The primary purpose of Peace Corps – Thailand’s TCCS
(Teacher Collaboration and Community Service) Program is, as the name implies,
to work collaboratively with Thai teachers.
This collaboration can take many shapes and is always a work in
progress, an organic process that changes and grows with time, effort, care,
patience, and experience. But that’s
actually not what I am going to write about in this post, because, let’s face
it, as nice as my co-teachers are (and they’re both extremely kind to me and dedicated
to their teaching), the aspect of my service that I enjoy the most (so far at
least) is interacting with my students.
Obviously, it’s been a long while since I was in elementary
school, and I can’t really profess to know my students intimately well, given
the communication barriers, as well as differences in age and culture,
etc. But I can understand when they
enjoy something, be it a “game” we’re playing, an activity at school, or just
running around with their friends. And I
can understand that they are seeking the same things that most if not all of us
seek in our different ways: acceptance, acknowledgement, approval,
encouragement, affection, love. And I
know that in those moments when I see them full of life and enjoyment, it
gladdens my heart and lifts my spirit; and when I feel that I have played a
small part in offering them something that contributes to their sense of
feeling at home in the world and in themselves, it makes me glad that I am
here.
Make no mistake, they are not little angels of unalloyed
innocence and goodness. Like children
everywhere, they are frequently mean to one another. They hit each other, call each other names, reject
and exclude each other. On the academic
front, some of them display little or no motivation or interest in
learning. And although I think it’s
probably way over-diagnosed in the States, some of the kids here are, I
suspect, genuinely ADHD. And Thai
teachers’ answer to Ritalin generally seems to be verbal humiliation and/or a
whack on the head.
One of my 5th graders, Nut, has great difficulty
staying in his seat (he’s not alone in this, but he’s the most frequent
offender). He often wanders to the desks
of nearby students and harasses them in some manner or other, takes their
things, taunts them, pushes them. Last
week I learned that he hit a new girl and that she was now afraid to come to
school. The school’s response to this
was a beating and a lecture. It remains
to be seen whether this will have any effect, whether ameliorating or deleterious,
on his behavior. Nut’s parents are
divorced, and he is being raised by his grandmother, who I’m told verbally and
physically abuses him. Whenever he sees
me he gives me a hug, and for the present at least, he listens to me, and will
return to his seat and at least try to pay attention to the lesson (which
attention might last the rest of the class period or only the next 5 minutes,
depending). There are times when he is
actually interested in what’s going on and really makes an effort to be engaged
and learn. I’ve told him (in Thai) that
I know that he can learn English, but that he has to keep making an effort. Unfortunately, my Thai is not good enough to
have the kind of conversation I would like to have with him, one in which I
could ask him about his home, how he feels in school, what he is thinking and
feeling when he takes someone else’s things or hits them.
In the same class as Nut, the class leader is Baimon. She is a model student, which I suppose is
why she is class leader. She is excited
to learn, and although she is not the best in the class in terms of her mastery
of English, she is always fully engaged and puts forth her best
effort. But even though I am prejudiced
towards academic qualities, what I most admire about Baimon is simply her
enthusiasm for life and her ability to be present in and curious about the
moment. Even during the morning assembly
when all the students are standing in the hot sun and most of them are zoned
out, she is fully attentive, and one gets the sense that she is genuinely open
to all possibilities of what could happen next.
Of course, what does happen next is usually nothing to write home about,
but I love it that she exudes a sense of possibility, one that I,
unfortunately, am all too frequently lacking.
That being said, lest this unintentionally take too dark a
turn, Baimon’s bright-eyed attentiveness and sense of expectation (which I hope
she will never lose), and Nut’s evident suffering yet persisting ability to
both give and receive affection (which I fear he will lose) are at the top of the list of things that keep me
engaged in my work and in being here in general.
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