A Thailand Teaching Assistant Reflects
Read Samantha Walton’s (BA Primary Education year 2) reflections on her time in Thailand as a British Council English teaching assistant.
When I attended the meeting for opportunities abroad at the end of last year, I was immediately interested in the British Council programme where students can teach in either Thailand or India. Doing a degree in Primary Education, this seemed like the perfect opportunity to gain experience that would be invaluable for my future teaching career. Going to Thailand was also a chance to live abroad and travel to a part of the world I have always wanted to visit. After sending the application early in 2016, it was months before I received confirmation that my application was successful. From then on, I told everyone I could about spending the summer in Thailand; I looked up English lessons and made all the necessary arrangements in preparation for the departure in June.
My time in Thailand was spent in a small rural school in the South of Thailand with little more than 120 pupils in total. This was a blessing for me as I got to know a lot of them individually and by the time I left, I was as attached to them as they were to me and leaving them felt like I was leaving family that I may never see again. The experience I gained in Thailand was more valuable than I could have ever imagined before leaving Scotland. Whilst there, I spent almost every hour of the school day surrounded by children and was able get an insight into the lives of the children in the ‘real’ Thailand.
Most of the children live on or around farms and a few of the older boys were also farm hands, walking the buffalo in the morning. At school, there is an assembly first thing in the morning where the national anthem is played on a speaker and the Thai flag is raised. Later, I was told that the national anthem is also played at 8am and 6pm on every radio station in Thailand. During the day, the children have different lessons including Thai Language, Maths, Computing, Scouts and English. They also have a few free periods, particularly after lunch time and this is when a lot of my time was spent with them.
The reason I grew so close to the children is because I did not behave the way they would expect a teacher to behave. In Thai culture, teachers are highly respected by all but there is an expectation of superiority and authority. This is something I was not overly comfortable with and I treated the children as I would treat a friend. In fact, I played hide and seek, “Pokémon Go”, gave the children piggy back rides, bought them stickers, toys and gave them sweets. What surprised them the most however, was how much I cared about them. I would ask them daily if they were feeling okay, I hugged them when they cried and I bought them drinks and filled their water bottles with cold water (which was for teachers only). Often, the children would find this quite amusing and these behaviours were often the source of great debate amongst the pupils.
The Thai people I met were very open and friendly and I found that most people I encountered in my town would smile and nod regardless of the fact we had never met. At one point, I was walking to a motorcycle taxi stand and a minibus of schoolchildren I had never met shouted hello and waved from the windows. My mentor at the school referred to me as her ‘sister’ and another teacher referred to me as her ‘daughter’. I was very much made to feel at home where I was living, so much so that I did not want to come back to Scotland and for some time after I left the town, I felt as if I had left my home.
Looking back at my time in Thailand has given me an appreciation of how fortunate we are as individuals to grow up in a country in the ‘developed world’ and an appreciation for all the amenities and resources that most people in this country have access to - amenities that those in Thailand would consider a luxury. It has also given me an appreciation for the simpler things in life and watching the children climbing trees, playing with marbles and playing volleyball gave me time to reflect on what children here sometimes miss out on due to ‘red tape’, health and safety or parental concern.