An Overdue Update

Well, October has come and gone. Its 31 days felt like a little less than 24 hours for me over here, what with the end-of-term, report cards, regular classes, the two-week break from school and the return to classes. It definitely has been a whirlwind.

To make this a quick update, and to spare all of those who are actually interested, we'll jump right into the essential parts: School, my break & my current outlook on everything.


School.

We finished off the first term of school here at the beginning of October, meaning compiling grade books and making report cards... from scratch. Nowhere are there any nice bits of software to help make things easier or to streamline the process: every single character on every single report card had to be individually typed and perfectly formatted. Even if so much as one missing space (or one extra) was detected by the administration, the whole report card would have to be redone. Many of the teachers think that this is a bit excessive, especially since these report cards are for high school & will most likely be thrown out by the end of the month anyways (who cares if they all aren't 100% identically formatted?!).

After compiling my grades, I discovered that my expected class averages were achieved—between 65 & 70% for both Math & Chemistry subjects. What I wasn't expecting, though, was what I found out on the Monday after our October semester break started. Before leaving on our adventures, I noticed a half-dozen of my students at the school, waiting around for something. I asked them why they were here on break and they told me that they weren't on break—that they were here to go to school. Surprised, I asked them what subject. They said "Chemistry."

It then dawned on me that half of the kids there were in the 10B class—which only received English Language instruction—while the other half were the students in my class who had failed (precisely because they never handed in a stitch of homework & consciously decided to doodle on their chapter tests instead of actually filling them out). Asking Aaron, our administrator, about this on the way to the airport for our getaway, he said that he just found out about it himself. Apparently, these kids were going to be instructed in Chemistry for the next two weeks because their parents were paying for extra instruction to help the kids get a "step up" before the next term began. All of the instruction would be in Thai to assist them in knowledge acquisition.

Then Aaron's cell phone rings. It's the school asking him where the teachers had put their midterm examinations. The school was wanting copies so that the kids could retake the exams. Aaron apologised, say that he didn't know and that since he was already in a taxi, he couldn't help them find these tests. After the telephone call was finished, Aaron promptly turned off his cell phone.

Thailand is notorious for being a country where you can buy anything. This includes academic grades; even at our school. Apparently, after all the foreign staff has handed in their marks and issued report cards, the Thai staff enter these grades into the students’ records for the Ministry of Education. This is how the rich kids who don't do any school work and refuse to complete their tests end up being promoted to the next grade level: If mom & dad have enough baht, then your passing grade is purchased.

It's considered shameful in Thai culture for someone to fail & to be held back an academic year, and parents don't want this to happen. The kids all know about this practise—in fact, it was a couple of students in my class who told me exactly how it works. Since we are a private school, and since tuition is so "high" (compared to public Thai schools), it is generally recognised as the parents' & students' right to be able to pass any class that they take, as long as the school is compensated enough for this trouble. The irony, of course, is that these students who will eventually graduate (financially) from our institution will enter the greater community (maybe even university) without a high school education, and the school's own reputation will be destroyed, since the greatest testament to a school's excellence is the calibre of its alumni. Word will spread about how poorly educated the students from this school are (even if it's only 1 in 10 students who buys their diploma) and as a result, no parents will want to enrol their children at that institution. It makes a lot of sense if you have foresight enough to consider the ramifications of your immediate actions. Though, just as Aaron turned off his cell phone after that conversation, so will I do likewise & continue onwards.


Break.

My break was very much needed. At the beginning of the year, I was running on 7 or 8 hours of sleep a night, and not needing a single drop of caffeine. By the final week of school, I was down to 4 or 5 hours of sleep a night and up to 2 or 3 bottles of Red Bull a day just trying to keep my eyelids from collapsing. It was beautiful to get out of Bangkok, to not have to hear traffic, to not have to worry about stepping in random piles of dog crap everywhere, to not have to breathe in the smoggy goodness that is Bangkok air. The best part, by far, was the chance to get some much needed sleep.

I travelled with the Aaron & Katie Wong, along with the visiting Snyder family, to two very nice beachside resorts in southern Thailand, where we relaxed and adventured and did whatever we wanted to do whenever we wanted to do it. My first day there, I slept for 14 hours. I got up, ate breakfast, walked around on the beach for a bit and then took a 4 hour nap in the shade of a palm tree. It was great.

We did other things too though. Active things. We rented motorcycles and cruised around this island for the day, stopping every once in a while for good photo op's or for food and whatnot. We went snorkelling, sea kayaking and rock climbing. One day, John Fairbridge and I decided to climb up this 1237 step stairway to the top of the highest mountain in the region, at the top of which was a very large Buddhist shrine. How do I know that there were 1237 steps? They had painted markers indicating the number of stairs every so often, and 1237 was on the final post for the handrail at the very top of the mountain. It was definitely worth the trip: the view was amazing, and had the smoke coming from Indonesia's deforestation projects not been blowing in across the Gulf of Thailand that day, it would have made for a spectacular sunset.

Our sea kayaking guide, whose name was Mun Gee (yes, it does sound a lot like "monkey," and he made joking references to how his nickname was "Chee kee") said that, on the behalf of his people, he wanted to thank all of us from North America for our generosity in helping them recover from the tsunami in Dec. 2004. He said that all of the people around were very thankful, but that the majority of them did not speak any English but were always happy and excited to see foreigners because they wanted to thank them for their generosity. He told us that apparently 90% of all the funds donated went directly to work & relief projects for the effected areas (which I was surprised to hear. I would have thought that the government would have skimmed more than that).

All things, alas, come to an end, and this Monday marked the beginning of the new term. School started off very well: after day 1, the students seemed eager and ready to learn. On day 2, I received a new student in grade 10 without any prior warning, and the school hadn't given her any books or anything for the classes that she'd be taking (surprise, surprise). We're still trying to figure out what to do for her Chemistry text...

Speaking of students, the girl who chose to accept Christ back in July, Kand, didn't return to GES this term—also without any notice. I was told from her classmates that she had gone on an exchange program to study in Australia. Hopefully there she'll have good exposure to good people & (let's pray) a better opportunity to learn about Christ than what GES can do.


Outlook.

My current outlooks and perspective about everything right now is quite bleak. After the 2nd day of classes, my students returned to their usual non-caring, external locus of control attitudes, blaming me for giving them too much homework when they refuse to finish assignments & consequently complain that they don't know how to do the mathematics (since math skill is developed through practising math and not manual dexterity on PSPs or cell phones). A couple students even had the gall on Friday to tell me that I was lazy and I wasn't doing my job when—for the first time this year—I had the class mark a homework assignment.

It is attitudes like this that really make me wonder why I bother putting in 15 hours a day for these kids. I literally am in my classroom or at work in the office from 7:15 am to 10:30 at night, leaving only for a 30 minute lunch & a 30 minute supper break. It's an unsustainable level of work, and I acknowledge this. I became physically ill last term because of the levels of stress and lack of rest that my job is currently demanding from me, and I do not want to repeat the same fiasco. Something's gotta give, and it's going to have to happen soon...before I give out and collapse on the floor somewhere.

I decided, yesterday, to try a new approach starting tomorrow. This approach is a "take no crap, take no excuses" attitude, where I'm going to set a high level of expectation from my students. The good kids are already meeting or exceeding this benchmark, and those who don't will have to whip into shape, or else they'll be sitting in a detention faster than they can spell "supercalifragilisticexpialadotious."

On the topic of expectations, I've discovered that I'm pretty sure it's almost impossible to both be a teacher and be a missionary at the same time. The former requires that you take the posture of an impartial authority, so that when a student fails, they don't feel personally attacked (or when you're personally attacked by them, you don't let it bother you). The latter works better when you meet the people on their terms, in their space, on their playing field: trying to love them and invest your life into theirs with the goal of sharing Christ with them. If both can be done, it's mighty difficult. I applaud any person who can do this with hormonal, defiant & spoiled rich teenagers.

To be really honest, I don't think that I've had much of a ministry impact on Thailand at all since the middle of July, when my course-load shifted from Math & basic English to Math & Chemistry. I simply don't have the time, and because of that, I really am beginning to wonder what the crap I am doing here. I decided to come to Thailand with the purpose of working in some sort of ministry-related activity, and right now, I don't see how teaching children about the finer points of quadratic equations and stoichiometric balancing really advances the kingdom of God in Thailand, where what feels like (from my perspective) the majority of Christians are foreigners—either teaching or working for multinational corporations—who don't really feel compelled to learn the language or reach out to Thai people at all, as it would extend beyond their comfort zones.

I think, perhaps, I am feeling rather starved of edifying Christian community (an 85 hour work-week will do that to ya) and just straight up time with God. Our organisation, which claims to be a ministry, really gives no opportunity or avenue for spiritual support—at least in a way that I can relate to. We’re required to go to church on Sunday, yet the only churches that I’ve found have congregations that either are: a.) full of partying, extraverted socialites who’re always on the go; b.) filled with professionals, their wives and pre-teenaged children who daren’t leave their personally-constructed white-man ghetto; or c.) conducted in Thai. The one prayer meeting / corporate worship time that we have as a GES staff happens twice a month and feels rather rigid, religious and empty. There is no focus on staff members' spiritual health really at all, and all the attention is, instead, directed on whether or not you have completed your paperwork on time. Rather than ensuring the priority of the staff's spiritual health and well-being, we are given 30 minutes of mandatory “devotional time” with our students (which are 90% Buddhist and don't want to hear about Jesus for what is—for some of them—the 6th year of the same stuff) each day—and those that are the most receptive (the new kids) barely speak a sentence of English. Of course, the irony with this is that every other class gets Thai-English Bibles, yet these new students aren’t so lucky. What do they get? Nothing. Not even a devotional instructor who interacts with them for more than 2 hours each week (consequently making the devotional time rather irrelevant to whatever actually might be happening in their lives).

I’ve been finding myself really questioning what I’m doing here & why I continue onward. Pragmatically, I stick around because I signed a contract, and my name on that contract is my word. I don’t like breaking my word. Also, I get reimbursed for my airfare if I stay the full term, which is another pragmatic plus for my retention. Those things aside, I find it extremely difficult to rationalise my work and my efforts here. I mean, the students who actually do their homework and who actually try are a joy. I love ‘em to death and I have great hopes for them. Honestly, there probably make up just as much of the classroom population as the rotten apples (maybe even more), but it’s the yeast that taints the flour; not the other way around. Regardless of the students who are good or bad, how is teaching here any different than teaching back in Canada? It’s not that I’m disinterested in teaching; it just never was my primary motivation to come here and do this.

In the middle of writing this update, someone asked me why I don’t do anything about this situation. Perhaps I have learned too much from my students & consider change as being beyond my control. I feel too overwhelmed with work and duty to try to even get around to making the effort to instigate change. That, and my personal history is chalk-full of instances where I try to get the ball of change moving only to be ignored or squelched by the powers that be. Let’s just say that I have no faith in my ability to motivate or to inspire people. Maybe that also translates into me not having faith in others’ willingness to change. I don’t know. All I do know is that I don’t feel that me raising these concerns to you or anybody else is really going to change anything (perhaps prayer would. Please consider this something to bring to God, if you’re a praying person).

Am I having any impact for God in this place? I’ve no idea. The answer would seem to be “probably.” I presented the gospel to my students in July and one of them wanted to follow Jesus. Yes, that is super awesome. It’s huge. It’s enough to have made this entire experience completely worth it. I just wish that the school would have done a better job helping follow up with her decision to follow Jesus instead of ignoring her desire while celebrating the cute grade 4 student who accepted Jesus several weeks later. I try to remember to pray for her whenever I find myself remembering to pray—which, unfortunately, has been rare since the middle of August.

To sum up, I’m discouraged. Really discouraged. I feel like Luke Skywalker when he crash landed on Degobah and was invited into this strange creature’s house for food while he was looking for Yoda:

LUKE: Look, I'm sure it's delicious. I just don't understand why we
can't see Yoda now.

CREATURE: Patience! For the Jedi it is time to eat as well. Eat, eat.
Hot. Good food, hm? Good, hmm?

LUKE: How far away is Yoda? Will it take us long to get there?

CREATURE: Not far. Yoda not far. Patience. Soon you will be with him.
(tasting food from the pot) Rootleaf, I cook. Why wish you become
Jedi? Hm?

LUKE: Mostly because of my father, I guess.

CREATURE: Ah, your father. Powerful Jedi was he, powerful Jedi, mmm.

LUKE: (a little angry) Oh, come on. How could you know my father? You
don't even know who I am. (fed up) Oh, I don't even know what I'm
doing here. We're wasting our time.

I’m not sure what I’m doing here, and I definitely feel like I am wasting my time (somewhat. I mean, teaching is a noble thing to do; it’s just not what I expected to be doing exclusively). I’m working wa-a-a-ay too much to live a healthy lifestyle, and my spiritual state has drowned in the khlong behind the school (that’s an open sewer, for those of you who don’t know). All of this is unsustainable. Something inevitably is going to change. It’s just a matter of what and when.


I’ll keep you posted.