Neogenesis

June 7, 2008.

A week has effectively gone by, and in a few days, orientation for the 2008/09 school-year will begin. To say that the week was without note would be a gross understatement, as many new twists, turns, excitements and whatnots have been revealed within these few, short seven days.

When I arrived at GES, I had assumed I was the only foreign person around, and for the first few days of my return, it definitely felt like that. I didn't actually see anybody from the school until Sunday morning, at church... When Chris & Ro walked up on stage and began leading worship. "What what what??" I thought to myself, "There are other teachers around?! Sweet!"

The service went by in an interesting fashion. It being the final week of classes (or something) at ISB, the most prestigious International School in Thailand—which happens to be just down the street from the church—Sunday's service was oriented around the fact that many families would be leaving the community with the culmination of some of their children's educations. There were a lot of good-byes and a lot of heart-felt responses to which I felt a bit foreign, having just arrived back in Thailand; and after the speaking portion of the service was done, the church held a rather sizeable potluck session in the sanctuary for people to mingle & munch away the last service everyone'd be together. It was good to still see some familiar faces in the congregation and even better to have been noticed by a handful of folks too. I was surprised, actually, at how warmly I was welcomed back by a church body with whom I had spent no more than like 45 Sundays with. It felt good to be noticed & appreciated.

As far as school has been going, Monday was a very anxious day for me. Having just arrived a couple of days previous, with many of my memories from the end of last year fresh in my mind, I lay on my bedroom floor laughing nervously at the potential absurdity of the decision I had made. "What in the world am I doing here?" was a thought that plagued my mind that morning, coupled with, "What in the world will I be doing here," "How am I going to survive this year," and "What was I thinking?"

I knew, however, that God had indeed called me very explicitly to come back to GES and to Thailand to be used for his purposes. Still not knowing what those were, I was feeling a bit trepidatious... at best. Knowing Scripture seems to come in very handy, and since the God's Word admonishes us to cast all anxieties on Him (for He cares for us), I did just that. I prayed and told the Lord exactly how I was feeling, but let Him know that I would allow Him to deal with these issues and trust that He knows what He is doing. After taking a deep breath, I closed the door to my bedroom, went down the flight of stairs, out of my house and traversed the school's campus to head into the potential fire of the office.

To spare you from tedious details and episodes, let's just say that from Monday through to today, each day has caused my reservations & fears about my relationship with the administration to melt away—and not just melt away to neutrality, but in place of my fears, hope & excitement have begun to spring up in its place! Working with Peter & Sue directly, so far, has been not bad: even pleasurable at times. Sue's asked me to see what I can do about updating the school's website and to try to get some monthly content areas flowing as well as spearheading a project that sounds much like a school newspaper (springing from that, also a yearbook). These things sound quite interesting, and at present I'm looking forward to seeing how I can engage students in taking ownership of some of these activities.

I was also given the pleasure/responsibility of being able to pick up new & returning staff members from the airport throughout the week. It was good to see familiar faces & to be able to welcome my former colleagues back to the country—even if they were half dazed by the jetlag of trans-Pacific flights. Furthermore, it's been great to be able to get to know the new staff members who have been filtering in throughout the week. They are, for lack of a better word (and based so far on first impressions), awesome, awesome people & I am looking very much forward to spending the next year getting to know them & having the opportunity to support them in their teaching endeavours.

As I left Canada, Katie Wong had mentioned to me that the community atmosphere changes substantially each year that she had been at GES, and I can already see such differences forming. One of the biggest "new" things about this new group of staff is that the majority of new teachers all know each other very well, having all gone to the same college together (and all having graduated this past spring). The reservedness and social barriers that often come with people "trying to put their best foot forward" when conglomerating into a new social environment are practically nonexistent. These people feel real, and they feel very comfortable with each other—even the new teachers who didn't know any other soul at GES before stepping onto campus.

One of the most exciting things that happened with this group so far occurred last night, the evening after the newest arrival, Chris, landed in Bangkok. The whole shebang of new staffies had just come back from taking an excursion to Big C and came into the staff room where Surang & I were talking about campus security measures and other new ideas for the year. One thing led to another, and Surang expressed that one of her big dreams for this year is to have the school focus more on getting the students spiritually connected. She mentioned how, through working with the Baptist church on campus, it might be a good idea to have students be invited to come & hang out with the church folk once a month, with activities co-sponsored by GES staff & Thai church members. Suggestions were made about having dinners for the students along with activities & sports/games where they would be exposed to Christianity in more of a relational way than just the "instruction" style of exposure dominated by our devotional times.

Hearing this made my heart leap for joy.

And then she talked about maybe taking the whole high school to go to orphanages & children’s' ministries and other outreaches of the sort, to show them Christianity in action—and to give the students an opportunity to assist in helping the community! Goodness gracious, this woman must have been reading my mind over the past few months! All of the staff members seemed very gung-ho about such activities, which was really encouraging. And then, as it was Friday night & we all wanted to go do something, without even mentioning anything, the group decided that they wanted to get together & sing worship songs and pray. On a Friday night! I couldn't believe it!! Last year, trying to get staff together on a Friday night to worship God seemed like a painful chore, and here this group is, getting together on their own initiative, desiring to worship God together at the beginning of the year. Man, I have a feeling I am going to love working with these people this year!


* * * * *


Orientation begins for the new staff on Monday, and the first two days are optional for returning staff. I think I'm going to sit in on those days to try & further building amicable relations with the new staff. One of the things that I felt about my arrival last year was how disconnected & unsupported I felt from the returning teachers when they didn't show up at newbie orientation. I could really have used their wisdom and experience throughout that time, and my desire is to provide just that to these new folks this year—even with what little experience & actual proficiency I have.



As for my job description, well... It’s GES & I'm pretty sure no one really knows the full story as to what will ultimately happen with me. I've been hired back as a full-time librarian, who will be responsible for digitising the library catalogue, organising the collection with a recognisable standard, moving the collection to the new facilities (scheduled completion is September of this year), maintaining, weeding & adding to the collection. Extended responsibilities include (but aren't limited to: this is GES) the first on-call substitute teacher, the primary after-school "homework help" worker, secondary administrative support, non-library resource management and external communications head. On top of this, I've been asked by the Thai office workers to take up teaching Remedial English classes to high school students—essentially taking the lower level students from the main-stream English 10 & 11 classes and teaching them in line their proficiencies. By chance, Michelle—our half-time administrator—and I stumbled upon what also looks like me filling in for high school math instruction (grades 10, 11 & 12) until the permanent teacher arrives in the middle of July. Seriously, we literally stumbled upon this: during a casual conversation about who was going to fill in the blanks with the late-arriving staff, Michelle pulled up the master schedule and hovered the mouse over the empty Math slot, and a note appeared, which said "Mr. Daniel." Ha!

Michelle is in full support of me being a full-time librarian, and she—like I—recognises that in order for me to be able to do a good job at it, the position will require me to focus intensely upon the tasks within that job description. Having me take over the high school English "B" program (which we all thought was scrapped, after a parent/teacher/administration meeting at the end of last year) as well as becoming the acting high school math teacher pretty much sounds like my last year's experience... plus being the librarian. I was overloaded as it was with Math and English "B" last year; how in the world I would be able to pull of my library position would be beyond me.

This, hopefully, will all get sorted out within the next 10 days—or at least it had better. The first day of English instruction at GES is ten days away. It's going to be interesting to see how everything turns out.

More on that next time ;)




Update: June 8, 2008.

Turns out that I’m for sure going to be teaching high school Math until the permanent teacher arrives (hopefully) in July!