Trojan Tales from the Far East: A Day in the Life of a Teacher at Chiang Saen Wittayakhom

7:00 AM Wake up! Usually to the sounds of Thai music being piped through loudspeakers around the school, construction happening outside our window, and students laughing as they walk around the campus before school starts.

7:45 AM Breakfast at the canteen. Jon gets chicken with rice and egg, while Carolyn gets rice with two eggs on top. The best part of this meal is definitely the sauces that we put on top: one is a sweet red garlic sauce, the other is a spicy green sauce.

Our breakfast and sometimes lunch

8:00 AM Morning assembly. Every school day begins with an all-school morning assembly. The assembly begins with the school marching band playing the Thai National Anthem, followed by Buddhist prayer and a moment of meditation. There are also usually announcements/presentations by students, and the assembly finishes with the marching band playing the school song while the students sing along.

All 1,200 students at the assembly

One of our students giving a speech in English...we were so proud!

8:30 AM School starts! The school day is divided into 7 periods from 8:30 AM to 3:05 PM. Depending on the day, we teach anywhere from 2-5 periods. At this point we are lucky enough to teach together, but one of the English teachers is leaving this school soon and our schedule will change then as we pick up his classes. So far, we have been teaching conversational English: names, greetings, feelings, age, and so on.

Kru Jon preparing for a lesson

Students walking to their classes

11:50 AM Back to the canteen for lunch! We either stick to the same meal from breakfast, or get “suki”, a kind of noodle soup. There are four different restaurant stands at the canteen and so far we have only tried two, but we will continue to branch out as we improve our Thai so we know exactly what we are eating.

3:05 PM School has officially ended, but there is a big academic competition coming up and we have been helping the students prepare for it. This has been pretty fun as events range from skits to speeches to storytelling to a spelling bee. If no one comes to us for help we usually help some students who have started playing Scrabble every day during this time.

4:30 PM School ends. We usually go back to our house, relax for a little bit then head to dinner. Our favorite place to go is a restaurant called “Three Men”, where we get delicious Thai food for 30 baht, or about $1.00. The food is delicious and all of the ingredients are fresh from the marketplace. After dinner we might bike around, visit a coffee shop, wander around the street vendors, or go to the Tesco store that is the only thing that resembles a grocery store here. This is also when we take care of our chores – like doing our laundry.