Wai Kru — Wai Students — Wai haven’t I written in over a month?

Why, hello!  It’s been a while, and quite a lot has happened.  I’ve had difficulty as of late getting these first words down on the page.  But, here they are!  And the first hurdle is cleared.

The new school year is in full swing here at Sa-Nguan Ying.  The Thai academic year runs from May until the end of February/ beginning of March with a mid-year break in October, and in the case of my super-ambitions English Program children, portions of the interim periods are dedicated to extra classes, summer school, and competitions.  When I landed in Thailand in October, I arrived just in time to take on the 7th and 9th grade English classes with the start of the second semester.  Now, it’s 8 months later and I’m kicking off a new academic year with the sophomore, junior, and senior classes.

The school year is off to a strong start, and I find myself much more at ease in the classroom than I did in my first years of teaching.  I’ll go ahead and take a small share of the credit for that– my organization and time management, I think, have improved quite a lot– but the real delights in working at Sa-Nguan Ying are my wonderful, remarkably adorable students!  Their joy is truly infectious and, working with these students, I don’t think anyone could help but camouflage  right in in the Land of Smiles.

This past month, Sa-Nguan Ying students participated in Wai Kru celebrations.  The hands held in lotus, or prayer stance, known as the “wai,” is the Thai sign of greeting, thanks, and respect.  “Kru” is the word for teacher, and thus Wai Kru Day is Thailand’s national Teacher Appreciation Day. Teaching is a highly revered profession here in Thailand, and this holiday in which students show their respect and appreciation to their mentors is upheld in schools throughout the kingdom.  Students recite a wai kru chant asking for blessings from their teachers and present them with ornate flower arrangements– the blossoms traditionally symbolizing intelligence, perseverance, and respect.

The day before Wai Kru, the students in each class at Sa-Nguan Ying collaborated to create two flower arrangements, which representatives from the classes carried in procession during the next day’s ceremony.  They were presented in homage to some of the school’s most distinguished and long-serving professionals, then judged in categories of “beauty” and “creativity,” and displayed in the classrooms.

Pear, Aoy, View, and Boong representing their M2 (8th grade) classes

some of our M3 kids (9th grade)

Cee with the M6 “Angry Bird” arrangement

The Wai Kru ceremony was neat to see, but my real reason for writing today is to “wai” my super students, who make teaching at Sa-Nguan Ying such a pleasure everyday. Here’s why…

1) They’re super affectionate

Each morning I am greeted by so many bright and happy faces calling out “Hello teachaaaa!” from down the hall.  My Thai students are all a bunch of little love-bugs, and their love is unconditional.  The students love to give us hugs (refreshingly uncontroversial here), and every so often our days begin with tiny little Kaew with her squeaky little voice darting all around the office and distributing fragrant white flowers cupped in banana leaf vessels.  A deep respect for elders and especially their caretakers has been ingrained in them from the time they were wee babes, and though I don’t know that this unconditional love is always warranted, I do revel it.  Reading my students weekly journals, I once came upon an entry where the student wrote “Teacher is like second parent.”  I can’t speak for Thai student-teacher relationships everywhere, but I really do think it is a special bond that the students and teachers share here in the English Program.

2) They’re super expressive

These kids are super expressive, and the sound effects they make crack me up!  They have this way of saying “oooooOOOOOooooo,” in unison when they find something intriguing that is really quite uncanny.  I don’t know if it is a sixth sense, or if they all just have lightening-fast reaction times, but a nanosecond after one kid starts to “oo…” they all join in.  Believe me when I say that this choral “ooooOOOOoooo” is one of the cutest sounds known to man.  Put on a movie for these kids, and I’ve won myself 50 min of free entertainment without so much as glancing at the TV.  When my M4 (sophomore) kids completed their first unit test, we decided to take some time to chill out a bit by watching the movie “UP.”  I wish I had a sound byte of this for you. The room was filled with ooooOOOOoooo’s and Ahhhhhhh’s and Eiiiiiiaaaa’s and Ay’s!  Sometimes I thought they were going to jump right out of their chairs and lunge at the screen.  These kids are super enthusiastic, and it makes teaching them super fun.

3) They’re super not angsty

Okay, so I know that teenagers are teenagers and they’ve all got these rampaging hormones inside of them that make them momentarily insane for 3-7 years, but these kids are so happy! Then again, you can never be too sure in Thailand, because the culture discourages negative displays of emotion, but they sure seem happy.  And yes, there are some that are more well-adjusted than others, and the occasional “Eeyore” that sits alone and rarely cracks a smile, but the angsty-years just don’t seem to be as much of a rite of passage here.

4) They’re super singers

My students love to sing.  As a rule, Americans are exponentially more loud and boisterous than Thai folk… as a trend, obnoxiously so.  But in this country, when it comes time to set up the microphone and let out your inner-rock star, nobody’s putting Baby in a corner.  Uninhibited though they may be in so many ways, most people I know from home at least need some liquid courage before they’ll take to the karaoke stage, and that’s the brave ones. But in Thailand a party isn’t a party without karaoke, whether it is set up in a VIP room at a restaurant or hotel or out of the back of a pick-up truck.  My students love to sing, and some of their (and my!) favorite lessons are when I bring in an English song for them to listen to, filling in the missing words on their lyric sheets by applying our new grammar rules or vocabulary words.  After we listen, it’s time to stand up and sing, and most of them are not shy to belt out the lyrics!

5) They’re super sanook maak loi

That is, very fun to the extreme.  And pretty gung-ho about whatever they’re asked to do, so long as there is a steady influx of fun.  My Thai students have taught me to be less serious in the classroom.  I’ve learned that in teaching language learners, my number one goal should be to encourage them to enjoy English class.  If they feel comfortable in my class, they’ll feel more comfortable practicing their English and hopefully more inclined to use it outside of class.  Fun, or “sanook,” is a big part of Thai culture– go “sanook” or go home, one might say.  And these kids work so hard– attending extra classes after school hours and weekend enrichment courses as well… they get so excited when they get to let their hair down.  That is not to say that we play games everyday, but we’re all around a more happy and productive whole when the fun keeps flowing.   Of course, this is true of my students in the States, too, but somehow working with my Thai kids has really driven this lesson home for me.  The kids are gung-ho about anything with an element of sanook, and they are especially enthusiastic when there are Reeses Peanut Butter Cups at stake.  When these kids get competitive, man do they get competitive!

All in all, my experiences at Sa-Nguan Ying have been very positive.  It isn’t always easy to be working in the education system of such a foreign culture– quite a few of the practices that I’ve encountered here have felt counter-intuitive to me.  And it is the same in the States– there is so much “fluff” that can cloud your vision and make you lose sight of the main goal.  But whenever I’ve felt frustrated with the system, I have only to think about my wonderful, narak-ah kids and none of the rest matters.