Monthly report - April

Free Schools World Literacy-Thailand
Monthly Report - April.

April has been a relatively quite month being as it is in the middle of the years-end vacation period. We have still had all the evening and weekend schools operating albeit on a smaller scale, while some of the government classes have been closed for holidays. The official school year begins again in earnest around the 16th/17th May.

From the 12th -17th April the locals celebrate the Songkran Festival. This is the biggest festival on the Thai calendar and is somewhat analogous to our Christmas and New Year period. The school year ends about 3 weeks before Songkran and starts up again about one month later. During this period, particularly in rural area’s, children are expected to work, to significant contribute to the physical needs of the family or village. This is the major reason why some of the evening Free Schools have temporarily had some lower attendances.

Despite that, the schools have continued to run smoothly and effectively through April. Most schools still boasted above 20 students each day we visited them and each day these children are receiving a good, basic education in Thai language and mathematics. It is most encouraging when you look at the work of the students; while we don’t know what they are writing in Thai, we can see they are learning to write the language and the Mathematics that they are doing is often of an impressive level.

One thing that we would like to develop further is to facilitate more teacher-training. These ladies all have differing levels of experience and it is important to remember that they do not have the advantages of operating under the larger framework of an actual school. Apart from the financial support of FSWL and regular visits from us, they are completely on their own and left to their own devices. Considering this makes the job they do all the more remarkable!

In the first half of April we observed one of the teachers, Dee, having a bit of a rough time of it. She was no longer allowed to use the school room in the village and had to relocate to a barren, empty shed. On top of this Dee is one of the ladies with no real teacher experience and it seemed like she was not coping well with the transition. We then arranged, through Som Diau, to send Dee up to observe Aer teaching for an evening. Aer, like Dee, works in a Lahu village which is one of the oldest schools that Mark set up. As well as being a great teacher she is also a lovely person and we thought that she could be able to help Dee. As far as we know this was the first time that Free School teachers have met each other in this capacity. Since this evening of observation and training it seems like Dee has more confidence in her teaching and beter structure to her classes which is a really good outcome.

So we look forward to May and the resumption of all schools and a return to the new school year!

Warm Regards,

Ben & Jildou