The Duties of an Ajarn

In Thailand, being a teacher (“ajarn” in Thai) is a position deserving of respect. On the respect totem pole, only monks and the king are higher. There is even a national holiday for paying respect to teachers, during which every student makes a bouquet and must wai (bow), forehead to the floor, and present it to their teachers. On a regular basis, students are always supposed to be, literally, lower than teachers, so they duck when we walk past. They also crawl up to Thai teachers’ desks on their knees. And, although being a foreign teacher will certainly diminish the amount of respect we receive in actuality, it in no way lessens the cultural expectations imposed on us. This can be an intimidating situation to walk into as a foreigner. 

Having no official rulebook, we are just left blindly feeling our way through the cultural differences. And, from what we can figure out, the rules make no sense. We have been scolded for: wearing non-collared shirts, wearing flipflops, drinking directly out of a big water bottle at morning flag raising ceremony, eating while standing, not using a straw, eating while walking, eating popsicles, not eating food that was offered to us. The list goes on and includes, primarily, things that we see Thai teachers doing on a regular basis. 

The list of don’ts also extends to any personal life you may have in public. What you wear, what you do, what you eat, can all potentially be witnessed by an unseen student, or worse, parent. My piercings are a disruption in almost every class, and if I wear my hair up I can be sure that the constellation tattoo on my neck will serve as a major distraction. Bumping into students on the weekends while wearing my nose ring and potentially showing bits of my shoulder tattoo pumps fodder into the gossip mill. And, as it isn’t naturally occurring in Thailand, cleavage is a big no-no. 

We gain a bit of celebrity. Thais know where we teach. In Ratchaburi, our laundry ladies tracked down where we lived when they ruined some of our clothes. The director of our current school called us on the guesthouse phone one morning, without our telling him where we were staying. Word gets around. We stand out. Drinking beer? Smoking cigarettes? We do it at home or where there are only adults: bars, not restaurants. 

Luckily, in more-touristy Chiang Rai, we stand out less than we did last term. And the school seems a bit more lax overall. But, we still are expected to finish our afternoon popsicles before going back to school, and the students do freak out a little bit when we crouch down to their level.

We Are Glorified Babysitters: Adventures as Wranglers of Tiny Children

 

Children are exhausting.  Put thirty to fifty of them in one room and the exhaustion factor increases exponentially. Add the fact that they speak little to no English, and we speak no functional Thai, and you have pure chaos. Twenty to twenty-two hours a week of absolute unbridled chaos, complete with yelling, hitting, rolling on the floor, dumping water on each other, and (in some of Win’s fourth grade classes) riding each other around the classroom. 

Last semester we taught high school, where they want to talk about boyfriends and girlfriends and listen to Lady Gaga or Justin Beiber. Now we are getting a crash course on teaching elementary and middle school. First lesson: They are tiny balls of energy who need constant entertainment.

Luckily, when it comes down to it, our job (officially teaching speaking and listening) is just to play with kids. This typically involves speaking like a caveman while gesturing like a mime on drugs, hoping we are loud enough that the trouble kids in the back are distracted enough to stop hitting each other, and encouraging kids to speak above a whisper (a lot of clapping helps), all while sweating and getting chalk everywhere. And laughing. A lot of laughing. 

Four to five classes a day is nearly unbearable. In the post-work collapse, we can hardly do more than shower and eat before falling asleep. But it’s worth it to have a job where the main job requirement is making sure the kids have fun.