Landvinninga

They just wanted a big white monkey to dance with the children on "Buddha Days" so they could snap pics for their website and brochures and sell more seats the following year because they had "Western English teachers." I started out at one of the top schools in the country (#4) in the capital and figured maybe that was just a thing there. Then I went to a pretty remote village and it was the same deal.

Also the students are already super racist by age 7. They know a Thai teacher and a Western teacher are not equals. Western teachers are babysitters that you play with, not teachers you respect. I don't hate the kids for it obviously but the system that created that.

So where I was in Thailand if a school hires a native English speaker the school gets paid 55,000 baht a month to employ them. Most won't pay you all of that though so the school literally makes money by hiring you. (Because I could speak some Thai and I was in nowhere I had some leverage and I had them pay my housing and 48,000 baht, they still made like 2k off me each month.) For a non-native Westerner (German or something) they pay 30,000. But they will still do that and sometimes even pay a German 40,000 because the schools are all for-profit (with government subsidies) based on enrollment. So they want to get more enrollment next year. One way to get more enrollment is to show a brochure/website picture of a White teacher playing/praying with the kids or when they had me wear traditional Thai dress and pretend to be the King on Father's day (King's birthday.) A Buddha day is a Buddhist holiday of which there are so many they just call it that so they have the Western teachers take part in the arts and crafts.

They truly do not care if you teach, you are basically a model and baby sitter. And because they are skimming money off the top by employing you they make you come in as many days as possible. Like I had one school close down early for renovations but they made us check in even after we had our grades turned in and we weren't coming back the next year so no lessons to plan. But we still had to check in by 8am. And we got paid to shoot the shit, play sports in the gym, eat at the cafeteria, and sometimes we went down to the mall to watch movies. Then I started bringing my laptop with emulator in and we used the projectors to have Mario Kart parties.

Nobody warned me ahead of time. But everyone told me when I got there. I laugh when people say the US education system is fucked up. It's far from perfect but they have no idea.

Interesting. I fell in love with teaching in the US then became disillusioned with it in SE Asia. Came back to America and went back to teaching for a while before I just wanted to travel more.

Yep. It's actually super chillax IF you don't actually want to be a teacher to work at a school as one. Like I knew people who just did it for the travel and they loved it. Super cushy job. But I worked in education in the US and wanted to teach. So it burned me out not being able to, everyone else told me to just let go and I fought for 3 months before finally giving in. So I moved thinking it would be better but it was the same, just on a more personal scale because I knew most people in the village.

Then finally I went to private tutoring with people who wanted to learn and I found my love of teaching again after 18 months of suffering.