brucetefl

But Home Schooling in Thailand is actually illegal. But when I was having my kids home schooled everyone knew. Even friends in the MOE. But I needed the help of the private Pratom school to allow them to skip years and come back in.

Many people are concerned, and rightfully so, about how to best educate their children here in Thailand. I have three children. One of them finished M6 18 months ago. One is M6 now. A third is M5. I'm pretty happy with the way that their education has gone generally. Some of you maybe interested in how I did it, especially since there are no international schools nearby.

Their education started at birth. In my house, I only speak to my children English. Since they were born. Next, cartoons, movies, and any other television that they watched was exclusively in English. They were not allowed to watch any Thai programming. Let's face it, the rest of the world outside of my home will be in Thai. But I wanted them to be completely fluent in English. So those were the rules. When my children were younger my wife spoke to them in English. But after a few years she changed back to Thai. No problem. I left it up to her.

I chose A smaller, well-run, Thai private K-6 school for them. And I got to know the owner. I did her a few favors, like help her find English teachers or even helped her myself a few times. I did this because I was going to need a favor from her in the future.

each of my children spent two years of their primary education studying at home with a Filipina teacher. They studied the basic curriculum that the other students were studying, but they did it in English. Sometimes I would have two of my children studying together. Sometimes it would just be one. At the time I was paying 15,000 per month, 60,000 per term, 120,000 per year. With two kids together that's still far cheaper than most international schools.

I also gave my kids Reading assignments during the summer holidays. Every year and that even continues today. My oldest son ended up reading all the harry potter books as well as many Stephen King and other popular books.

When they got to Matayom I did not put them into the English programs. Why should they study with a bunch of kids who speak very little English? They speak English. I want them to learn what they're there to study.

Have been very happy with their education. The Thai school system is a joke. But there is a lot of cool stuff on the internet now (check out Crash Course on youtube)

Two posts from other threads that seem appropriate here:

This might be interesting to some.

A few years ago we had a lot of students taking our TEFL course in Ban Phe. We always went to one school to do our Teaching Practice (each of our students had to teach eight lessons to real students in a real Thai school). The school was not a good one academically. People who cared sent their kids to Rayong to the bigger and better schools.

When we first started visiting the school the kids were afraid of the teachers and could say nothing to them. But we kept visiting that school month after month. It was 80 to 120 hours of free classes per month at the school.

After a few months the students attitudes completely changed. As soon as we arrived at the school the students would gather around the van and greet the teachers, ask them simple questions and chat with them. There was a marked improvement in the students' English listening and speaking ability.

Then, quite suddenly, the director of the school told us we were no longer welcome. The students had not improved their scores in their grammar-centric exams!

Lets see.  What should I say here.

The person fired has spent several years in Thailand. 

Lets just say he has been fired many, many times over his lifetime.

My guess is he tried a bit too hard to be cute using the "homo" prefix.  In fact I would bet on it.

 

 

So the guy who wrote the article is the owner of See TEFL?  

 

So where is the mob with pitch forks and torches?  If I pulled an underhanded stunt like this the TEFL crowd would be outraged!

 

Honestly, is he trying to get competitors shut down?  Pathetic.

 

And I obviously was not looking at the right place for their MOE permission.  I did not see it, but stand corrected.

 

 

 

He's writing about unlicensed - IE illegal - competition Bruce. Surely a good thing as you are licensed as well.
 

 

What do you figure his motivation for writing is? 

 

Ummm.... for the betterment of Thailand and its people.   :)

Its called self serving.  

Let the MOE do their job and run a good TEFL course (or whatever kind of course you run).  Whining about your competition is just sad.

So the guy who wrote the article is the owner of See TEFL?  

So where is the mob with pitch forks and torches?  If I pulled an underhanded stunt like this the TEFL crowd would be outraged!

Honestly, is he trying to get competitors shut down?  Pathetic.

And I obviously was not looking at the right place for their MOE permission.  I did not see it, but stand corrected.

Honestly, while all have employed TEFLers in the past, at least RELS and GIS are really selective. St. Josephs seems to employ anyone with a pulse. But the pay was also much better at the former.

Although we no longer operate the TEFL training in Ban Phe, the school still has activity and is officially open.  Therefore licenses are still valid.  And, by agreement, we have given permission to the other TEFL International centers to operate under our license.  

Thanks for the info on See.  When visiting the MOE in Bangkok they never mentioned See having a license, just us, ECC and Text & Talk.  And they told us, in hindsight, that they wish they had never given us this permission.  Teacher training should be provided by universities, according to the MOE.  But they also could not revoke our licenses! 

Looking at the link you provided shows they are licensed with the MOE but not that they have permission to conduct Teacher Training.  As with most TEFL training centers in Thailand, from the appearances, it seems they are a language school operating the TEFL on the side without official permission.  

I could very well be wrong.  But I don't think I am.  Wouldn't be the first time, though.

To be honest I never made a big deal about our rare official permission because the MOE certainly were not closing down the centers that basically have sprung up like weeds over the last 15 years.  What was the point of raising a big fuss over the issue?  No one seemed to care.

Actually, to my knowledge and according to what I have been told by the MOE, there are only three non-formal registered Teacher Training organizations in Thailand.  ECC, TEFL International and Text & Talk.  After these three were registered, the MOE did not allow any more, stating that Teacher Training should be conducted by universities.  

Those claiming to be registered are registered as English schools and run TESOL training without official approval--something that the MOE may decide to crack down on along if they have chosen to enforce the laws.

Non-formal schools include language, cooking, dress making, massage and teacher training.

 

Most are licensed but there is a significant number that are not. They have been getting away with it for years. With ASEAN opening up next year, Thailand has decided to get its house in order.

GIS will be a big step up. RELS is already better than St. Joseph's (in my opinion). And GIS should be even better.

St Joseph's (as you undoubtedly know) is almost exclusively Thai. RELS has lots of 1/2 Thai kids as does GIS. GIS more outright foreigners, although I do not currently know students who attend GIS, but do know a handful that attend St. Andrews. All are a step up from St. Joseph's (again my opinion).

Having lived in Rayong area for over 16 years now I have known several students who have attended both Garden International School and its sister school Rayong English Program School. My friends who had send their kids to Garden actually had more complaints than the kids sent to REPS (never heard a complaint about REPS students), but I think they had far higher expectations as well.

In the past both have hired TEFLers from TEFL International (FOR SHAME!). But the ones I recall, like Shelly, were very good teachers despite the fact that they took a TEFL course.

My wife was formerly the president of the Rayong Non-formal education Association.  It was commonly known that roughly half of the schools in Rayong were unlicensed and... no one really cared.  Including the MOE.

This might be interesting to some.

A few years ago we had a lot of students taking our TEFL course in Ban Phe.  We always went to one school to do our Teaching Practice (each of our students had to teach eight lessons to real students in a real Thai school).  The school was not a good one academically.  People who cared sent their kids to Rayong to the bigger and better schools.

When we first started visiting the school the kids were afraid of the teachers and could say nothing to them.  But we kept visiting that school month after month.  It was 80 to 120 hours of free classes per month at the school.

After a few months the students attitudes completely changed.  As soon as we arrived at the school the students would gather around the van and greet the teachers, ask them simple questions and chat with them.  There was a marked improvement in the students' English listening and speaking ability.

Then, quite suddenly, the director of the school told us we were no longer welcome.  The students had not improved their scores in their grammar-centric exams!

I love this stuff, but it is more for high school students:

http://www.youtube.com/user/crashcourse

Bu there is loads of stuff out there. Even entire Home Schooling curriculum. Google is your friend.

thats a really interesting quote.

 And it shows Where things may be heading.

 The problem, of course, is that very few Thais speak English well enough to teach.  And those that you have a strong command of English can get 4 times the salary working in a company instead of being a teacher.

Now here is the magic question:

When they get rid of many of these teachers, are they going to get rid of the bad ones and only keep the good ones?  In my 18 years I see little correlation between qualifications and teaching skills.

In answer to the title of the thread…I hope so…I really hope so. Too many people out there passing themselves off as teachers when they ain't.

but they are supposed to offer them again.  At least that is the last I heard from TCT.

I live in Rayong and I know some. PM me.

Being an expert in a field does not make you a teacher in that field.  But it only takes a bit of training to make you capable of teaching.  Not an expert, but as Diane Larson Freeman says, and I paraphrase, we do not know exactly how to train teachers but we know they learn the most from actually teaching.

Actually none of my professors in undergrad or grad school had any training in how to teach.  They were just experts in the subject matter.

 

These statements are so illogical that it baffles me.
 
I would hire a trademan who has spent his entire life doing the task.  Yes.  And native English speakers have been speaking English their entire lives.
 
Would i hire someone to do the wiring on my house who spent 4 years studying how to lay bricks?  I would only care about how well he could do the wiring and I could care less about his time spent studying brick laying.
 
 
 

TEFL is a joke and should be banned IMO.

You are NOT a teacher. As i said before you don't hire an unqualified tradesman to do a job in your home do you?

TEFL is a bad loophole. It doesn;t matter if you are good or not. I strongly agree that a university degree should be minimum for working as a teacher.

You should all also bring a Police report from your home country no more than 2 months old. 

Speaking and being able to teach it. Miles apart.

I take it you're a "teacher"?

 

Many people with degrees have TEFL.  And TEFL is the normal qualification for language schools all over Europe.

I don't want TEFL ppl near anyone's kids. They are not fit for purpose

The end

These statements are so illogical that it baffles me.

I would hire a trademan who has spent his entire life doing the task.  Yes.  And native English speakers have been speaking English their entire lives.

Would i hire someone to do the wiring on my house who spent 4 years studying how to lay bricks?  I would only care about how well he could do the wiring and I could care less about his time spent studying brick laying.

TEFL is a joke and should be banned IMO.

You are NOT a teacher. As i said before you don't hire an unqualified tradesman to do a job in your home do you?

TEFL is a bad loophole. It doesn;t matter if you are good or not. I strongly agree that a university degree should be minimum for working as a teacher.

You should all also bring a Police report from your home country no more than 2 months old. 

A tutor is going to be expensive. If you can find a Thai it will likely be 150 or 200 baht per hour. Any decent westerner will be much more, Maybe better to get to know some of the kids that study at the international schools on the British system and get to be study partners with them. Invite them to pizza or something every week.

DO NOT PUT YOUR KIDS IN ENGLISH PROGRAM!

Why should they study with a bunch of kids who speak very little English? They speak English. I want them to learn what they're there to study.

I posted a much longer thread on educating kids here:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/747051-how-to-educate-your-kids-in-thailand/

Many people are concerned, and rightfully so, about how to best educate their children here in Thailand. I have three children. One of them finished M6 18 months ago. One is M6 now. A third is M5. I'm pretty happy with the way that their education has gone generally. Some of you maybe interested in how I did it, especially since there are no international schools nearby.

Their education started at birth. In my house, I only speak to my children English. Since they were born. Next, cartoons, movies, and any other television that they watched was exclusively in English. They were not allowed to watch any Thai programming. Let's face it, the rest of the world outside of my home will be in Thai. But I wanted them to be completely fluent in English. So those were the rules. When my children were younger my wife spoke to them in English. But after a few years she changed back to Thai. No problem. I left it up to her.

I chose A smaller, well-run, Thai private K-6 school for them. And I got to know the owner. I did her a few favors, like help her find English teachers or even helped her myself a few times. I did this because I was going to need a favor from her in the future.

each of my children spent two years of their primary education studying at home with a Filipina teacher. They studied the basic curriculum that the other students were studying, but they did it in English. Sometimes I would have two of my children studying together. Sometimes it would just be one. At the time I was paying 15,000 per month, 60,000 per term, 120,000 per year. With two kids together that's still far cheaper than most international schools.

I also gave my kids Reading assignments during the summer holidays. Every year and that even continues today. My oldest son ended up reading all the harry potter books as well as many Stephen King and other popular books.

When they got to Matayom I did not put them into the English programs. Why should they study with a bunch of kids who speak very little English? They speak English. I want them to learn what they're there to study.

Have been very happy with their education. The Thai school system is a joke. But there is a lot of cool stuff on the internet now (check out Crash Course on youtube)