"Under Conditions of Hardship if Necessary"

“Under conditions of hardship if necessary”

When the Peace Corps was created in 1961, JFK famously asked Americans to serve where they were asked to go, “under conditions of hardship if necessary.”  That phrase probably evokes images of physical hardships such as walking long distances to get water or chopping wood before you can cook dinner. Peace Corps Thailand is sometimes half-seriously called “the posh corps” because Thailand is a relatively developed country where even a rural upcountry village like mine has electricity and running water almost all the time. Just in case, though, most everyone in the village has large water storage tanks like the one in the picture below, for the possibility of prolonged drought.

I think most PCVs (Peace Corps Volunteers) in my group would agree that the inconveniences we deal with at our sites don’t rise to the level of hardship – which is not to say that nothing is hard. Much that we take for granted in America – administrative support for teachers, classrooms with doors and windows that close, some level of instructional technology (copy machines, projectors, computers, etc.) – is absent or in short supply at rural Thai schools. For class handouts and tests, most teachers use their own computers and printers. Our classrooms, like our houses, must be swept twice a day to keep dust and dirt under control. Some classrooms have computers and projectors, like the one below:

The picture above was taken on a Wednesday, the day students wear their Scout uniforms. The picture below shows Level 4 students in their assigned room, which is typical of the classrooms for the primary grades (the uniforms tell us this picture was taken on a Tuesday). 

The next picture is the English classroom for Mattayom students (=junior high and high school).  Nobody thinks twice about sitting on the floor.  Students seem to use the computers at the back of the room mostly for Facebook, but there is a projector for teacher use as well. 

Conditions that make teaching a challenge include noise, teaching load, and class cancellations. Our school has quite a bit more noise than I remember from American schools – children yelling outside or reciting at the top of their lungs in the next room, workers using saws, drills, or weed-whackers right outside the classroom, loudspeaker announcements, and more. You get used to most of these after a few weeks or months – up to a point. Occasionally, when the din is simply too great, I tell the students to do their math homework until the noise dies down again.

Teaching loads vary somewhat by school. PCVs don’t have sole responsibility for classes, but co-teach with one or more Thai teachers.  This term, there are about 130 students total in the six classes (4 different levels, 18 hours a week) that I co-teach with two English teachers – which seems like a lot to me, spoiled college teacher that I am, but probably looks familiar to many teachers – and is the envy of fellow PCVs with classes of 30 or 40. PCVs learn to cope with this too – as one philosophically said, “There’s not that much difference between 30 and 40.”

The workload is much higher for the Thai teachers than for us. All the Thai teachers I’ve met have significant responsibilities besides teaching and homeroom. A few examples are record-keeping (not just their own grades, but various official reports that must be submitted up the educational hierarchy); administrative duties such as staffing the school’s savings bank or the school store; helping serve lunch in the cafeteria; preparing the schedule of classes; serving as registrar; coordinating set-up, tear-down, and hospitality for events. Most teachers are advisors to student clubs; they also coach sports and groom students for academic competitions—a time-consuming activity that will get its own post eventually.  As a PCV, I have only one regular non-teaching assignment: to be at the school gate by 7:30am each Monday to greet students in English as they arrive.

Teaching at a rural Thai school makes you rethink your ideas about what is essential for teaching and learning. I can’t speak for others, but for me, the hardest thing has been to accept the fact that lost instructional time is just lost – and no one seems concerned about it. Schedules are unpredictable. We often lose days or parts of days for events announced at the last minute. We face classes with half or more of the students absent for participation in an approved activity (sports, dance, band, academic competitions, festivals, special computer training, etc.). We are expected to let these students make up the missed work, but good luck finding a time to do it.

Besides the lack of a plan for making up lost class time, there are no substitute teachers when someone is absent for illness, to take care of family business, or to attend a conference. The teacher is expected to leave an assignment for students to complete in her/his absence. The Thai teachers are used to all this and just seem to roll with it. I get frustrated because, unlike adapting to “old” technology or larger classes or dusty classrooms or even excessive noise, lost class periods make it much harder to teach effectively. Sometimes, after not seeing students for a week, the previous lesson is a hazy memory at best and the only option is to reteach.

What do these practices say about school priorities? I think that school directors and the education ministry want students to have a rich co-curricular experience – certainly a worthy goal – and expect flexibility in the academic curriculum in order to accomplish it.  And actually, I think it’s great that the arts – dance and music – are treated the same as sports, for example, and that students are encouraged to take more advanced computer classes than our school can offer. Still, the situation reminds me of a pizza that began with a few ingredients – let’s say tomato sauce, cheese, sausage, and mushrooms – and then other ingredients were added – pepperoni, onions, ham, pineapple, green peppers, artichokes, chicken, anchovies, and more – until the crust could no longer support the toppings. I think the crust of the pizza – our school’s academic curriculum – is being stretched too thin. Trying to hold my part of it together under these conditions is, to me, the hardship of teaching in rural Thailand.