Help Train Teachers in Thailand

We started this month with a fair at the Ao Luk Non-Formal Education (NFE) Centre, where we have been running free English classes for adults since July 2007. There was a lot of fun to be had and lots of mess to be made; Teaching Children (TC) volunteers Sophie & Laura got to work painting faces while the rest of us ran the various games & activities, including a 3 legged race, hoopla, pass the parcel, fishing for prizes, a can shack and a crafts table making penguin piggy banks out of plastic bottles! By far everyone’s favourite was the Global Village Idiot stocks, where students got the chance to bombard their teachers with wet sponges, water pistols and, eventually, entire buckets of water. Students – adults & kids, volunteers and staff all had a whale of a time and walked away drenched but happy.

As is tradition at the end of each term, we held a party at our base for all the students, community and volunteers, the theme this time being ‘GVI rak Ao Luk’ – ‘GVI loves Ao Luk’. The students always make a huge effort and, as always, brought an obscene amount of food, but this time we also had a special treat for them. After weeks of intensive training (thanks to GVI staff member and Ao Luk local, Apple) the volunteers & staff got dolled up in traditional Thai dress and performed a Thai dance at the party; I think we did a pretty good job and everyone loved it (or were too polite to say otherwise!). Laura B & Ian also put together a heart-warming and tear-jerking slideshow of some of the highlights of our time in Ao Luk. After hours of laughter, food and a lot of karaoke, our guests gradually drifted off, leaving us to close-up the karaoke with our set piece; as 1am approaches, so does the haunting (and mildly disturbing) howl of Bohemian Rhapsody!

As part of our Teacher Training initiative, aiming to improve the standard of English taught in schools by providing workshop for local teachers, GVI asked Rachaprachautit School if they would like to host one of these workshops. We were very excited when they replied that all of the schools in Koh Lanta, on hearing about the teacher training, had decided to close for 2 days so that all of the teachers could attend! For 2 days we ran workshops in the various techniques we use in our classes for the 45 teachers; they took part in English games and activities and everyone had a great time. Most weren’t even English teachers, but, with the launch of the ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) Economic Community in 2015 – for which English is the official working language – Thailand is in the midst of a national initiative to get everyone speaking English, and the teachers were eager for the opportunity to practice with native speakers. We were treated like royalty, fed endlessly and had the chance to see the beautiful National Park as well as some brilliant Thai dancing by the students.

August also saw the start of our final ‘full’ term in Ao Luk; over the past 5 years demand for our free classes has declined, as thousands of community members have worked their way through the GVI course and become confident English speakers. Many have used their newly learned language skills to develop their own community tourism businesses, others have improved their employment prospects and some of our younger students have gone on to study English at university in the hopes of becoming English teachers. The community has benefitted hugely from the classes and is in a good position to continue more independently, with GVI playing a smaller part in their English development.