"Unbelievable's!"

Happy Monday ka.

There's one story I've had on my mind for almost over a week and it has kept me smiling whenever I think about it! My teaching time which was brief has turned out to have so much influence in my happiness, and my life. (It always makes me think of Ajarn Mor+ Vicharn too as he really loves listening to teacher-student stories.)

A group of Trimitr students invited me to their reunion after over 30 years they graduated and left the school. I never taught this group but was very close to their homeroom teacher so I was delighted to be included and accepted to be with them without hesitation.

A student kindly picked me up from my house and told me to let him know if it started to be boring so he would drive me home. Personally, I didn't feel it could be so because it was so nice just to observe the teacher-student reactions and to see how much fun students themselves had with many of their long lost friends.

Here are what I think "unbelievable's"!

- The group tried to look for their long lost friends. Obviously they searched names from google. When only the same last name popped up, they contacted those people to see if they could be related. When they couldn't track any down, they went to see where their friends used to live in case their friends are still in that neighborhood. I heard that it worked!

- A few called me 'Ajarn Porntip' right away and several could even remember my last name!
One student said to me, 'Whenever I go to your office in the evening, you always eat 'เส้นเล็กใส่น้ำพริกเผา' (thin noodles with chili paste). I had no idea that was my favorite but my senior friend confirmed it too!

Another student told me he could remember me very well because he was at my office to answer my questions he could no longer recall. But he felt very happy I asked him to be there! Immediately, I thought that some little things we did could be far more meaningful to our students than expected ka!

- One student started talking with me when he saw that I was simply observing the people. I told him to sit on the chair as he was kneeling down. He said with teachers, 'I'm always a kid/dek' (aged 50 laew ka!). We talked a lot from his career to family and his impression of the school. He was really touched with teachers at his time who were dedicated and like 'second mom' unlike teachers today.

The next morning, I emailed to thank him for keeping me company. His answered has made me smile. He ended by putting ด.ช. (honorific for younger boys) followed by his name. So very cute and sweet!

The appreciation expressed and the caring shown have made me feel so blessed to be a teacher for at least once in my life!.....in fact, in the Thai tradition, I've never left the profession since 'A teacher is always a teacher!'

School leadership

Good morning everyone ka!

 

Last week, with the kind cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA), we were able to organize a seminar, inviting school directors in our ETA (English Teaching Assistantship program) and the MFA network to learn about several US school instructional approaches and administration and leadership.

 

High on the list of the school directors who visited the US schools were critical thinking through problem-based learning, priorities on teaching over attention to receive guests, and importance of substance in learning over huge school name signs.

 

We were also fortunate to have Associate Professor Varakorn Samakoses with us, sharing his deep thoughts what the public expects from school leaders.

 

He stressed the need for leaders to handle important things themselves, admit the fact that errors can occur, and to be genuinely open to listen attentively with the least prejudice.

 

With the impacts made by globalization on all the sectors, leaders must be more aware of common issues in this interconnected digital world, like human rights and peace, effects of capitalism, and knowledge revolution.

 

On public expectations, he pointed out that Thai people expect leaders to focus on students, providing education of  quality. However, the facts remain that 73% of the funding is on education personnel salary and that teachers aren't facilitators in class to enhance active learning.

 

For directors to be leaders, they need to know how to assign others to achieve mission and ask 'Why?' more often. Effort must be made to nurture trust within the schools.

 

A few attributes he repeatedly pointed out were ethics, holding up ideals with integrity, and respect.

 

What he shared might be something familiar, but the session was rich in content and great examples for the participants to realize the links of our country to the outside world, public expectations and the real situations, and the challenges of each leader to learn, to develop their own selves as role models, and to look into the future.

 

Once in a while, school directors need to be reminded of their roles and responsibilities with some food for thoughts!

 

All with their open minds and hearts certainly left the seminar, feeling inspired and energized!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sustainable Development

Swasdee ka, everyone....again I was out of the office a lot and will be more in weeks ahead!

I was invited to moderate a session on the topic related to interdisciplinary studies on sustainable development at Kampangpetch Rajabhat University  Again, I learned so many amazing things far beyond my own field and it made me feel great to increase my own awareness how much effort is out there in the world!

The organizer was able to get real experts in various fields, even all the five turned out to have solid science background, basically, engineering.

In the conference, we learned about the sub-topics relating to sustainable development leading developed countries have been pursuing, from Professor Dr. Peter Haddawy (A Fulbright alum currently working at the Faculty of ICT, Mahidol University). Even on several areas cited, namely, climate change to forestry and  renewable energy, I realize the huge knowledge has been acquired in form of publications and statistics gave us many implications that could ignite lots of discussion and investigation.

Professor Mamoru Shibayama from Kyoto University, Japan is now Director of the ASEAN Center, based in Bangkok. His interest is in Area Informatics...something I feel so very distant from me. The very unique aspect that amazed me was how he linked this specialization with Archeology, especially to determine mobility of the monks in Thailand from ordination until leaving the monkhood, interviewing many and doing the monitoring for over 10 years. We discussed later how it would be so fun to jointly work on 'mobility of students in Thailand and ASEAN', good?

Three other were from Australia (Dr. Leisa Armstrong from Edith Cowan University), Canada (Dr. Patrick Chuankarn), and China (Assistant Professor Jinliang Wang from Changzhou University), sharing about e-agriculture to enhance productivity through increased useful content for farmers, sustainable marketing throughout the supply chain of raw materials to customers, and indoor air quality with its impacts on health, energy and environment.

Here are what I learned from this international conference:

1. Realize better how interconnectedness of our world has increased and how much more is needed for inter/multidisciplinary teams for research studies.

2. Give even more importance to General Education Subjects, especially the sharpening of worldviews, and learning skills.

3. Maximize the use of ICT to increase our understanding about the cross-cutting issues while trying to integrate crucial ones to make strong positive impacts.

4. Synergize efforts at every level from individual to international as sustainable development enhances our well-being and quality of life for us and generations to come. In some contexts and cases, development could mean 'Appropriate Development'....what will harm least and fit best for a country and the impact on its neighbors and the world!

5. See growth in academic conference business as there were almost 1,000 in the audience. Since graduate students are required to present their research, more outlets are needed. I seriously think that if there are several 'social enterprises' that hold international conferences to accommodate this demand, it would raise the quality of research sharing without much need for each university to exhaust too much energy on logistics and ceremonies. More importantly, all the conferences must be based on quality of the selection of themes, panelists, and research theses; not simply to satisfy IQA/EQA criteria or other related standards.

Bye+ bye ka!