Signs of change

Last Monday there was a meeting in Bangkok for all the VSO volunteers working on the Early Childhood Development project. There are just five of us now: two in Mae Sot, two in the south in Ranong and one on the outskirts of Bangkok. (One of the volunteers who started at the same time as me left her placement after six months.)

Even though we are all working on the same project, our placements are all very different, due partly to the different geographical contexts and partly to whether we are working with Thai schools or migrant learning centres. It was, nevertheless, very useful to have the opportunity to share what we have been doing, to celebrate successes, exchange ideas and confront some of the challenges.

For volunteers working with migrant learning centres, the challenges include:

• lack of teacher motivation - most teachers are untrained and are very poorly paid
• high turnover of staff - many of the teachers who have been trained on the project have left to take up other job opportunities
• poor organisational capacity of school management
• lack of resources - the centres do not have the resources needed for Early Years teaching and learning and are dependent on the resources funded by the VSO project, with clear issues for project sustainability

For volunteers working with Thai schools, the challenges include:

• curriculum constraints - the schools must follow the national curriculum requirements, which do not necessarily lend themselves to appropriate ECD practice
• parental expectations - parents expect a formal education with emphasis on written work, and teachers feel constrained by this
• lack of appropriate resources such as good story books and play equipment
• resistance to change on the part of teachers

For my own situation, I have to say that I have received a very positive response from the teachers, and the challenges lie in helping them overcome the factors that make change difficult. We have been back to three of the four centres so far since the workshop and in all of them we have seen evidence of the teachers putting into practice something that they learned, which is very encouraging. I have deliberately taken a very slow approach, taking time to observe and try to understand the context before suggesting small changes. I am aware that some of the teachers are very experienced and that they are working within certain limitations, such as being a single teacher with no help in a large class of nursery-age children. Every time I come up with a bright idea, I have to check myself and imagine how I would implement it if I was in their shoes.

Since the workshop, we have started to do a little bit of teaching - mostly small group practical activities. One essential Early Years learning experience that is universally absent is any provision for role play. In the photos below we are with the very youngest children at one centre (1-2 year olds). There are very few resources in this room, other than the ubiquitous plastic bricks. We set up a "hospital" in a corner of the room with three dolls, three of the children's sleep-time pillows, a plastic bottle (for medicine) and my notebook and pen (which doubled as a syringe for injections).

It was clear the children had never had the opportunity to do anything like this before. A few of them came and joined us and a curious little crowd gathered to watch. I demonstrated being "doctor", examining and treating the sick dollies and making notes in my notebook. (One of the dolls clearly needed a hip replacement as one of her legs was back to front. I tried putting it on the right way, but then realised she had two left legs! I thought that maybe the extra disembodied leg that one little boy was chewing on might be the missing one, but that turned out to be a left one as well!)

One little girl in particular really entered into the role, taking over as doctor and even doing some role-play writing in my notebook - something else that the children get very little opportunity to do.

After the meeting in Bangkok, Alice and I stayed an extra day to buy some books and resources for the schools. At the workshop, I had used The Very Hungry Caterpillar as a demonstration text for story-telling, but I only had an English version at that stage. In Bangkok I was able to get some copies in Thai. The centre we have been visiting the last couple of days were doing a curriculum topic of "Living Things", so it seemed an excellent opportunity to use the book, especially as the children had been outside earlier in the morning looking for living things in the grounds of the centre, including butterflies. Here we are doing a double act, English and Thai:

 

Here the children are engrossed in looking at ants. Thankfully, none of them discovered the trick of focusing the sun's rays through the magnifying glass to set fire to them, though some of them had to be dissuaded from stamping merrily on them!

I was delighted to see that the children were given the opportunity to draw the living things they had seen. So far I have seen little evidence of any free drawing. The results were quite impressive!