A Feminist in Thailand

Feminism is becoming more widespread as each day goes by. Social media sites such as Tumblr and hashtags on Twitter influence women and young girls daily. More and more celebrities like Emma Watson and Beyonce are calling out for change and raising awareness for the cause.

One day I hope western countries will achieve gender equality and that day seems to be getting closer and closer. But for those countries which are a little behind, it is worryingly so close and yet so far.

I am a TEFL teacher in Thailand and I see gender inequality starting in the classrooms at young ages. Which is precisely where feminist efforts should start. Adults should be encouraging young girls and boys to act however they want to act. If a boy wants to play with Barbies, he shouldn’t be mocked. If a girl wants to play with toy cars she shouldn’t be discouraged. But unfortunately, in my own class, boys have openly been laughed at by Thai teachers for drawing long hair or dresses on themselves in self portraits. In a country where cross dressing is largely excepted it’s confusing why it’s only the young girls who strive to be white, pretty and thin. The pressure that girls have to conform to this ideal of beauty seems to me, greater than western girls have it.

Children are taught gender roles from such an early age. I am expected to teach the role of the mother and father in the Health book.

Which only talks about heterosexual couples and has no mention of any other sexuality. The book even talks about how girls grow up to be women and men grow up to be men. So where do all these lady boys come from?

I have tried to neutralise the genders of professions and give examples of male nurses and female doctors and avoid the word housewife in the English book. I think it is working, because one of my students corrected me when I was asking where the picture of the Doctor was in her work. She told me ‘Doctor can be girl’. I was so proud.

I will not look at the world through rose tinted glasses just because I am an expat/ tourist. There needs to be a significant change in the Thai philosophy. But for now, I will trudge on trying to change my classes view of gender. Here’s hoping there are some feminists in the making in my class.

Here’s the latest on Emma Watson’s contribution to the feminist cause.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/11112411/Emma-Watson-Being-a-feminist-doesnt-make-me-man-hating.html

Teaching in Thailand so far

Well my first three months of teaching have been safe to say pretty tiring. I have had countless naps.

I think most will agree that the best way to train a teacher is to throw them into the deep end. By that I mean teaching English as a foriegn language abroad. Of course a bit of teacher training would help too but nothing can compare to the hands on experience that is TEFL.

Teaching such a low grade has been difficult as they cannot speak any English and they don’t understand me. This is especially irritating when a collegue who teaches just one grade above has great conversations with their students and thier classes are well behaved. Still, I am determined to get my students to this level of English.
My first week was a week of games and getting to know the abilities of my P1 class (6 year olds). This was a good icebreaker, although this week, I now know, should have been a week for laying down the law.

Teaching in my Thai school means that I share my class with a Homeroom teacher, Science, Music and Scouts teachers and a Thai assistant/ translator. The Thai assistant is always with the children and is the one to discipline them. Unfortunately, this means painful punishments of slapping them on the hands with rulers which I am still not okay with. Thai students see foriegn teachers as fun and someone they can have a bit of a laugh with and they automatically love you. This is great but it means they don’t respect you and certainly don’t fear you as much as the Thai teachers. So slowly I am implementing rules and also playing games and acting silly so they will both love me and respect me… Hopefully.

I teach a range of subjects from Health to Computers so that the students are completely imersed in English language. However, my Thai assistant has to translate most of what I say which always gets me thinking ‘why am I actually here?’. The reason is because my school is ‘world class standard’ so they say and they like to show off with lots of foriegn teachers. Despite the fakeness of the school and the countless photo opportunities I will smile and nod (because that’s what you do in Thailand) and focus on improving my teaching.

With stresses of classroom management, teaching sensitive subject matters (Health) and parents watching your every move. Literally, there is an online forum where the parents talk about you and pictures are uploaded of you teaching every other second. Nothing can bring me down because the cuteness of my kids will always without fail lift my spirits.

Just look how cute they are.

With a possible PGCE in my future, watch this space, Sarah Roberts will be the best teacher you’ve ever seen.

A New Life Teaching in Thailand

Hi everyone, I’m Sarah and I am going to be starting a blog about my year in Thailand teaching young children.

I’ve been here a week so far and I am loving it. Although for most of the week it has felt like a very strange holiday. All of the LoveTefl teachers first met either on the flight to Bangkok or in the posh hotel we stayed in in Ayuttaya. It was like a weird kind of freshers week apart from instead of going to lectures hungover, we had to go to Orientation hungover.

 

 

The Orientation was really helpful with telling us about visas, contracts, housing but by the time they were wizzing through Thai language I was half asleep and none of it went in. But as long as you attempt to speak their language you will be welcomed by Thai people.
Learning about Thai culture was an not exactly shocking but it was definitely an eye- opener. Thai people like to constantly have a smile on their face- something I may have to practice as I have what some call ‘bitch face’ where you always look uninterested. Thai people don’t like the British culture of moaning- another thing I may have to adapt to as I love a good moan and grumble, doesn’t everyone? One thing I won’t have to adapt to is the chilled atmosphere. As I am not a stressy person and as long as I never lose face by getting angry and agressive (which is their perception of British people) I will achieve ‘sanuk’ which is their word for a happy and fun lifestyle.

After an insightful few days learning about my time here and mingling with the other teachers, we all transferred to Bangkok on Khao San Road.

If you have ever heard of this place or seen it in the film ‘The Beach’ you will know that it is a bizarre backpackers haven. Full of McDonalds, Burger Kings, Starbucks. Full of beers, buckets of alcohol, shishas. And just plain full of drunk people. Drunk people like me who on the first night thought it would be fun to eat some bugs…

The bugs tasted mainly salty but after a while were just a bit of a faff to chew and get through them all.

Bangkok is a very busy place and as I have been there before and seen all of the sights, a fellow teacher convinced me to brave it and go off on my own for the day. I took his advice and felt so grown up as I took a bus boat to the end and back.

It was was very relaxing and not at all like travelling the busy traffic filled streets on a tuk tuk.

After a couple of days on Khao San Road you start to get sick of all the people hassling you for taxis, tuk tuks, and ping pong shows. (If you are as niave as I was and don’t know what a ping pong show is you should look it up and then you will see why people get sick of this place.) So it was good to know that we would be transferring to Chanthaburi where we will be living and teaching for the year.
I heard Chanthaburi is supposed to be a typical Thai town which made me feel like I would be making the most of this trip and embracing the culture rather than living in the touristy capital Bangkok. We arrived here and our teaching assistants took us on a tour around town in their cars and showed us the school.
The classroom has a lot of resources which eased my worries about what I was to do with a class full of children. Although, the P.E. area is right in the middle of the school where everyone can see and it has a basket ball and foot ball net. God help me when it comes to teaching P.E. and the kids learn I can’t catch. But I will get to that hurdle later on.
The teaching assistants also took us to the massive Tesco Lotus down the road, which made us feel right at home. So much so that we went back to get some food to settle our stomachs after a week of only Thai food and having poorly bellies.
All that we are going to do tomorrow is explore some more, try and find places to live and get settled into our new town!