Trespassers beware!

My next door neighbours have two dogs, who spend most of their time in their front yard, which is within spitting distance of my bedroom window. One of them is very laid back and docile, preferring to leave any house-guarding duties to his companion, who spends much of his time standing behind the front gate barking with great enthusiasm at anyone or thing that passes by. (Don't dogs ever get sore throats?)
Yesterday morning, when I opened my curtains, I noticed that only the quiet dog was in the yard. The vocal one was lying at the side of the road on the other side of the gate which was firmly closed. I wondered if this was a deliberate strategy on the part of the owners to get him to stop barking - he certainly seemed quite tranquil.
A little while later, I opened the curtains to the other window, which looks out onto my own front yard, and who should I see in my yard but the very same dog! I could not imagine how on earth he got in there, as my gate was closed and locked and I am sure he is too big to have squeezed through the tiny gap underneath. However, working on the assumption that if he found a way in he must also be able to find his way back out I went to the front door, threw it open and, in a loud and authoritative voice with appropriate accompanying arm gestures, uttered such useful phrases as "Get out!" and "Go away!" and even a terrifying "Shoo!"
He regarded me with a somewhat quizzical expression, but did not show any signs of removing himself from the premises. People have told me that throwing something at dogs is usually quite effective at getting them to go away, so I picked up one of my trainers from the shoe rack just inside the front door and hurled it across the yard at him. At this he ran down the side of the house, only to reappear again a few seconds later. At this point I realised that he had no idea how to get out, and that he was starting to get distressed, so I decided to leave him alone for a bit and go back inside to appraise the situation.
I was stuck in my house with a large and by now nervous dog between me and my locked front gate. My only option was to go back out there, unlock the gate and let him out. I waited a while and then ventured out, armed with a broom, just in case. He was eyeing me very warily and cowered against the gate as I crossed the yard. I decided a total change of tactic was needed, so I talked to him in a "You-daft-dog-how-did-you-manage-to-get-in-here-shall-we-get-this-gate-open-and-let-you-out?" sort of way. He ran out as soon as the gate was open, and returned to his spot outside his own front gate.
I began to wonder if maybe I had been unwise to upset him. After all, I have to pass his house every day, and if he was going to be on the wrong side of the gate, he might decide to take his revenge... On the other hand, I absolutely did not want him to start regarding my front yard as his territory. I had to pass him several times during the day as I went back and forth on my motorbike doing all my Saturday errands. At first, he was still looking at me with a rather nervous and wary expression, but eventually he relaxed, and when I came back from the market in the afternoon he came sniffing around my bike, wagging his tail and looking for all the world as if he might even invite himself back in. "Don't even think about it!" I said. Clearly, he either has a very short memory, or else we have now established some sort of relationship with me as dominant dog!
This morning when I opened the curtains, both dogs were back in their yard. I still have no idea how he got in to mine....

Butter wouldn't melt.... (He's the one with the brown face)

 



Musical Mayhem

Forget glue and coloured paper - today I really stirred things up. A fundamental concept in early childhood education that I have been trying to get across is the idea of the teacher as facilitator - observing children at play and finding appropriate ways to support and extend what they are doing beyond what they would have achieved on their own.
One little boy today was playing a drum, and was clearly very interested in it. I sat down with him and joined in with a tambourine, following his lead with the rhythm. After a while I gave him the tambourine and he started to play them both together. His sense of rhythm is amazing:

 

After the tambourine was stolen from under his nose by another little boy, they started to play together. They were beginning to vary the tempo of their playing, so I encouraged this by moving to their music, marching slowly on the spot and then speeding up to a fast tip-toe jog as they got faster. They thought this was fantastic and might have continued endlessly if my energy levels had been up to it!

 

 

By this time, other children were starting to take an interest, and the teacher was beginning to regard me with a certain degree of scepticism and alarm. Several other children joined in, using anything that came to hand to serve as drums and drumsticks. It did get rather noisy...

I was impressed, though, with their level of cooperation and concentration.

 

 

I suggested to the teacher that we could incorporate these children's interest in the percussion instruments into an activity with the whole class. So just before lunchtime we played some movement games and sang songs with children taking turns to lead on the percussion.

 

When the children were sleeping after lunch, we talked through the morning. I explained the method in my apparent musical madness, and encouraged the teacher to give the children further opportunities to use the instruments. I wonder if she will...



Winter in Mae Sot

While I was away last week, it seems that winter arrived in Mae Sot. Top 5 give-away signs are:

• the locals are going around in woolly hats, scarves and jumpers
• I have started sleeping under a cover
• the motorbike journey to work is chilly enough to merit a jacket
• I have turned the shower dial up a notch to have a properly hot shower in the morning
• walking barefoot on the tiled floor at home is just the wrong side of pleasantly cool, necessitating a further addition to my footwear collection:

To put all this in perspective for those of you shivering back home, daytime temperatures are still in the high 20s, dropping at night to 18-20 degrees, though the long range forecast is predicting a further fall, possibly as low as 16 at night! Then it will be socks and slippers!

I had a great week away last week with Alessandro and Antonella, friends who came to visit from UK. We spent time in and around Chiang Mai and Sukhothai, before coming back to Mae Sot at the weekend. I will do a proper write-up in due course....

Meeting the Parents

Yesterday and today we had the opportunity to attend meetings held for parents at two of the centres (the same two where we did the trees and flowers). These meetings are held twice a year, once for each semester. At the first meeting, the local ministry chief attended and made a speech. Apparently this is highly unusual, and he only came because he was informed that we would be there! The parents were given information about every aspect of the running of the centres, from budgeting systems to school lunches to teacher professional development to curriculum to such mundane but important issues as remembering to pick up your child at the end of the day and sending a change of clothes to school for those occasional unfortunate "accidents"!

We spoke briefly about the project and how we are working with the teachers. We also gave an overview of the main areas of Early Childhood Development and talked about the important role played by parents and families. The teachers have told us that one of the reasons they place so much emphasis on teaching children to write the letters of the alphabet is because it is expected by the parents. We took the opportunity to explain to the parents the importance at this age of the development of spoken language, and in particular the development of the home language for children who are not Thai. We shared some ideas of games that parents could play at home to support their children's spoken language development. At the second meeting in particular there was a significant proportion of migrant parents present, and my coordinator's tri-lingual skills came into their own, as he was able to translate key points into Burmese as well as Thai.

We had also prepared a questionnaire to gather some data on parents' ideas about what is important in early childhood development, and on the advantages and challenges of Thai and migrant children learning together at school. It will be very interesting to see what transpires from those. I am hoping that they will give us an indication of possible areas to work on together with parents and the community during the next school year.

 

Getting creative

One of the six types of activities included in the early years curriculum here is "creative activities." With a few exceptions, our experience of this so far is that the children do not get much chance to be genuinely creative. The activities are usually very teacher-controlled, and the work produced tends to end up looking very much the same. In the last couple of weeks the teachers at two of the centres were foolhardy enough to let me loose with coloured paper, scissors and glue...

At one centre they were studying the topic of "trees". I suggested that they re-read a picture book that I saw the teacher read to them a while ago about animals sheltering under a tree in the rain. (A good opportunity to recap the "seasons" topic.) My idea was then to make a different version of the book with the children, about animals hiding from the sun in the shade of the tree.

First, we went outside to look at the trees and shrubs in the school grounds, observing the different sizes and shapes of the trees, the colours of the leaves, and feeling the texture of the bark. We then made bark rubbings to use for the tree trunks in the pictures for the book.

The next day we worked with small groups of children to make the tree pictures, while other children did independent activities. (This approach to organising activities does not tend to be used. Nearly everything is done as whole class. There seem to be several reasons for this:

• a high ratio of children to adults means it is easier to keep control of things if the whole class are doing the same thing together;
• the aim is usually to make sure all children complete a particular task in a day so that it can be ticked off, rather than giving the children the opportunity for a genuine learning experience
• teachers do not feel confident that children left to do activities independently will not cause havoc

In working with teachers to make changes to their practice, I am having to tread a careful path between what seems to me to be good practice, and what is actually manageable and appropriate within the constraints of the context in which the teachers are working. There is nothing like doing the activities myself to help me understand some of the reasons why they do things the way they do!)

 

The result: notice how no two trees look the same, and some of them don't especially resemble a tree - just how 3-year-old art should be!

The next day we worked with small groups again to make the book. First, each child drew an animal (or several) hiding under their tree, and then stuck their picture onto a page of the book. They were all thoroughly engaged and delighted with the end product. I hope they will be allowed to read it, and that it will not be put away out of reach in a safe place!

At the other centre they were studying the topic of flowers, so I suggested making flowers in pots that could then be used for a role play flower shop. The teacher had started to prepare some fancy paper flower petals for the children to use, but I explained that I intended to let them make their own. The children were very excited about the glue and scissors - I don't think they get much chance really to experiment with such materials.

As with the tree pictures, the children seemed delighted with their finished flowers, their faces showing a real pleasure in the achievement.

The Flower Shop

I am not sure that the teachers were so impressed with the end result. The idea of creative activities here seems to be to make something that conforms to the teacher's model and looks perfect, which is why the teacher often ends up doing most of the work, and the child's contribution is minimal. Our trees and flowers were certainly not perfect, but the children were in control of what they were doing, making choices and decisions, experimenting with materials and developing their skills of using tools such as scissors. Radical ideas!

Grand Openings

Yesterday we had our Annual Partnership Review meeting, which is a standard part of VSO placements, providing an opportunity to review the working relationship with project partners and plan for the year ahead. The VSO Education Programme Manager came up from Bangkok, and we met with the local ministry education chiefs and the directors of the four centres that we work with.

The meeting was formal, which is something that I am getting used to. It was very useful, though, to have everyone together in one room to discuss the project. We got some positive feedback about the support we have given so far, and the meeting finished with the education chiefs and directors from each area working together to draw up suggested activities for the remainder of the project under the main objective headings.

That has given us a really good basis for moving forward with some of the more challenging project areas, such as involving families and the local community, and working to improve access to education for migrant children who are not currently in school.

Opening speech by local Ministry of Interior Official

 

As part of the project, VSO has given financial support to three of the centres to improve their outdoor play facilities for the children. After the meeting, we went to one of the centres for the official opening of their improved playground. The equipment, which was in a badly deteriorated state, has all been mended and repainted, which means the children are able to use the playground again.

This morning we did another grand opening at another of the centres. Their playground has been transformed from an un-usable patch of land, completely overgrown with vegetation and home to a family of chickens, to a covered area, that will provide shelter from sun and rain, so that the children can play outside all year round. (Though I suppose technically we have evicted the chickens...)

Before:

 

 After:

Parents arrive for the opening

Local Ministry of Interior Chief gives opening speech

Presentation of thank you gift to VSO

 

 

Obligatory group photo!

 

 Work is still going on at the third centre, but should be finished soon:

 

Now we just need to make sure that outdoor play becomes a regular feature of the daily routine, which it has not been up until now.

 

 We stayed on at this last centre for the rest of the morning, as it is their week on our rota. We introduced water play for the first time - just three children around  a large bowl with a selection of plastic containers. As at the other centres where we have introduced water play, the children were all eager to have a go and would have played for hours if they could! We need to work with the teachers to help them understand how to support children's play without interfering.

 

 

A crowd of fascinated onlookers soon gathered. It took some determination to enforce the
"Only three at a time" rule!

And finally, the best moment of the day. After lunch, they all get their little beds out and go to sleep. Once they are sleeping, that is the time we can talk to the teachers about the morning and plan together for the next day.

 

Sweet dreams!



Latest developments

On Friday we delivered the books and games that I purchased in Bangkok to two of the centres, and next Friday we will do the same at the other two. They were received with much excitement and appreciation. We had been told that the local ministry officials would be invited for the occasion, but in the end that was not the case, so it was rather more low key than it might have been! Nevertheless, we still did the obligatory photo-shoot:

While at one of the centres I also demonstrated a few simple home-made games for one of the teachers, who seems particularly interested to try out new things. Earlier in the week I had noticed that one boy in her class, who can sometimes be a bit disruptive, was fascinated by pouring sand into and out of a plastic bag when the children were playing outside. The teachers are generally quite reluctant to use sand and water play in class, because of the potential for mess! I took in an alternative - a small tray of rice with a few containers. Here is the little lad in question, absolutely engrossed, and the other children itching to have a go!

One of the key points of early childhood education that I am still trying to get across is that the starting point for teaching and learning should come from the children's own interests and stage of development, and that observation of children is fundamental for making appropriate teaching decisions. It is a slow process...

Meanwhile, at home, it has been an exciting weekend! Yesterday we had a little traffic jam on our street, as there was a big Caterpillar earth-mover filling in all the potholes on the road with gravel.

Now, this was a welcome event, as the potholes required some nifty navigating by motorbike and made for a very bumpy ride by car, and in the rainy season filled with water to become mini-lakes of uncertain depth. I wondered, however, how long it would be before they made a reappearance.

So imagine my delight (and that of all the neighbours - we were out in force with our cameras!), when they came back today to resurface the road with tarmac!

 

 

I can't wait to go and try it out, though I suppose in some ways it will have taken the element of interest and challenge out of my morning ride to work!

This morning I managed for only the second time to meet with the young lady that I have agreed to do language exchange with. We are both very busy with our respective jobs and activities, so it is not easy to coincide! At this rate, I am not going to make much progress, and I have been considering taking proper lessons. I am starting to pick up more when Thai is spoken around me, and I have built up a large vocabulary, but I haven't really mastered putting it all together into coherent sentences! I know how frustrated and disappointed I will be if I return home at the end of two years without being able at least to hold a basic conversation, but being already one third of the way through my placement (yikes!) I am going to have to start making a serious effort!

My blog has made it on to the VSO website, together with a selection of others, so if you would like to see what volunteers are up to in other parts of the world, have a look here!