Montly report August

Free Schools World Literacy (Thailand)

Monthly Report August 2007

It is fair to say that August has been an eventful month for the project here in Thailand. During this time we have conducted the first teacher training culminating in the event that took place at Fang government school on Saturday 1st September. Also this month things have been set in motion to ensure that the Mirror Foundation will take over management of the project during the next few months.

We have been anticipating the idea of bringing all the teachers together for training since we first arrived here in March. It was clear that many of the teachers were lacking some basic skills and knowledge. So it was with great excitement that we appointed Mr Chai, a government teacher from neighbouring Mae Sai, to the role of Teacher Trainer. We had meet Chai several times at the English camps and found him to be a great teacher and communicator and importantly his English is excellent.

So the training process began during August when, over the course of 3 evenings, we brought Chai to each of the evening/village FreeSchools to meet the teachers and observe them in action in the classroom. From this Jildou and Chai then worked to create a plan of action for the training. For the purpose of offering background knowledge and for the benefit of future teacher trainings I have attached Jildou’s Programme outline and the Training schedule to the email which caries this report.

The training on Saturday was a great success. It was the first time that the teachers had ever been gathered together. We were missing only 2 teachers due to other learning commitments. Fortunately they were Chantana and Poy, - two very capable teachers. The teachers all enjoyed meeting each other and while the training programme was packed there was also some time for getting to know each other. We feel a lot was achieved through this coming together.

This week Chai will begin the follow up visits. These will be longer, more intensive sessions with the teachers during class to help them implement the classroom techniques that have been learned at the training. Finally we will conclude the programme in six weeks when in the middle of October we will again bring the teachers together for a wrap us session. This will focus more specifically on teaching Thai as a second language and we hope it will be an opportunity for the teachers to be introduced to representatives of the Mirror Foundation.


We were first introduced to the work of the Mirror Foundation (www.mirrorartgroup.org) through Brennan O’connor, a photo journalist who has been donating his professional services to both organisations in Thailand. The relationship developed when Sue Tennant visited their base near Chiang Rai and meet with Paul Garrioch, an Australian volunteer. The Mirror Foundation have been working with Hill Tribe people in this region for 10 years and are highly suitable to run and manage the local Free Schools project. The schools will be managed by a Thai national and Paul will be responsible for the relationship to the Canadian and Australian organisations. The hand over will begin in October, though Jildou and I will remain in the area for some months after that so we can expect a smooth and supportive transition.

Around the schools the only change is that teacher Boom is no longer with us. Boom was teaching at Huay Patchu which was another village that had 100% attendance at the local government school. It is also a school where numbers have been low for months despite meetings we had with the village Chief. Boom has a day job at a government school so this was not her only source of income and she is understanding of the reasons why this school is not continuing. We encouraged Boom to find another village or orange farm where many children do not attend school but she was unable to do so. In the meantime we will keep looking on her behalf.

This is indicative of the change here this year since the Thai government decreed education for all, with or without Thai I.D cards. It is harder to find whole villages where children do not go to school and the future direction of the project here may do better to focus on Government school scholarships for the severely disadvantaged than expanding the village classrooms.