfortable with how little the teachers get paid by the municipality -- 7,000 baht a month. This is less than I was given as a living stipend by CIEE Thailand. And it is less than I am given now by the municipality to do less than the teachers are asked to do.

Welcome to "Processing School"!

I started this blog despite my sister and my grandma’s lack of faith in my ability to keep a blog. How my grandma knows and notably, remembers, that I haven’t been able to keep a blog in the past, I’m not sure. But she’s right.

I have a method for keeping this one, though – I’m going to write very simply. That is, I’m not going to try too hard, and I’m not going to attempt anything deep or beautiful. I’ll do my best to write from the heart, but only if that’s what’s easiest.

I’ve been reading a book, which is a compilation of high school “revolutionary” writers and speakers from the 1960s. The writing and words are very straightforward. In fact so straightforward that I wonder if the parents, teachers, administrators, even other students in the schools who wouldn’t have labeled themselves radicalized revolutionaries, didn’t and today wouldn’t, take offense, become defensive, and totally disregard the writing as…well, disturbing, insulting, and too simple.

Probably. After all, I wasn’t a high school revolutionary, and I cringed at some parts that were clearly describing my “type.” But at least the writers made sense. And at least they were saying something.

This blog is my attempt to take a lesson from those students from the past, and not mask my words in “deepness,” or revert to silence. Rather, I hope to use honesty and openness, and I’m going to risk offending myself and others in the process.

Really, I can only hope to make the blog as exciting as I’m making it sound!

Anyways, soon I’ll be surrounded by a bunch of crazy 3rd graders, each of us with 3% smaller brains than when I’m done facilitating school. That is assuming none of us can already juggle (I did practice at the airport).

I will get to actually explaining what I'm doing here, which by the way has nothing to do with elephants, in future posts.