From May till February at the Dan Khun Thot school

I spent three terms teaching at the Dan Khun Thot School. The second term of the 2018-2019 academic year and both terms of the 2019-2020 academic year. And so I had a chance to fully experience what it is like to teach at a school in Thailand. I am going to write about the 2019-2020 academic year in this post. You can also read my previous post about my first term teaching in Thailand here: Teacher Alesh and his world at the Dan Khun Thot school.

Introduction

I continued teaching at the SPL section of the school, the Special Lab, which is a selective primary school. In addition, I also kept teaching in the kindergarten. I gave classes to 8 levels of schoolchildren, the entire primary school (6 levels) and 2 levels in the kindergarten. My workload was 17 teaching hours per week, which was more than enough considering the number of levels.

An overview of my classes:

Kindergarten level 2: 1 class per week (3 different classes: KG2/1, KG2/2, KG2/3)
Kindergarten level 3: 1 class per week (4 different classes: KG3/1, KG3/2, KG3/3, KG3/4)
Primary school grades 1 to 4: 2 classes per week
Primary school grades 5 to 6: 1 class per week

I taught 330 – 340 children, 170+ in the primary school and 160+ in the kindergarten.

Although, a term is longer for the kids, it lasted 4 months for me. The first term ran from Thursday May 16th, 2019 until Friday September 13th, 2019, while the second term ran from Friday November 1st, 2019 until Friday February 28th, 2020.

My desk was in the classroom of the second grade meaning I was expected to sit there during my free periods as opposed to sitting in a staff room. This made the job ever so demanding.

A lot of events took place at school throughout the academic year, some of which I actively participated in. Let me guide you through all the events I can think of.

Queen’s birthday

The Queen’s Birthday is a national holiday in Thailand held annually on June 3rd since 2019. If June 3rd falls on a weekend, the holiday will be observed on the following Monday. This holiday marks the birthday of the current queen of Thailand, Queen Suthida. This event was celebrated at the Dan Khun Thot School on Friday before the actual holiday. Monks visited the school on this occasion to hold a spiritual ceremony after which they were given alms by teachers and students alike.

Wai Kru ceremony

The Wai Kru ceremony is a Thai ritual in which students pay respects to all the teachers at school. The ceremony took place on June 20th in the school hall. Afterwards, the students came to pay respects to the teachers they actually taught them. It was amazing when some of my students came to me and gave me flowers and hugged me.

Mother’s Day

Mother’s day is another national holiday in Thailand. As opposed to other countries Mother’s day in Thailand is celebrated on the former Queen’s birthday which is August 12th (formerly Queen’s birthday, currently National Mother’s day). This occasion is also considered in the teaching curriculum and hence I gave a special class during which we sang Mother’s day songs and the pupils made and colored Mother’s day greeting cards.

Sports Days

Sports days were a three day event taking place in mid August. All school was divided into four huge teams by colour: red, blue, yellow and pink. Everybody wore a sports uniform in their team’s colour. Some students actively participated in sports competitions with other students cheering. At the end, there was a parade around the town and a closing ceremony.

Loy Krathong

Loy Krathong is a festival celebrated annually all over Thailand and is also known as the Thai Festival of Lights. Krathong is a Thai term which refers to a piece of banana trunk decorated with flowers, banana leaves, candle and incense sticks. The word Loy means to float in the Thai language. Traditionally, Thai people float these beautifully decorated ‘baskets’ (banana trunks) on a river or lake and thank the Goddess of Water. Loy Krathong takes place on the evening of the full moon of the 12th month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar. It was celebrated on November 11, 2019. Normally, children make baskets at school on the day of the festival but due to an event held at our school, they didn’t do so this year. I celebrated my second Loy Krathong in Dan Khun Thot.

Scouts camp

I was given an offer to take part in the scouts camp this year. Scouts camp is an event when the students do different physical activities intertwined with singing, dancing and cheering, and as such having fun. I joined the lower primary school pupils on this day (Grades 1 to 3) whose camp was just a one day activity compared to the higher primary school pupils who also stayed overnight. Prior to the camp taking place Thursday was a scouts day at school when all the pupils wore scouts uniforms and also rehearsed activities for the camp.

Christmas

Although traditionally not a Thai holiday, December brings Christmas time to Thailand, too, schools included. Foreign teachers put on Santa costumes, fill up their bags with candy only to throw it among the kids eager to get as much candy as they can eat. There’s also a Christmas show and competitions. Christmas is also taken into account when it comes to the teaching curriculum and I and my pupils spent the class time singing songs, playing games and making Christmas cards.

New Year’s celebrations go hand in hand with Christmas and on the very last day of the year, there is a party for the kids when they eat, drink, sing and dance. There is a tradition of exchanging gifts. Each and every pupil in a class as well as teachers bring a gift. All the names (or student numbers) are put in a bowl and everyone draws a slip of paper with someone’s name or number and gets their gift until all gifts are given.

SPL camp

It was a two day school event taking place in a resort near the Khao Yai national park. Previously, the students had competed in different games in three different categories – English, math and science. Sadly, this year there was no place for English. The camp bore the name STEM camp, the acronym standing for science, technology, engineering and math. In addition, the pupils prepared an amazing performance for the director and other members of the school staff as well as for their parents. On the second day, we visited an exotic animals park and a renewable energy centre, both visits presenting opportunities for the kids to learn something new and have fun.

Zoo visit

To my great surprise, the kindergarten staff presented me with an offer to join my pupils when they went to the zoo in the city of Nakhon Ratchasima. It was a refreshing experience for me.

Open House

Open House was an event during which there were visitors at school and the students presented their projects to the academic staff as well as their parents. The theme of the Open House event was Innovation again. So the idea behind the students’ projects was how to make a better future through innovation.

Selection of new SPL Grade 1 students

Similarly like last year, I was asked to help to interview our kindergarten pupils to become new first graders. As I have mentioned, SPL primary school is a selective primary school and therefore, there is a sort of entrance examination to choose the future pupils. I only took part in the oral part which consisted of asking the students 5 questions and giving them a score based on their answers.