Visiting My School

December 1, 2011

This is my only offer so far. But I was hesitant to take it since I wanted to teach elementary school kids English in a rural area of Thailand. I wouldn’t be getting any of these from this school. But I was still intrigued. I have always liked history. I also think that it would be an opportunity I wouldn’t ever get in the States; teaching history to secondary leveled students. And of course, the Thai history part always cracks me up. So I wanted to check out the school. 

Keep in mind I was thinking I was going to be in a poorer area of Thailand. So when seeing the school, it looked like the Nordstrom’s of schools here in Bangkok. One of the other teachers, Sarah, was also given an offer at this school. She was going to be the new biology teacher because of her background in science. We were told about how great this school was and have only heard good reviews. We heard that they have various amounts of supplies, resources, and very intelligent students.

It looked pretty nice. Gated school yard. Large buildings. Big open soccer or football field. Kids running around with blue and white uniforms. So this is it. This is where I will be spending grueling long hours dealing with defiant and hormonal teenagers.

We went to the English Program (EP) classrooms which are located in a separate building from the rest of the school. Many of these bilingual schools will have a building for EP students. The rest of the school will be for the Thai program. Parents pay a lot of money for their students to enroll in an English program. Each classroom did have a good amount of supplies. There were projector screens, whiteboards, desks, pens, books, lockers, and air conditioning (bonus!). Each classroom also had a Thai homeroom teacher. The other foreign teachers (including Sarah and myself) would rotate from classroom to classroom teaching our specified subjects. 

The Job Logistics—

Curriculum. When I was given my books and schedule for my classes, I was in disbelief. I have a lot to do. I teach about 22 classes per week and make 22 lesson plans a week. Some of the classes repeat throughout the week so technically I have 15 subjects I need to study and teach. This doesn’t seem like a lot at first until you factor in having to teach multiple subjects to a diverse range of grade levels. I also teach English and Thai history. For Thai history, I have four separate classes I need to teach. This sounds very challenging. They gave me 11 books to use for class. Three of these books are completely in Thai. I can’t read them. I don’t know why they gave them to me. And two other books are not related to the subjects that I am teaching. So out of the 15 subjects, I was only given six books to use. I don’t have any provided resources for my English classes, Thai history classes, and a couple of my world history classes. This seems a bit irregular. I’m now sweating and it’s not because of the Thai sun.

Contract Tenure. When looking at the curriculum, we noticed that the ending date of the semester was a lot earlier than we expected. The semester ends on February 28^th. How can this be? ATI made sure that I did not book my return flight home any time before March 31^st. They made it clear to me that all schools end around this date. Not a month earlier. Sarah and I were very confused so we asked our placement advisor. She explained that most schools won’t extend any longer than February and that it wasn’t normal for Thai schools to end that late. We were still confused. Why would ATI tell us March 31^st? I was very concerned because we have already lost three weeks of class because of the flood and now we are losing an entire month. That isn’t the 4-5 month guarantee ATI gave us. Not even close. Nevertheless, I guess if all the schools in Thailand are like this, there is really nothing we can do.

Salary. We were guaranteed 30,000 ฿ per month plus a housing allowance of 3,5000-5,000 ฿. This is about 1,000 USD month salary plus 100-150 dollar housing allowance. Our advisor told us because we are doing a lot of work for this school; we are actually getting paid more. But then she told us that she takes a large cut of the salary, which actually ends up bringing our salary below the guaranteed amount. With her large cut, Sarah and I can’t afford to rent an apartment. We didn’t understand why she was taking such a big cut. This was confusing. And it was even more confusing trying to discuss our concerns with her.

The Perk! This is the only school that doesn’t have to work weekends. Sarah and I were almost sold when hearing this. Despite our many concerns with this school, we were all of a sudden more interested in it. All the other schools will require their teachers to work on every Saturday for 12 weeks. Our advisor confirmed this. That’s the entire rest of the semester. If Sarah and I decide to go to another school, we won’t be able to travel or relax on the weekends. 

Honestly, overall the school didn’t seem like a right fit. But none of the other teachers knew where they were going and there were only a couple days before school started. Sarah and I felt lucky that we had a placement and the possibility of having our weekends. But we were so overwhelmed and exhausted from the day that we decided to mull all this over since we weren’t signing a contract just yet.