One of the activities I did the past week was to help coordinate for alumni of Teachers College, Columbia University (TC-CU) together to signify a Global TC Day.
Ajarn Chaiwat from Silpakorn University and I agreed that we should do something more than just a fun gathering so we thought of a meeting with the Minister of Education since we all graduated from what's known as one of the very best schools of education. But more importantly, we all are passionate in education and wish we could play a little part to develop it further in every possible way we can.
Finally, we had an-hour meeting with Minister Teerakiat with 10 of us in attendance.
My lessons learned from this activity ka:
1. I was happy to signify the Global TC Day doing something more academic than just 'meet and greet'. It was really meaningful for the alumni to learn and share more when we had some sort of formal forum ka.
2. Each of us graduated from different departments and work in both public and private sectors so if there was more time, the discussion could have been even richer and more lively. I enjoyed it a lot simply listening to the interactions.
3. The minister was generous with his time and he told us what he has been doing and what has yet to be done. Two key issues I drew from the conversation were:
- The culture of the MOE is difficult to change so do what we can do.
Personally, I was glad he seems to know the culture quite well. It'd be nice to try to change some of the 'traditions' by exercising senior leadership from him and other senior leaders too. For example, the ways officials have to take care of their bosses and show their 'admiration' especially when assuming a new position or moving to another office (to literally go send them off!)....many more examples too ka.
I was saying to the minister that we didn't bring any nicely wrapped gift or flowers but several brought our books for him to read and it was great to learn what he's been reading too ka....one is, 'How to run a country' ka!
- Stay idealistic to have hope and keep going.
I like it a lot ka. We need to keep our ideals alive with more hope to go forward. It's hard to be mentally strong as wherever we visit, we may find many situations that make us feel they're far too complicated and too big for us to help tackle. Passion, hope, and continuous efforts from our ideals will be the great drive ka.
4. Homework from the minister is for us to help think of 'teacher recruitment'.....and yes, it's a complicated issue. We plan to get started from a small discussion group and see how best to have a modest share ka.
From last week till mid next month, I'll help Fulbright Thailand with its program for 16 American teachers' visits in all the regions of Thailand. Will learn a lot again for sure ka!
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