Tuesday, November 19, 2013

All Sport All The Time


All Sport All The Time
Sport Week at a Rural Thai School

During Peace Corps pre-service training, we had frequent guest presentations by second-year volunteers, who tried to give us a heads-up on what to expect at our sites. They told us about events that would disrupt our teaching schedules, such as Sport Week, during which any semblance of academic learning goes out the window. It’s one of the many aspects of Thai school culture that you can’t fully appreciate until you’ve been there.

Our school’s fall/winter term began on October 28, a week before the start of Sport Week. However, very few classes met that first week because students were either practicing their sport to be ready for competitions or helping teachers in charge of setups, schedules, and logistics. Our school hosted the event, which involved 12 schools in our area and made a lot of extra work, especially for teachers who coach a sport or had other official roles.  They were grateful for any help students could give them. During Sport Week, teachers were expected to clock in and out every day, the same as when classes are in session, except that Sport Week also included Saturday and Sunday.

Each morning, food vendors began setting up before 7am, knowing that students are ready to eat chicken on a stick, sausages, fried bananas, and any number of other snacks at all times.  The vendor pictured below is one of several with permission to sell on the school grounds. There were four or five others just outside the school gates as well.
Students from other schools would begin arriving shortly before 9am, usually in overfilled pickup 
 trucks or buses like these:



There were Sport Week competitions in seven sports:  football, futsal, petanque (sometimes called boules), sepak ta kraw (sometimes called kick volleyball), table tennis, volleyball, and, to my surprise, beach volleyball – although there’s no beach anywhere near this village. Sand was provided to simulate beach conditions. The schedule was dominated by football – I follow local and European usage in calling it football instead of soccer, since American football isn’t well known here.  Some of the “smaller” sports – table tennis and petanque – had competitions for only three or four days, but football was scheduled over all seven days.

Before coming to Thailand, I wasn’t familiar with sepak ta kraw or petanque.  It was fascinating to learn that petanque was introduced to Thailand in the 1970s by the mother of Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej (Rama IX), Queen Mother Srinagarindra (1900-1995). She had learned the game in Switzerland, where she lived from 1933 (after her husband’s death) until 1964, when she returned to Thailand to pursue social and environmental projects to improve the lives of people in the poorest parts of the country.  In case petanque is new to you too:  it is played with wooden or metal balls that are thrown to land as near as possible to a small target ball.  Points are awarded based on how close the ball is to the target ball. As you can see in the video, our students throw overhand in this game. Unfortunately, my video doesn’t show you where the ball landed, sorry!


Ta kraw is my new favorite sport to watch. It is a game of Southeast Asia, played in most if not all countries in this part of the world. Thailand and Malaysia are said to be the  “powerhouse countries” for this sport. In case it is new to you too: ta kraw is played with a lightweight rattan ball and a net similar to a volleyball net. There are three players per side. The only time you can touch the ball with your hands is when serving; otherwise you can hit it with your head, shoulder, knee, or foot. The object, of course, is to get it over the net in such a manner as to be difficult or impossible for the other team to return. The best players are able to stop the ball with their head and aim it either to another player or in a direction they can run to and kick it over the net and down (like spiking the ball in volleyball). I hope this brief video gives a clearer idea than my tortured description:


During Sport Week, I took a zillion pictures and videos, most of which were quickly trashed for poor quality or ho-hum content. For a few teachers, like me, whose major role was that of spectator, Sport Week got a bit tedious after several days, but the unwavering enthusiasm and support from coaches, referees, announcers and parents were spectacular. Even students whose teams didn’t win must have felt affirmed by so much positive energy. 

When classes resumed on November 12, what did we talk about?  -- Sport Week, of course, a great topic for English classes and a good conversation starter in any language.  My co-teacher and I used some of my pictures and videos to focus students’ attention on specific games. The 4th and 5th graders loved the videos, calling out names of players from our school or naming other schools whose uniforms they recognized. Their engagement with the topic reaffirmed our decision last term to throw out our textbooks, which are full of material about places our students have no concept of (such as shopping malls). Instead, we now develop our own materials based on what is all around us at school and in the village.

Sport Week concluded with speeches, ceremonies, announcements of awards, marching bands, and a parade – but I’ll spare you my video of the parade, at least for now. Maybe on a slow news day . . . .


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