meaningfully touching

Happy Monday ka! I got a little yet touching story from an alumna who got Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship, administered by Fulbright. She has been even more proactive since she got back a few years ago.

We did a project to promote reading together. She started using, ‘Read it forward’ to share books with others. Now she has added the use of ‘Thank you note’, especially to those around in the university who have been overlooked to help her students have more caring while generating happy feelings to others.

One little thank-you project got many nice notes and may I translate several to English to share with you na ka. 

- Thanks to ‘uncle security guard’ ลุงรปภ. (the way Thai younger kids address more senior people who don’t have ‘ranks’) for helping me store my bike outside and keeping my key for me when I forget. Many thanks for your caring and I wish you very healthy and that you are our loving uncle for years.

 - Uncle ka, you’re so nice and fully responsible for your work. I’m impressed and thankful every time you help me lift my bike. Even I know it’s part of your job, I notice that you’re the only one guard who does his best!

- To ‘auntie housekeeper’: may I thank you and other aunties who work has allowed us to have clean classes. You all must be tired, keep going na ka. I won’t throw trash carelessly ka.

- Hope you enjoy doing your work on our university gardens ka. Wear lots of smiles too for every day of yours to be very happy na ka!

A student studying biology the past semester wrote to a laboratory staff to say thanks to him for not answering to her questions all the time because she realized that she had to make more efforts to search for the answers on her own too. This staff seems to be quite popular as kids put their thank-you cards with a box of milk for him!

Two main things popped up on my mind ka:

1. In the Thai context, we have to admit that we do have ‘socio-economic hierarchy’ and so we frequently fail to acknowledge and recognize the presence of many of them…(and us in some situations too!).  This caring exercise needs to be promoted for our people, young and old alike to have respect to all, regardless of any status in the society lae ka.

2. The appreciation expressed would make them become more motivated to do their jobs even better while feeling more proud of their own responsibilities like the Pike Place fish market in Seattle ka.

Caring can go a long way for a gentler and kinder society ka!

Top 10 quotes on leadership

Let me share with you Richard Branson’s top 10 quotes on leadership from LinkedIn, January 7, 2015, which I read a few days ago. Here they are, in order of preference from 1 on ka:

1. Leadership is the ability to hide your panic from others. – Lao Tuz

2. Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt to offer a solution everybody can understand. – Colin Powell

3. Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality. – Warren Bennis

4. Leadership is the art of giving people a platform for spreading ideas that work. – Seth Godin

5. You manage things; you lead people. – Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

6. The smartest thing I ever did was to hire my weakness. – Sara Blakely

7. Leaders think and talk about the solutions. Followers think and talk about the problems. – Brian Tracy

8. Tend to the people, and they will tend to the business. – John Maxwell

9. Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower. – Steve Jobs

10. A lot of people have gone further than they thought they could because someone else thought they could. – Zig Ziglar

Which is your favorite ka?

My top three picks are 7, 10, and 6 ka.

The first is because I always think that being a leader means he/she along with his/her team must try to get solutions for problems/challenges lying in front of them for all not to get stuck (complaining/feeling upset or scared or confused!?!).

My second is what I think of our own Thai kids ka. We, parents and teachers included, need to do more, especially those who don’t really do well in studies. Having faith in them could potentially get them started, or get them going to a more challenging path to discover themselves.

The third is also related to the Thai context of ‘face’ and ‘authority’ ka. No one is smart at everything and if our Thai bosses are open to those who can do some of the work better to perform to reach the goal successfully and smoothly. I think our context has shaped many Thai bosses to ‘hide my weakness’, not ‘hire my weakness’ lae ka.

standard etiquttes

I was at a fine hotel for breakfast and was very upset to see that one young Chinese guy spitted twice onto the restaurant floor, in fact around his table lae ka and no one at his table said anything!

This very little incident made me think a lot ka.

Definitely, while Thailand earns income from tourism, there's price to pay in addition to the deterioration of environment ka. The hotel itself must have changed its policy for survival so it has welcomed so many Chinese who can afford to come to Thailand. With such a shift, it affects so many things that the hotel itself may need to assess if it's worth it na ka.

First, it could turn the regular guests away because of the inappropriate mess and noisy crowds as we could no longer have our sabai sabai meals.

Second, the way the hotel serves the food has changed. The presentation that used to be quite nice has now been piled up to accommodate the increasing customers. The overall quality has dropped.

Third, I feel sorry for the waiters and waitresses as they don't seem to look as happy as before ka.

Fourth, though spitting in public could be seen to be very minor for some groups of people and yes, some Thais like cabdrivers and other groups included, it shows how much help we need from all key stakeholders like education and media sectors to make everyone aware of how their undesirable habits at home could become unacceptable standards when they visit other countries.

For Chinese in particular, I read about the government's effort to come up with something like 'spittoon' for its citizens decades ago. They need to continue working on it more seriously.

Our Thai government, families, and schools plus media need to promote the sense of social responsibility in this aspect too. We lack awareness of keeping our public areas safe and clean still! Tour guides and agencies must take it seriously to come up with the 'standards' for all tourists to be aware and behave accordingly!

In any case, we keep trying to make our own selves good examples for others to see na ka!

Wonderful start na ka!

Hope you all had a nice relaxing long holiday ka. I now feel amused to see my family and friends talking about 'Monday allergy' as I no longer have it! Oh! I've made so many people jealous of me lae ka!

This morning, I picked up an article I read a while ago to see what I should share on my ppt, especially to ASEAN students I'll talk with tomorrow in Hat Yai. And so I think to get 2015 started, let me share with you several pieces of articles I like ka.

1. A Curriculum for the Selfie Generation by Dan Barrett from the Chornicle of Higher Education, June 2, 2014

It mentions about the need for more General Education courses to 'fit for a generation of oversharers' and many colleges offer courses about 'life'.

Florida's state law in 2013 led the University of Florida to have a 'required' course on 'What is the Good Life?' for students 'to explore that question through art, architecture, history, literature, music, religion, and philosophy.' Roanoke College emphasizes on doing higher-level intellectual tasks like synthesizing and making judgments aobut arguments to come up with courses to satisfy two requirements, namely, 'intellectual inquiry' and 'living in an examined life'.

After all, the key persons to lead the students are their professors and I now am curious what our Thai universities have done about the Y and very soon the Z generation that will enter into the university walls!

2. MOOC U: The Revolution Isn't Over. by Jeffrey Selingo from the Chronicle of Higher Education, October 3, 2014; and Can Humanism Survive the Coming by Clay Farris Naff from Humanist, Sept/Oct 2014

Over 6 million people have signed up for MOOC (Massive Open Online Courses) since 2011. It's still believed to be capable of changing the world though it doesn't seem to be that successful (only about 10% complete them) and should be best used as a supplement to formal classes for now.

Several arguments why MOOC classes don't work that well...they are like long regular ones and may need to be run differently, course materials often disappear from the web a few weeks after a class ends due to the intelletual property issue, and they don't make money for colleges.

The second article also touches on MOOC Company Coursera, founded by Stanford University 'to give everyone in the world access to a high quality education for free'. It quotes the New York Times about Harvard Business School and others are trembling over MOOC, wondering whether they should jump on this bandwagon, risking the devalue of on-campus education or to stay put at the risk of being left behind.

No matter what, I seriously think that MOOC will be here to stay to benefit learners from all walks of life....not that much for the Thais for now and our universities can maximize the use for more benefits. MOOC courses may need to be segmented to fit with the target groups' preference and requirements. For the selfie generation, it needs to be shorter with powerful messages of communication to ignite further research and thinking. With the spoonfed style of learning of the Thais, recording professors' teaching to call it 'elearning' doesn't really work that well in the Thai context as it could be quite long and boring. Shorter and more entertaining teaching styles could attract increased students' attention and learning.

I started the first working day of the year with the meaning of 'life' of and for our young generations!

Keep thinking, learning, and taking actions ka...perhaps 'acting while teaching too na ka:))!'