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I have moved this blog to Wordpress. You can find me here:
http://mercycentrelanguageprogram.wordpress.com/

The wonderful teachers

In this post I will distinguish between the full-time teachers in the schools and the volunteer teachers by referring to them as teachers and volunteers respectively. 

I heard a story today about one of the teachers at a kindergarten in which the program has volunteers. I will call her Kru (meaning teacher) A. Kru A (then Miss A) grew up in the Klong Toei area. Her family's livelihood came from collecting recyclable rubbish from the streets to sell. They were a family in extreme poverty, and whilst mum and dad were able to escape the day to day horror through cheap alcohol, which of course became a horror in itself, Miss A had no such sanctuary. One day, Miss A found a school and marvelled at the children through the windows; happy, active and socialising. It was one of the first Mercy funded Kindergarten schools. Sister Maria, co-founder of the Mercy Centre alongside Father Joe, saw her peering through the window and asked her if she wanted to attend the school. She excitedly agreed and the Mercy Centre provided Miss A with an education. At 16 she enrolled on a teacher training program, wanting to pay forward the kindness and hope she had received from her teachers.
Kru A is now nearly 50 and teaches at one of the Mercy funded kindergartens. She is an amazing and caring teacher, totally dedicated to the betterment of the children in her care. This is not an isolated story. Many of the teachers and staff at the Mercy Centre have similar backgrounds.
The volunteers who are sent out to the schools to teach are very lucky to have the class' Thai teacher on hand to help with general classroom management and any essential translations that may be needed. The teachers have gracefully accepted the volunteers into their classrooms and, for that, I am so very grateful.
To come straight to the point without pulling any punches; Thailand's education system is antiquated. I will qualify that statement by saying that I have, admittedly, only a little experience in Thai schools and most of it has been with the Mercy funded kindergarten schools. I have a lot of experience in teaching children who have come from the Thai education system and know many teachers who have trained in Thai teacher training programs. My accusation is consistent with their experiences.
It's not just the lack of funding and old furniture that makes the classroom so dated, it's the pedagogy: The teaching methods and principles. Rote learning is common, and situated, authentic pupil engagement is non-existent. Pupil's repeat what the teacher says and most mouth the words unaware of any meaning. Even those who do understand the meaning soon forget if it is not put to use.

“Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand.” Chinese proverb 

The curriculum I use in the schools uses pupil involvement as much as possible. There are opportunities for group and paired work and new vocabulary is introduced in a systematic way consistent with current educational research on how the brain learns best. Lessons are supported by engaging resources relevant to the pupils' age (if not always their background!).
I have been teaching the first lesson of the program to classes in all of the schools for each new volunteer to observe. That first lesson is difficult. The children just repeat what the teacher says and paired or group work is a near impossibility. After six weeks I went back to first school I started the program at. The children were giving considered responses and most had some awareness of expectations of paired work. I can really see the program working.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, I would like to give the volunteers more training but I also think it's important to offer some kind of training or advice to the teachers. (Perhaps more important, since they will be the ones there all the year, and next year, and may use the advice to inform the rest of their teaching.) I am beginning to write a list of guidelines to help the teachers support the volunteers and pupils in the program:

• Allow the pupils to try to work out the meaning of vocabulary through the context and other clues we give before offering a Thai translation.
• Wrong answers are not a source of shame but a learning opportunity.
• Learn WITH the pupils. 
• ...

If you have any suggestions I can add to this list please comment below. Thank you for reading and please share with anyone you think may be able to help or may be interested. I would like to thank Kru A and all the other teachers for their dedication and acceptance. I believe education is about sharing. The teachers have shared a lot with me I and would like to pay them back by sharing some of the good practices and pedagogy out there.

Reaching out to schools outside of Bangkok

I can now proudly announce that I have the language program running in all 11 of the Mercy Centre funded kindergarten schools in the Klong Toei area.

Next steps...

To deliver the same, quality program to the 12 Mercy Centre funded kindergarten schools outside of Bangkok. Unfortunately, they are all around one hour away from Bangkok so the current system of getting volunteers residing in Bangkok out to the schools will not work.

I have enough text books and workbooks for the children out in these schools but how we deliver the lessons is the problem. (Curriculum details) I have been thinking about using some kind of video conferencing system.

What I need:

• Advice from educators out there who have used any kind of video system to deliver lessons. What went well? Are there any other options that keep lessons interactive, and can deliver the curriculum I have in mind?
• Any ideas for simple and free operating systems that could support this kind of thing?
• I need hardware. Are there any companies out there ready to 'refresh' their computer hardware and donate them to a worthy cause in the Bangkok area?

If anyone can help with any of this, any advice is greatly accepted, please email me or add a comment to this post.

Many thanks,

Alf

The curriculum and the volunteers

After consulting with some language schools and language teachers in Bangkok I decided upon Oxford University Press materials.  (See here for more details.) As well as the program at the kindergarten schools I am also running an after school program for the older children who live at the Mercy Centre itself. These children are often those whose parents have died, are in prison or cannot look after their children for whatever reason. The Mercy Centre looks after the children and tries to help support the family to get back on its feet if that's a possibility. For the after school program I am using English Time for the 10-12 year old children, Get Ahead for the teenagers and later stages of Let's Go for the 7-9 year old children.
In the kindergarten schools I am using Let's Go. It's a very popular program with great resources. It follows a clear progression and the teachers books make it easy for an intelligent person confident in English to follow. The vast majority of the volunteers on the program are not qualified teachers. Let's Go has very clear instructions, a detailed philosophy and lots of drills and games to supplement the detailed lesson plans. When a new volunteer starts I take them to the school myself and teach the first lesson or two until they feel confident enough with the materials and environment to go out on their own. I visit the volunteers regularly to ensure they are happy with their teaching and that the children are learning. I have instigated a system of peer observations to help the volunteers support one another, and some volunteers teach in pairs. I have been looking at training options for the volunteers and may well soon be organising a website with video resources. If anyone has any input or suggestions please comment below.

The volunteers have been great. They have taken ownership of the program and work really hard, making their own resources and going out of their way to provide the best learning opportunities they can for the children. I have a number of volunteers recruited from social media groups and volunteers already here at the Mercy Centre. There are currently 4 full time volunteers from Norway and 1 from Austria who are here on programs developed between the Mercy Centre and their home countries. Other volunteers are living here in Bangkok with a little free time to spare. The volunteers who teach the after school program are all qualified teachers who I have worked with before.

Since the last school I worked at (for money!) was an IB (International Baccalaureate) school I have managed to talk the CAS* students, via the CAS coordinator, into volunteering in the kindergarten schools as well. I am lucky enough to have a friend and ex work colleague who used to be head of early learners at the British Council here in Bangkok. As such he has trained countless teachers to teach English as an additional language. He has very kindly volunteered to give the CAS students some training before they come to the schools. The students will also observe me teach and will be teaching in pairs.

Volunteers come and go and I am always looking for more. If you are available any time Monday to Friday for an hour or two between 9 and 12 please email me.

*Creativity, Action, Service - a mandatory module of the IB that teaches the students about social responsibility.

A brief outline of the program and my history

I am a teacher who, up until 3 months ago, was working in an international school in Bangkok. I'm from the UK where I qualified as a teacher and taught in primary schools. I came to Bangkok in 2000 to work in an international school here and, apart from a 3 year return to the UK, have been here ever since.
Earlier this year I started to do some weekend voluntary work at the Mercy Centre in Klong Toei, a slum neighbourhood in the port area of Bangkok. I could write for days about the great work of the Mercy Centre and its patriarch, Father Joe, but I will, instead, refer you to the website  www.mercycentre.org
Whilst volunteering there I noticed a lot of kind people wanting to volunteer and, despite well organised and professional volunteer management, there was no curriculum in place for the volunteers and students to follow. I did a bit of research and spoke at length with Father Joe about where more a organised teaching program would be most effectively directed. What resulted was the the beginnings of the language program.
The Mercy Centre has funded 23 permanent kindergarten schools in the Klong Toei area and outside of Bangkok, as well other temporary sites where they are needed (e.g. construction site camps that house migrant construction worker families). Without these schools the children under the age of 6 would get no education until they go to government assisted school at 6-7. This preschool is essential to give these children a head start they so desperately need.
My part in this is relatively small. My goal is to provide each K3 or Anuban Sam class (Ages 5-6) with 2 hours of English language lessons a week; delivered by native English speakers from a well planned, organised and resourced curriculum. I managed to secure enough funding from the parent company of the international school I used to work for to buy an appropriate curriculum, consulted with a number of language schools about the best curriculum for my circumstances and used social media and school contacts to attract many of the volunteers (and resources!).
The program started August 4th, 2014 with two schools. The goal is to have all of the 11 kindergarten schools in Klong Toei with 2 hours of lessons a week and then reaching out to the remaining 12 schools, outside of Bangkok using some form of VOIP assisted teaching. (Any suggestions or connections with people who may have already done something similar is most welcome.)
The aim of this blog is to detail the program as it develops and to reach out to people who may be able to help. Thank you for reading.

Photo courtesy of Dave Crimaldi