Visiting Thai Teacher

On Tuesday our team had a visit from Chalinee Samutphong, a visiting teacher from Thailand, who is spending the months of December and January in our classroom. Here is some background on her: My name is Chalinee Samutphong, and my students always call me “teacher Nina”. At present I’m teaching grade 10 students and they are 15-16 years old. I started working here in 2006 and I taught grade 7 and 8 in that time. This school is called “Wattana Wittaya Academy”the first boarding school of Thailand. There are only girls in this school, kindergarten, primary,junior and senior high school. At this school I have been teaching grade 7 – 12 for six years and I have terrific experiences about teaching here. Senior teachers, students and alumna sometimes teach me many things that I have never known before like having the good relationship, being the proper lady, and also being the mother role. I have the duty in the morning and in the evening about waking students up and taking of them to be neat in how to make a bed well, keep clean with their stuff reading books and doing homework in the evening.I can teach any age of students and I think I can manage how to teach them well because I have been teaching for ten years. Before I started working at Wattana Wittaya Academy I taught in my hometown before. I taught grade 7 for the first year, the students in the University for the Second Year, the vocational students and the girls in the boarding school. When I teach I always use the methods and the process that I have learned to create the lesson that make students are interested in. I like doing the teaching materials to have students train and practice by themselves like computer program “E-learning” and sometimes in class there are many students who aren’t smart and try not to pay attention to learn. I usually use cooperative learning method to make them work with friends and sometimes they are afraid to give or share opinion to the teacher but when they have group works they can do it very well. My special skills I have, using computer to make teaching materials from many programs, playing Thai instrument “Thai flute”, singing, playing volleyball, swimming, doing some Thai dancing, drawing and painting, acting about drama performance and cooking. I think my special skills I have will be useful for your students and I try my best to do it. I had the experience when I went to Canada last three years; I taught the kids how to play Thai children’s games and they were enjoyed so much. Yours faithfully, Miss Chalinee Samutphong While on our team she taught us how to say "thank-you" in Thai which is "Khob--Khun". She also taught us how to greet one another. To greet a boy and say hello you say "Sa-wad-dee-Krub". To greet a girl and say hello, you say "Sa-wad-dee-Ka". To greet a teacher you say, "Sa-wad-dee-Kru (the teacher's name)". The greeting is called "Wai" and they put their hands together and bow as they do it. We learned about the schools in Thailand as well. All students have to wear uniforms to school everyday. They start the day at 8 am and go to an assembly where they sing the national anthem. After the assembly they go to their classroom but they have to take their shoes off first. They have a 20 minute recess at 10:30 am. At 12:30 they get a lunch and break for an hour. They can purchase whatever they want for lunch and have a lot more choices than we do. Their day ends at 4 pm but every student has a job to help clean-up before they go home. We also learned a little about Thailand itself. We learned that their are 60,000,000 people in Thailand and that 6,000,000 of those people are in Bangkok. The King is called "Nai-Lhuang" and the Queen is called "Pra-Rajini". People bring food to the Monks each day because they are not allowed to cook. Thailand is known as the "Land of Smiles". The elephant is the symbol for Thailand. They have a special festival called "Loy Krathong" each November on the full moon. People float flowers to apologize to the Gods for using the water. They make a wish when they float the flowers which are called Krathong. At night they float lanterns into the sky and have fireworks.