I take my hat off to the lovely lady whose full time job it is to keep track of the visas and work permits of all the employees. She has organisational skills second to none, which is just as well, or she would have disappeared long ago under a mountain of paper!
On the work front, things are progressing well. We have completed two cycles of visits to the four centres that we are working with, and we are now busy preparing for the workshop that we will be running the weekend after next. As well as the teachers from our four regular centres, teachers from three other centres in one of the sub-district areas will also attend, as will the local ministry education chiefs. No pressure, then! We had not visited the three other centres at all, and we thought it would be a good idea to do so before the workshop, to meet the teachers and introduce ourselves. They are all more remote than the centres we work with on a regular basis, which are all within ten to twenty minutes on the motorbike. So last week we set off with the WE truck into the hills. The route to one of the centres in particular was not unlike a bumpy roller-coaster ride. The road, unpaved and already very hilly and bendy, had been further sculpted by the rainy weather, with one bend where the side of the road had collapsed away completely and a new section of road had been cut into the hillside. More taking-off-of-hats is due to the young driver who negotiated the entire route incredibly carefully and gently.
When we got there, the centre was delightful! A tiny little building, incredibly simple, but so neatly organised and well cared for. The children were very happy and confident - two of the older boys (i.e. 4 years old) were leading the rest of the class in a fantastic dance routine, which of course I had to join in with! (Sadly no pictures of that - I was too busy dancing!)
Much teaching, even of these young children, consists of repetition and chanting . We are planning to introduce some games and practical activities as part of the workshop.
The teachers at this centre have created a bright and cheerful environment for the children
No chairs and tables - not that there was much room for furniture anyway!
They are fortunate to have a large covered area so the children can play outside, come rain or shine (and here it really is either one or the other!)
The three centres that we visited are all in an area where the population is Thai-Karen. This means that the home language of most of the children and the teachers is Karen, though there are a few migrant children who are Burmese speakers. At school, the official language of instruction is Thai, but the teachers also use Karen and some Burmese to help the children understand. In this respect, the situation is quite different from the other four centres, where the teachers and many of the children are Thai, and there are some migrant children who are either Burmese or Karen speakers. These teachers have an additional challenge on their hands of not being able to communicate with some of the children in their home language. Something else that we will be exploring in the workshop.
The workshop will be quite a challenge to deliver, especially for my coordinator who has to translate between English and Thai, neither of which is his own language. For this reason I started planning it well in advance and have more or less written a script, so he can be prepared. I have also tried to make it as practical as possible, so that there is not too much of us talking. But that is also partly because I am trying to model good early years teaching practice! I just hope I have not been too ambitious with what I have planned, and that the teachers enter into the spirit of it!
For those of you interested in more VSO news, here is the link to The Link!
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