How to spot a (possibly) bad teacher

I wrote this blog because there has been a lot of discussion about teachers lately and I know many students spend their hard earned money on English teachers, only to be let down.

Let's get straight to business. There is no definition of a "good" teacher, because personality plays such an important part for any educator. Good teachers can come in all shapes, sizes and personality types in my opinion.

However, while it's also impossible to give a strict exposition of a "bad" teacher - as opposed to an obviously awful teacher - there are certain things to look out for and I will describe them here.

But first, be very clear: there are very good teachers in Thailand. A whole damn lot of them. Some are fully qualified, some partly qualified, a few unqualified. Wherever you are in Siam, look in the right places, ask the right questions and you will find them. I make this point because part of me feels like a traitor whenever I criticise the state of foreign teachers in Thailand, but sadly it needs to be done. I could go on at length about the attitude and approach of bad teachers but it would not help.

What will help is this; my list of 'warning signs' for possibly bad teachers. Bear in mind this guide is aimed at adult students. While much of it would naturally apply to a teacher for any age group, some things will differ for obvious reasons. I also want to stress it's aimed at teachers of English language, which is not my own full time profession.

1) Look at appearance.

Not too much needs to be said here as Thais are hot on appearances anyway. While I know some very good but overworked teachers who can be a little scruffy, it's generally a warning sign. Shoes are a particular signal. Teachers are not rich of course, we don't strut around in Armani leather soles but a glance at a teacher's footwear can often be a surefire giveaway to their attitude. Which reminds me, I must buy some more polish ;-0

2) Ask a very basic grammar question e,g:"What's the difference between the past simple and past perfect?".

It doesn't matter if you want to study grammar or not, a teacher who cannot answer such a question is like a pilot who doesn't know where the cockpit is. During my stint as head teacher at a certain school, I had an applicant teacher fill out our test form. One of the instructions was: "Name all the tenses". He answered: "Past, now, tomorrow". He was not employed.

3) Ask him if he's ever taught TOEIC or IELTS.

If you get a puzzled look, he's probably not a very experienced teacher. That doesn't make him bad, of course.

4) Ask a general question that has an open answer e.g: "What do you like about teaching?"

This has two purposes and is especially important if you wish to be a private student. First, you can actually listen to an answer to an important question. Secondly, you can test how much you understand of your potential teacher when he speaks. If he talks at a native speaker's pace and for a long time, he is probably not a very good teacher. I've only ever met one exception to this rule in my career.

5) Ask if you can watch him teach a class.

I don't know many people who jump for joy at the thought of a stranger watching them work but a teacher should be understanding and readily accepting of this. If he makes excuses as to why you can't, he is almost certainly a poor teacher.

That's all. Some people may be wondering why I didn't tell everyone to ask after a teacher's qualifications. Well it's simple: the bad ones will lie. Unless you are prepared to take the time to check the qualifications for yourself, you will achieve little. Following these steps should be enough to let you take a guess at his qualifications anyway.

Finally, the question of money. I avoided this because I think it's wrong to equate a person's wealth with their value but it is generally true that a cheap teacher is not such a good teacher. Keep this in mind when you go to the "shopping mall schools". That's not to say you can't find good teachers at the cheaper places , certainly you can, but your chances lower with the cost. It's like any type of shopping, you might strike a bargain, but you have to look carefully. I'd go as far as to say this is the most frequent mistake made by Thai students; they hunt for the cheapest private teacher without asking themselves why that teacher is cheap.

As usual, I never claim to be a good teacher and I'm certainly no authority on pedagogy. I have students that rate me very highly, a couple that probably don't like me (Thai students rarely say such things to your face) and most are somewhere in-between. I have never broken any of the above laws except on days when I forget my tie or shoe polish. I do not teach English myself, I teach grade nine and ten (and, next semester, eleven) Social Studies. My colleague in this is an ordained man with two masters degrees so to keep up with him, I must be doing OK.

I would be happy to give advice on teaching or checking teachers of young children or teenagers if people ask, and I invite other teachers to add ideas to my list.

Teacher's diary: day four

It's the second day of exams today and I am proctoring grade nine class 'a', the same class in which one student cheerfully informed me that "Japan won the Vietnam War". Actually, I like this class but I really don't expect much from them in terms of exam scores, they have a reputation as being very weak and difficult to control.

Every class lesson and every exam should have both a farang and Thai teacher in the room. I am very lucky, as I have an excellent support teacher. Her name is Bun. While some Thai teachers try to help but make things worse, some couldn't care less about support and some purposely make things harder for foreign teachers, Bun is none of these. We have a similar style, stern but with plenty of love underneath it. However, as she is a lot older than me and of course speaks the native language, she can get her point across well.

These kids know me so I don't have to give much of a prep talk, I explain the rules they already know: write everything in English, nothing on your desk except question sheet, answer sheet and stationary, if you need help, put up your hand. No rocket science involved.

As they begin, I wander up and down the room as I always do. My mind inevitably wanders over various topics. I'm pleased about the exams this semester. Last semester, our exam sheet came back from 'head office' less than twenty four hours before the start of exams. Of course, nearly all questions submitted by our teachers were thrown out and those of the HO teachers used. In addition, the HO school, of course, know exactly what will be in the exam a month beforehand, we have less than a day and usually not a single class period in which we know the actual exam questions. This is no accident.

Of course, a good teacher has the students well verses in all the curriculum, but I defy any teacher to say they honestly wouldn't want to see the exam at least one class before it starts.

This time, thanks to some pressure being applied in the right places, we got a whole three days to preview the exam, take out incorrect (I mean literally incorrect such as: "Which of The Earth's moons...."etc.) questions and prepare the students. Most subjects seem to have quite a balanced set of questions for once, too.

My mind snaps back to the present as a student raises his hand. The students are permitted to ask for explanations of questions they don't understand. Naturally, most of them will craftily try to elicit an answer from the teacher during the discussion. I don't mind that, I'll happily drop a clue or two for students who try hard during class. Some teachers go overboard and basically answer half the questions for the students, I try to avoid that and take a more balanced approach.

My own exam is in the afternoon. Every teacher is permitted to do this before his or her own subject's exam. I don't expect it to help much with this class though.

I give the students a prep speech beforehand. We run over some aspect of human history. It bugs me slightly that however many times I explain that the idea humans originated from Africa about 200,000 years ago (yes I know there are other dates flying around, no smart assed corrections please! :-) ) is what scientists currently believe, the kids always take it as a solid fact. This is probably a cultural issue: students here are taught that you don't question what the teacher says, period.

The exam contains questions about Thai kings, the development of human beings and important events of the last one hundred years.

I won't know how well they did until I'm done marking but most of them seem to finish quickly. With the exception of one crafty student using a well placed face mirror to view his friend's sheet, I don't catch anyone cheating. Now it's time for the dull marking session to begin.

Teacher's Diary: day two

The first class is grade nine class 'D', the same class I taught the Vietnam War to yesterday. So yes, today the topic is the Asian financial crisis.

I want to get across the concept of 'national reserves' by drawing a pile of money in a safe on the whiteboard. Problem is, my drawings are utterly retarded. I get the class artist to draw the pile of money. Unfortunately, he's being a perfectionist about it and taking his time. I explain he just needs to do a quick sketch but he's being stubborn and I can't get the kids to focus on me while he's drawing. We're ten minutes into class and I haven't started.

Once we get going though, the kids do great, even better than yesterday. These lot are so bright, some of them can even name the Thai prime ministers during the crisis years. Teachers are usually quick enough to tell students when they are not performing, so I make a point of telling them how well they did today. The next class will be a very different affair though, that's for sure.

Class 'A' were almost unanimously voted the most, ahem, 'difficult' class last year and this year is not much better. In the early days it was open hostility between this class and I, but it's a little better now. I've come to realise that most of these students are not obnoxious - though a few are - they are just very weak. There are actually some bright personalities but they simply cannot focus. And so it is today, as I teach my same 'Vietnam War' lesson as I did with class 'D' yesterday. I spend more time telling them to listen than actually teaching. A measure of my success could be my final question when I ask: "Who won the Vietnam War?" and a student answers: "Japan".

One boy is purposely giving me a hard time by cracking pointless jokes as I go along. He's not being humorous, he's purposely being disruptive and showing off to his mates. I'm going to let it slide now but next week he'll be sitting alone and if he is still a problem, he'll sit outside.

Next period is a free. The Science teachers are excited about the 'big bang' experiment, and I've been meaning to sit down with a fellow Social Studies teacher - a devout Christian - and get into a debate on infinite regress, but that can wait.

I then have grade ten Social Science. In fact, the grade ten curriculum is called 'Social Science' but in reality it is 'Earth Science', a fact which I didn't know when I agreed to take the class. I'm no earth scientist, but I get by. On the plus side, grade ten students are generally far more mature than grade nine and the class size is smaller. Some of these guys have known me for a while now and mostly seem to like me, so the lessons are relaxed affairs. Today we are doing a case study on deforestation in Indonesia. I keep it basic as - despite their age - a lot of these students are very weak with their English. The oldest girl in the class is eighteen, the oldest boy is seventeen, both struggle to speak English. It's a shame because both are good natured students.

That's my classes done for the day, except for 'Drama club'. 'Drama Club' is one of those extra duties that teachers treat as anathema, but I got lucky with this one. My assigned class is a small group of the brightest girls in grade ten. We are preparing a spoof performance of 'Finding Nemo' and to encourage the use of English, we have introduced a system of fining the girls one baht every time they speak Thai. At the end of the year we will use the money to buy a large take away meal to celebrate the performance. So far we only have about thirty baht so either myself and the other teacher - a Hungarian who speaks better English than I do - will have to subsidise, or we will have to order the world's smallest pizza.

The class goes well as usual but the noise from next door is deafening. In fact, this is a real problem in the school. There is always noise from somewhere, be it drum beats, singing, shouting or a teacher with a microphone. It's difficult for any teacher but for teachers speaking a foreign language, it's especially tough.

Still, overall it's been a successful day - two hits, one 'so so' and one miss. Tomorrow I'll aim for three 'hits'.

Teacher's Diary

This diary is inspired by the Teacher's Diary that appeared in one of my favourite magazines, Private Eye.

I thought it would be interesting to see what differences and similarities exist in 'day to day' work for teachers in the UK and Thailand.

I'll try this for a week or so and see how it turns out. I immediately wish to state that I enjoy my work and life in Thailand very much and teaching is a positive and rewarding job at many times. As this diary is focusing on everyday events, the grumbles and moans that will no doubt be apparent don't represent my overall mood at work, which, again, is very positive.


Today, Weds 9th September

This is my quietest day as I have only two periods. The first is a reading and writing class in grade eight. This class causes a lot of problems for other teachers yet always seems to work fine with me as long as I'm quite stern with them. Perhaps it's because two of the nosiest students in the class seem to have taken a shine to me. It's often the case that if the most confident students are on your side, the rest of the class will come round.

Today though, these guys - all aged from twelve to fourteen - are deathly quiet. Quieter than I've ever known them. I pre-teach some vocabulary such as "physical therapy" and "pressure". I'm not on red hot form myself but this is still pretty easy stuff and they seem lost. I get into compound nouns and assign some textbook questions which they finish easily but still there is the unnatural silence. Still, they learned something. At the end of class the teacher in next classroom reports that his kids were also bizarrely silent. It's possible that grade eight had a mass scolding from one of the senior teachers in the morning.

In my free period I sit in the staff room and read. Kim - our upper grades PE teacher - comes in with a student who is clearly in trouble. Kim hands the student over to the year head and informs her that the student called him a "fat idiot". There is a long discussion between student and year head in Thai by which I can make out the student is protesting his innocence, but I don't believe him. The student is question is actually a boy who wears make up and a bra to school. Kim feels the student gets away with a lot of things because he is this way, and I think he may have a point.

Next period is also free. I try to debate with the Science teacher about alternative fuels. He swears blind that nuclear power is not an option because we only have enough uranium for one hundred years. I dispute this, but he is having none of it.

My boss interrupts to hand me a copy of the grade nine Social Studies exam paper that students are set to take in two weeks. Our school is actually a sub-branch of a bigger school (from now on I'll call it the 'head school'). All our teachers must write exam papers for every subject and then send them to 'head school', who then decide how many of our questions to use and how many of their own to use. The official policy is: "they decide which is better, theirs or ours". Anybody who works in Thailand knows what this statement really means.

Naturally the exam is about ninety percent head school's, and ten percent mine. This wouldn't be so bad if the Social Studies teacher at head school could write in English, but instead I have questions like: "Which is the first king that is first Chakri Dynasty?" and "What is the worst demonstration event occurred in 1992?". Complaining is futile, we are not even allowed to speak to our peers at head school. I count a total of twenty one errors in the exam, then I hand it back.

Period four is grade nine Social Studies. This class is one of my favourites. They take a while to settle down but when they do, they work well. Today we are studying the Vietnam War. It's a good lesson because the students grasp the basic concepts of what happened and the anecdotes of the Thai military in the jungle quite well. This group is good at English, so they understand the concepts when I explain them. Some of the other classes have bright students but with poor English skills, which makes it very hard to inspire an interest in history. The lesson goes well but next week I have to explain the Asian Financial Crises, which will be harder to make interesting.

And so my day is done. Tomorrow is a longer day though.

The Thai Culture Course (How to scam, exploit and demoralise foreign teachers)

I was away from work when the news was delivered, but of course I was already aware of all the rumours. Still, I told everyone: "This is Thailand, don't listen to rumours, believe things when they happen".

But when I received the phone call telling me: " The Teachers Council of Thailand has decided all foreign teachers are required to attend a course in Thai culture, and you will pay for it yourself", I knew I was wrong this time.

Naturally, the news went down like a lead balloon amongst my teaching colleagues. I think the administration at our school knew that, which is why they broke further details into little pieces and fed us day by day rather than in one big hit. The details kept on coming.....the course is eleven thousand bhat, you won't get your work permit renewed if you don't attend, and you'll be doing the course in your free time.


Like everyone else, I protested. I have lived and worked in Thailand for nearly five years. I have a Thai wife and son, I am a member of the Tourist Police and I own property here, surely I must be exempt from the course? Other teachers raised similar protests.

The responding message was delivered in a Thai style but it was clear: shut up and take the course (PDF link). We (The Teachers Council) don't care how long you've lived here. We don't care what qualifications you have. Hell, we don't care if you can speak fluent Thai, drive a tuk tuk, eat som tam and sing Bird Tongchai all at the same time. You will come to the Thai culture course, you will do so in your free time, and you will pay for the privilege. You don't like it? Get out of Thailand.

Oh and by the way, that thousand bhat you paid for your teacher's licence two months ago is now invalid. No refunds.

We tried to keep our spirits up. We planned some pranks and organised a social event after the course. After all, at least our employer said we could wear what we liked. Or at least they did until three days later, when the announcement came: "Actually a phu yai is attending the course so everyone must be dressed in business atire". Like my colleagues up and down the nation, I gave up protesting and accepted the inevitable. I would miss two days of weekend work, take the darn course and forget about it. At least my school was good enough to cover some of the cost.

Day one of the course began with the typical smiles and greetings. The venue laid on a nice little breakfast pack for each of us and well wishers waited at the doors to greet us with: "Hello, thank you for coming!". (Like we had a f***ing choice!)

Included in the impressive bundle of worthless documents we were handed was a collection of CV's for those who would be speaking in the course. It was certainly impressive. Today's speakers included two lecturers from a well known university, tomorrow featured a Thai graduate from Harvard. At least these guys should be red-hot teachers.

So first up on the agenda for day one was "Thai language". Now, I must confess I was feeling optimistic for this. My spoken Thai is below par and I cannot read Thai atall. At least I might get something useful out of this morning.

On comes the lecturer, but her assistant takes the microphone, greets us in Thai and then announces "This is (professor's name) but I will be doing the speaking today". Our "professor of languages" is obviously so unsure of her English that she doesn't want to speak.

The course begins, the first few minutes goes quite well as we run through the different Thai tones and learn how they are expressed in written form. I desperately try to take in and store this complex information. We are fifteen minutes into the class.

The teacher (or rather her assistant) moves on to consonants. We orally repeat every consonant (yes, every last one) three times each. My mind is swimming.

Then we move on to "special cases" (I forget the exact classification). We go over each and every one of them, too. Three times each. My head is hurting. We have now gone at least ten times over the daily quota of new information for the adult language student.

But the professor is far from done. She moves on to different letters of the Thai alphabet that produce the same sounds. You guessed it, we have to repeat them three times each. My spirit is broken, I am prepared to tell my captors any secrets they want to make this torture stop as I mindlessly repeat the alien sounds. I have a magazine in my bag, but all the while our boss is walking up and down the hall, checking we are obedient.

For the next hour I fix my eyes on the statue of the Virgin Mary at the end of the hall, reminding myself that this isn't really Hell. Mary finally answers my prayers an hour later as we break for lunch. That was the end of the language session. We had "learned" the entire Thai alphabet and all its idiosyncrasies in one morning.

The afternoon was a little easier. We were handed a leaflet published by the TAT (yes the Tourist board, not the Teacher's board) about Thai food. We had a seminar on Thai cooking, its history and ingredients. I was missing my Saturday job (which helps to pay my many bills) to learn about the ingredients of pad thai. How was this going to make me a better teacher?

Day one ended at four PM. Too deflated to go out, I went home and dreamed of halls full of zombies, repeating letters from the Thai alphabet.

Day two could only get better. Our lecturer (the Harvard grad) was going to use this extortion of our money and time by the Teacher's Council to teach us "professional ethics". A bit like Ronald McDonald teaching healthy eating, I guess.

In fact our lecturer was a nice guy, though I noticed on his CV he was working for the Education Ministry which struck me as a coincidence (we can only guess how much these lecturers were being paid). We started off by being introduced to the Council's code of ethics, highlights of which included "Do not form mafia style groups in school" and "Do not gossip".

But the bombshell was about to come. We were about to be introduced to the new qualification requirements of the teaching council. To the lecturer's credit, he did it wisely. He broke the news ambiguously and slowly so it took us a while to work out was happening, allowing the shock to dissipate.

We were told we had two years to pass a one year course. The course would be done in our free time and cost at least sixty thousand bhat. The only other option was to pass four teaching exams, at two thousand bhat each. The only problem was, from the first batch of people that took the exams, less than five percent had passed.

"This is the rule for all teachers"; said our lecturer, "The Thai teachers must do the same". He neglected to mention how much the Thai teachers had to pay. And what was this one year course? A PGCE? A master's degree? No, it was brand new course dreamt up by the TCT and totally unheard of outside the nation.

I sat in disbelief. As we broke for lunch, my colleague held a piece of paper up to my face. It simply said: "BS".

The afternoon was actually quite interesting, we were given some case studies about ethics and had to offer our own opinions. Still, many people found it hard to concentrate. That was all for day two, our weekend was over, and we had one day still to go.

So after another week at work (guess what the main topic of conversation was?) it was time for the final day, and many of us predicted it would be the worst: Thai dance and music.

Yup, you guessed it, they made us dance. They made all of us wear long golden fingernails and dance around the hall whilst singing the 'Loy Khatong' song. If I were on a drunken night out with Thai friends, or if I were at least making a fool of myself by choice, I would have laughed. But as I looked around the hall during our dance, I realised this folly was part of the plan. By getting us to dance around and act stupid, these people wanted us to forget we were being scammed. In a building with at least two hundred people paying eleven thousand bhat each to take a compulsory course to improve us as teachers, we were dancing around in fake fingernails. It was truly surreal.

As three o'clock came and the dancing stopped, my colleague turned to me and said: "Now they are done humiliating us, they're going to let us go home". And they did, after mentioning that the certificates we had been promised - and which were the entire point of the course - were not actually ready yet, and they couldn't say when they would be available. Thanks and goodbye. I went home feeling violated.

The next week at work more news came out. It seems highly likely that the four exams we had been told about were .....ahem...."purposely difficult" to the point where it seems that the only real "choice" is to take the 60k+ course. Yes, Thai teachers had to do the same course, but at a tiny fraction of the price we were given. Thailand's foreign teachers are in a fix.

Now, I want to make something very clear. I've said before many times that Thailand's foreign teachers are, on the whole, a very imperfect bunch. Any attempt to improve them is most welcome and if I were given a test of my teaching ability and knowledge, I would tackle it with relish.

But I hope I've made clear that I am certain this latest set of events has nothing whatsoever to do with improving foreign teachers. The way the news was broken to us and the incredibly quick set of agreements that have been made between the Teacher's Council and various educational institutions were not hard to figure out. The staff involved in the courses, the dual pricing system and the fact that every teacher had to pay for his/her licence only to have it invalidated without refund by the new rules told its own tale. The ninety five percent failure rate of foreign teachers in the four new exams - in a nation where every student in my school passed a university entrance exam (even the students who cannot understand "Good morning, how are you?") after paying the exam fee - fills me with resentment.

If this was about improving teachers, give us a break. Allow us to take the course of our choice, charge us the same prices as the Thai teachers, don't insult our intelligence with compulsory courses in dancing, take experience and prior qualifications into account, make the exams fair so more than two people out of seventy can pass them and refund the money that every teachers paid for their licence about one month before the new requirements were announced by the same people.

I have to pay tribute to the Filipino teachers. They are paid less than half of the salary we get and nearly all of them send it home to their family in the Philippines as soon as they get it. If the new "requirements" were a kick in the teeth for us, it was a bombshell for them. Yet they handled the course and the further shocks far better than we did, and unlike us Englishmen, they spent a damn site less time complaining about it!

Still, the morale of the teachers has been hit hard and those of us with families are in a very tough position. We either allow ourselves to be blackmailed or we leave.

That said, I can't see how this will work out for the Teacher's Council. There is no doubt that a huge proportion of teachers will leave rather than be pushed into taking the new course and who will replace them? Better qualified teachers? Why would they want to pay for a totally unrecognised course to work in Thailand when other countries will pay them? Travellers and loose cannons? Not likely, and the few that do will be unqualified and untrustworthy.

The only people that are going to feel the squeeze are those with roots here. Most if us work weekends to help with those extra bills and forcing us to give up our free time is impossible.


My message to the Teacher's Council is this: you've had your little money spinner with the "Culture" course, but don't push your luck too far. This game of "Who needs who?" works both ways. We will allow you to toy with us to a point because we love Thailand and want to stay, but as much as you hate to admit it, you need us too. If you insult our intelligence and continually try to milk us like this, it might be you that ends up losing face, families that suffer and the student youth of Thailand that pays the cost of your greed.

The class from Heaven and the class(es) from Hell

I really thought that after nearly four years of teaching in the Land Of Smiles (LOS) I'd dealt with it all. I thought that'd I faced up to the roughest, survived the dullest and more or less quenched the rowdiest of classes.

The last two months have proved me wrong. I normally don't worry about hostile classes (which are nearly always teenage classes by definition) in fact I take it very lightheartedly and enjoy the challenge of winning them round. But for once, it's gotten me a little annoyed. For this term, I've found the best and the worst classes I've ever known.

The worst isn't actually a class, it's an entire grade. My weekday job is in a well known bilingual school. The school is effectively private and charges parents a hefty fee by Thai standards. As such, most of the kids are from upper middle class families and a fair sized portion of them are spoilt. That wasn't such a problem last year when I was teaching grade five. Most of the kids there were still, well, just kids. You get your good ones and your difficult ones. This year though it's grade nine - that means fourteen and fifteen year olds.

Now I'm not so old that I've forgotten what it's like to be a teenager at school and I can still relate to the kids pretty well - that has helped me in my career - but there comes a time when you have to stop making excuses for teenagers and get them squared up.

This year I'm teaching social studies. I was delighted to do this because it's a subject I love and I really thought I could bring it to life. By inducing the power plays of politics and the twists of the legal system I really thought I'd spice it up for the kids who thought learning jurisprudence in a foreign language would suck.

It turns out I was overoptimistic, at least for now. Five weeks into term, I've won over one of the classes but the other three are hopeless. Never before in my career have I come across students that will continue to do homework right in front of me after four requests to stop, who will refuse across the board - all thirty five of them - to answer questions to something they learned and wrote about the previous day, who curse teachers simply for asking if they are OK, shout and scream at me and each other out of the blue and generally have a totally negative and unco-operative attitude.

The fact that they speak English very well just exacerbates the aggitation on both sides, since they can't pretend they don't understand. They are not all like this of course - every difficult class always has some good kids and vice versa - but it's a huge majority in some cases.

Like I said, I've dealt with teenagers in bigger size classes before and more often than not, I've won them round. I once wrote about a class of forty five girls I taught every day for three years. On my last day of teaching them, every single student gave me a signed picture and a gift. Many of them cried and I nearly did myself. (I still carry their photos with me in my work bag, it gives me a boost to look through them during times like this). But that was government school students, now I'm dealing with spoilt, moody teenagers from rich families and it's an even bigger challenge.

I have a general system of tactics for difficult teenage classes. Plan A is simply to tolerate a lot and go easy with them for a few days. Plan B is to strike a good rapport and reward good work with games and 'fun' lessons. If that still fails, plan C is to firm up, give them a few speeches reminding them who's boss and who they shouldn't agitate if they want to enjoy the rest of the year and 'final resort' Plan D is simply to put the smack down. That means deducting points from exams, escorting offenders to the principal, shouting them down if they talk too much and so on. Basically, rule by force.

I'm now well down the line in plan C and entering plan D. I don't like doing it, in fact I hate it. It's not me and although I'm thick skinned, I don't really like to have thirty five hostile faces looking at me when I walk through the door to teach a subject I love. But at least two of my current classes have given me no choice. After trying to make the classes fun with games and mock silly elections and such, there was no improvement from them. I've dropped a few "Look , we can work together and have fun and get on or you can keep on with your big sulk and I'll still be here, and you'll just get lower tests scores and fewer activities" type speeches to them. These talks worked with nearly every other class I've taught and can often turn the tables, simply because what I say is true and fair. Not this time though.

I made my final decision to toughen up after I asked a class to close their notebooks at the end of a lesson. Most kids did , a few didn't. I asked them again three more times and still one girl - who was glaring at me - didn't. I asked her personally, and got the same glare. I walked to her desk and asked her up close. Never stopping her glare, she lifted up her book to my face, turned it over and dropped it on the desk in front of her. Basically an unspoken "fuck you" to the teacher who dared to ask her to close her book.

So it's time for rule by force. Every kid in the class now has full exam marks, but loses some of them every time they refuse to work or didn't make the effort. There's no end of lesson games, homework for other lessons is removed from kids who try to do it in my class and talkative students sit alone every lesson (they really hate that one). I don't like being a bastard but if it comes down to that or being a doormat in an out of control class, I'll take the former. When the kids realise why I'm doing what I do (I frequently remind them, it's only fair) and make the effort to change, I'll go back to being myself again.


I don't give up easy. Like I said, I've turned classes completely around before and I'm determined to do it again. If I can manage it with this lot, I'll be forever sure that I'm a good teacher.

But every "down day" in teaching usually has an opposite,and that opposite is my Saturday afternoon class. The class from heaven. (If you're reading this Carla, or Joe, it's the same class you both used to teach) Seven girls and one boy, all about twelve years old. They work, they listen, they try and they love to play games. It's so rare to get kids that like to play and learn, and even when they do, they usually want to spend more time playing, that's all part and parcel of being a kid! Not this class though, they love to play games but as soon as it's over, they'll open their text books and get cracking once again.

I make a point of telling them how great they are, and the feeling seems mutual. Today , when I returned to the room after coffee break, the kids had drawn a caricature of me on the board and written underneath: "Mr.Greg is the best teacher in the world".

I'm not sure if that statement is true, but it was a damn sight nicer than the reception I get from my teenage friends at the moment.

Still, that's teaching for you!

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My good friend Sitthichai Pookaiyaudom is hosting a meeting at the Bangkok Foreign Correspondants club on Tuesday evening. Guess who is attending the press conference?????

I might just have an interesting blog to write next week.

Thai government schools

So you've decided that a holiday in Thailand was not enough. You like it so much you want to stay long term. You know people who work out here as English teachers, and they've told you it's easy. You've got your paperwork, you've got a lover waiting for you and you're all set to start work. What should you expect?

The first thing to remember is that many who say English teaching is easy are wrong. What they mean is, it's easy to get way with a lot. There are many "teachers" out here that I would not let near my son. Bear in mind that there's a difference between getting by and doing a job properly.

But of course a big part of your happiness and success will lie with your choice of employer and how they treat you. That in turn will depend on the type of institution that employs you. I've written before about the types of schools so I'll just re-cap here. Private schools are the educational equivalent of fast food chains. They have a high staff turn over, provide immediate - but often un-nutritious and unhelpful - gratification to the student and are easy to find.

International schools are different. I've never worked in one but I've given private tuition to many international students. The schools seem to be high on facilities, high on teacher discipline and meticulous on testing. However, they still contain some of the negative Thai educational traits which I will touch on later.

Government schools are a challenge. I worked in one for three years, three of the best years of my life yet the same three years that allowed me to witness shocking events. When I first entered the school, I had delusions. I believed that teachers would conduct themselves with the decorum their position afforded. I believed that teachers had students' needs at heart. I believed most teachers liked their job.

What I discovered was different.

Now, I about to say some very harsh comments about Thai government schools. I want to stress this is my own humble opinion based on experience. My harshness is based on dissapointment that students are not given the education that the wonderful young people of Thailand deserve. Of course, not all teachers are like those I am about to describe. I've meet some teachers in government schools whom I greatly admire and aspire to copy , what's more there are many who enjoy foreign teachers with new methods and ideas and welcome us. Sadly, these are the exceptions that prove the rule.

Most government English teachers cannot speak English. That is a fact. They are victims of a vicious cycle. They have been bought up to learn grammar over communication, and with an average age of about fifty they cannot change. So, fourteen year old students who cannot say "Hello, how are you?" will be passed a broadsheet newspaper and told to underline noun phrases (a group of words acting as a noun, e.g. The Bank of England) and transitive verbs (verbs that must take an object). Thus, students become proficient at grammar points and useless a holding a basic conversation.

Discipline is also rigorously enforced. In my old blog I told the story of teachers on "gate duty". 'Gate duty' is when teachers stand at the front of the school gates, ostensibly to welcome students. In reality, teachers will check each student to make sure his or her hair is not one centimetre over limit or their socks too dirty. I once saw a student get caned for having dirty socks. The girl was from a poor family - remember Thailand is still a developing country - and conducted herself politely as she apologised to the teacher. The teacher ignored the apology and hit her three times. After the student left the room, the teacher told her colleagues in Thai "I don't like her". She had used the dirty socks as an excuse to use violence on the student.

If that sounds shocking or at least very unprofessional to you, it was an everyday occurrence to me. The same teacher who hit this girl hated work, she would regularly arrive in class at least half way through her lessons and could not speak English. She would teach the entire lesson in Thai.

Once again, if that surprises you , you have never worked in a government school in Thailand.

The Thai smile is conspicuous by its absence in government schools. That's not to say you won't get smiles. Students will often flash a genuine smile at a teacher and that can be a great little lift. However, teachers often use a smile as camouflage. I've seen a teacher smile as she fails a student she doesn't like, or hits a pupil that arrived two minutes late. Many older teachers dislike their foreign counterparts. Old fashioned values rule in these institutions, including the idea that age begets rank. As most farang teachers are younger than their Thai colleagues, they are considered lower. A cynic like me would dare to suggest that older teachers sometimes feel threatened by our presence.

Administration in most of these places is non existent. I would often find out about meetings, holidays and cancellations from students.

Students don't like the system any more than we do, but they are powerless. Government schools are hellbent on enforcing rank and authority. Critical thinking or even questioning is unwelcome. Students have been punished heavily for asking the teacher a question the teacher couldn't answer.

So are these places a hell for foreign teachers? No.

One thing that makes these places worthwhile are the students. Government schools tend to offer very large classes with a great mix of personalities and types. Often the foreign teacher is a novelty for these students and they can make you feel like a celebrity, at least at first! Such large classes can be very challenging to bring under control, especially for inexperienced teachers. The belief that the foreign teacher is an hour of fun is - how can I put this? - not discouraged by some local teachers and this can make life difficult. Often a stern line of control is necessary at first. This can lead to some decent leaning and subsequently good rapport.

Anyone who knows me knows that I grew very close to my main class during my three years at government school. I'm still in touch with many of them now. Although it was difficult working with an antiquated and unwelcoming institution, the magic of seeing fifty smiling young faces each day, and the satisfaction of watching them grow in knowledge and confidence made it all worthwhile. Such experiences can be rarer at the other types of school, and I'm blessed to have received it.

It's no mistake that I missed bilingual schools out in this report. Watch this space.

Thanks to Sriwittayapaknam School for letting me use some of the pictures in this blog. They seem to be a big cut above many other government schools.