Blind Inspiration

     Sawadikap! I would like to start off today by apologizing for taking so long to repost. I have been quite busy since my last time back here as you will soon read. I also am sorry that I have been slacking on my photography since we've come back to Bangkok. I will certainly be making an effort to do so as time and opportunity permit.

     So first off on the long list of catch-up.... School. The primary reason I have been lacking the time to keep my blogs up to date is that I recently started a Master's program in Social Psychology online. To properly keep up with my courses I spend around 16-20 hours a week, after work and on weekends, completing various readings and writing assignments, as well as participating in different class room discussions. So far I have been doing well and my studies have been a very interesting parallel to my experiences here. Overall, these studies have been a great use of my 'free time' and I hope to maybe enter a Ph. D. program in psychology when I return to the states.

      Work has also been rather interesting over the last few weeks. I'm getting to know my students better all the time. Everyday, when I walk around, many of my students say hi, good morning, and other simple greetings. Mostly, the students will wave and smile, many will even call out from across the way yelling "Hello teacher." In general, the students use the title teacher before addressing us so around school, my name is "Teacher Jeremy". I like it a lot more than the potential "Mr. Sutton". There are also many food stalls where both teachers and students can get lunch each day. I frequently eat at the same stall and I enjoy the little conversations I have with the lunch ladies. They always teach me new words about food and give a please smile and laugh when I mention their food is "aloi ma" or 'very good'.

     I have a total of 23 hours of in class instruction every week. I also only see each class once a week. This means I have quite a few students.... approximately 800-900 per week. The grades that have been assigned to me are Matiyom 3-6. This basically means 9-12 grade back in the states. About half my students are what we would call 9th graders. They can really be a handful at times and have the largest level of variability in their overall English level. Some classes are quite excellent and can speak very well. This is because even though my school is funded by the government and is 'public', students who's parents pay more can be put into "English Intensive classes". Students in these classes speak much better and likely have extra English instruction outside of school, or perhaps even their parents speak. In Thailand, being able to speak English and Thai is almost a guaranteed ticket to a high salary job. Another benefit of being in these English intensive classes is usually access to a room that has an air conditioner, fewer students, nice projectors, and even large hd tv's.

     There's sort of an interesting tendency here that is rather akin to more ancient times in the states and Europe. There is a strong correlation between students who are in the intensive classes, have access to new gadgets such as iphones and tablet PC's, and are overweight. It's basically a sure thing that if a student is overweight, they come from a rich family. The school where I'm working is full of rather well off students in general, but there are certainly different levels of stratification. At the end of the day, there are students both well off and poor in all of my classes, and in all of my classes there are students with ipads and what not. It's just interesting noticing tendencies throughout the school's population.

     Also, in several of my classes, I have individual blind students. There is really no specific schooling for them apart from regular instruction. I wasn't even informed there would be blind students in my classes until the students pointed it out to me after assigning some board work. These students read and write in braille, although I'm not sure how that differs in English and Thai, and they have presented me with an interesting challenge as a teacher. Most of my lessons are created from my mind and because I see so many students each week, I almost never use hand outs. That being the case, most of my lessons are generated using the whiteboard and having the students create something to match in their notebooks. In this way, the students are making their own English lesson books as we go. With the blind students however, I must continually find ways to prompt proper class responses both verbally instead of with purely visual clues. I do a lot of call and response that requires students to intuit which response is appropriate. This helps them with pronunciation while making them speak under time constraints. In this sense, my English class is not so different from music lessons. (I read recently that doing things 'in rhythm' helps people build neural connections more quickly than simply responding).

    This last week, I found myself particularly inspired by one of the blind students in one of my Matiyam 4 (10th grade) classes. She is a very good student and speaks quite a bit better than the other students. The hardest part about this particular class is that it is the last period of the day every Friday. This of course means that the 48 students in that class are practically jumping out of their skin, they are so ready to go.... During the last 10 minutes of class, I asked them to practice what we had gone over in paired conversations, usually I go around and listen to how they are doing and help them with pronunciation. This day however, they were particularly wild and I sat down to have a conversation with this particular blind student. She told me about how she likes to play the violin and sing in her free time. She also studies German and Japanese apart from speaking Thai, and her English is quite good compared to the rest of the class. Most striking, she told me about her interest in books. She primarily listens to them on audio in either English or Thai. What struck me most was when I asked about her favorite type of books. Excitedly, she told me she likes books about Thai history, but she loves books about space and the universe... I'm pretty sure she's been blind her whole life, but I couldn't help but speculate on what it must be like for her to contemplate the vastness of space having no visual reference. I mean really, the universe is so large that not one can actually comprehend it completely. The closest star past the Sun is so far away, it takes light about 26 years to make the trip. That is our galactic neighbor and already we have to measure it in an abstract term that we can only understand conceptually, and that distance is akin to a mere point considering the vastness of the whole universe.... That being said, her comment made me think that maybe her interpretation is even more accurate than our visually conditioned counterpart. Having never had the limitations of sight to establish boundaries in her mind, perhaps her thought patterns more directly reflect the openness of the universe. Mostly, her comment made me realize an overlooked assumption of my own thinking: that one must be able to see to appreciate the wonders of this universe. So as the saying goes, on that day, the student truly became the teacher. For that, I am especially grateful. It's experiences such as this that keep me motivated to continue learning and experiencing this world to the best of my capability.

     And that is where I'll leave you all for today. Thank you for joining me here. I promise to make an effort to get back to the posts more frequently. It can certainly be difficult to juggle the various parts of life but I will continue to do my best. Wherever you find yourself, I hope you're finding the opportunity to continue to learn and grow as well. Take care.