gerryBScot

I think the best book is Boonsong Lekagul and Phil Round's Birds of Thailand but it is out of print and a bit out of date now. Second hand copies can be found but are expensive. I like it because Phil has direct experience of working with many of these birds over the last 30 + years as Thailand's leading field biologist. There is a widely available and up to date version of this in Thai language under Boonsong's sole authorship.....he is now dead but undoubtedly is the most important Thai figure in birds and conservation. The English language edition has some good stuff about where to go and field craft. There are also good quality guidebooks in English written by Craig Robson which are available in most of the good bookshops in Chiang Mai.

There are a couple of good websites: norththailandbirding and add the dotcom thing is full of up to date observation details and information about locations. As its name might suggest it is good on the north so might give you some ideas about good areas to visit in your locale. there are also a couple of facebook groups with obvious names.

Hope this helps and good birding1

I find as a general rule that market traders have fantastic mental arithmetic - they need to otherwise they'll lose their customers. Prices are usually rounded too and usually in the buyer's favour. This is one of my regrets - that it took me so long to understand just how good local markets really are. In all respects that is - food is cheaper, fresher and the traders are not only great counters but also want your custom so they look after you, talk to you and generally give you a much better service. I never leave my local market feeling I have been overcharged either.

The problem with the 7-11 crew and there ilk is they are instructed to calculate everything by calculator. They get bollocked if they don't. This is an ingenious management strategy to minimise errors. It doesn't work, as the OP makes clear.

I suspect that basic numeracy skills as in mental arithmetic are in universal free fall, not just here in Thailand, with the advent of calculators and spreadsheets. I don't really know why else. I think every person needs to know the tables up to 12 if they are to have basic numeracy and not knowing this is a real disadvantage regardless of ability to use a calculator or a spreadsheet.

Primary Mathematics is possibly a misnomer because in real terms it is mainly Arithmetic. In virtually every class I teach there is some sort of counting on or back activity using different multiples and the students really like it - it requires them to pay attention and I think they genuinely like the challenge. And when you consider that for most language learners, 'foreign number' is very difficult, then I would say my students are making good progress.

I would also add that teaching Arithmetic and the rest is actually quite a highly specialised gig, especially subjects such as 'fractions'. The concepts are not exactly intuitive. These poor little blighters learn all about 1-2-3-4 and can readily understand that the numbers get bigger by one as you go up....., makes perfect sense and then you introduce 1/2 and then 1/4 and then 1/6 and 1/24 and you ask them which one is biggest. There's not much of a surprise if they say 1/24 is there? So understanding the concepts behind fractions and the fact that they conflict with much of what has been learned to date is understandably very challenging.

Ladies and Gentlemen I am overwhelmed by your messages of congratulations and support and the snippets of your lives that you have shared. Many thanks to you all and may you all flourish, just for today, get to bed clean and sober and resume that happy trudge tomorrow morning for another 24 hours.

You did what needed to be done and took the decision with great strength of character. Respects.

I'm 1 year on the wagon, but it was heart trouble that brought me to my senses. Before that I thought I was able to cope with drinking. What a crock of self-delusion. Since quitting, life just continues to get better. (I won't bore you with the details.)

Best to all.

Thanks and great stuff. Doesn't matter why we did it - just that we did it. My motivation was in part based on a significant, irregular heartbeat which went after about two years' sobriety. So keep it going and good luck.

Yup my journey into sobriety began 12 years ago when I rolled up at my first AA meeting at lunchtime in Northfields, out west in London. There unwittingly ended 25 years of drinking. Even before I picked up a drink myself, my life had been hugely affected by alcohol due to my parents' drinking. I don't think this had any relationship with my own alcoholism beyond conditioning me to the acceptability and normality of the behaviour that goes with the crazy drinking that we drunks get involved in. I never drank 'normally', - it was like pressing a switch, I was off and I drank abnormally from the off. It would be wrong to describe my life since as a cake walk - there have been many difficulties and problems which I have been able to negotiate, sometimes better than others. There have been lows and highs and lots of good, ordinary times in between. In amongst it all I have managed to move out here, get married for the first time,( how my wife and I got married is the stuff of fairy tales), father two great kids, (another first) and work. At the point of my first AA meeting I might have resorted to violence if someone had suggested it might work out the way it has. I've done it the AA way which surprised many people who knew me. Probably the most important decision I ever made. As always no big celebrations, a quiet family evening with the people who matter in my life. As I live in the sticks I don't get to many meetings these days but I checked in at Hua Hin recently and perhaps I'll come into BKK for a meeting this weekend. So I'm grateful to this forum and the people who hang out here - it's very helpful to me, especially those people who are struggling and in that insidious position of being unsure, in the debating society as we say. May your higher power bless you all!

Never really had a problem with Bangkok taxi drivers. When I come into town always found them to be good and helpful. I don't negotiate. If a price is suggested as opposed to the meter, I get out immediately and take the next one. I suppose this is the benefit of having rudimentary Thai. I'm not interested in complaining - doesn't solve my problem which is to get from A to B. Last taxi I used was from Silom to Sai Dtai Mai - a real sharp cookie, he knew I was catching a coach so gave me a price to my final destination which was very good; with the wife and two kids it was a no-brainer so we got the taxi home, he got the fair and a decent tip and he's now in my mobile phone and he gets the call ..... Unfortunately the hack driving game attracts a certain mentality, and having done it in London for a couple of years I know that if you look after people they tend to look after you; most of them however are chasing the fast buck, and many are clearly in the wrong job!

Exactly. I'm in my visa exemption, as an American -- and on the extension of it at that. Perhaps I can do a visa run and snag a 3 month tourist visa (including extensions,) but am umcomfortable at the prospect of being refused.

Anyways, if I have have problems and have to do a visa run to work on a tourist visa, I kgyt Hyatt sue in principle f the matter, irregardless getting my money (investment) back -- if at the very least, protecting other foreigners from this some sort indentured servitude, under the thumb of a corrupt management. Im 29, and have a pension that fall back on -- hate to think of young twenty-somethings not a whole unlike myself getting screwed by some incompetent dimwit who thinks that because he tucks his shirt in and has a mother tongue in English thinks he can manage an agency like this, make $200/hour for all the effort he's (neglected) to put in in my behalf, ******, that he can take 10% after falling through in his promises and responsibilities, complaining about racial discrimination when I look at their teaching methods and ****** TEFL strategies, never having fully learned a second alien language for themselves, thinking they're competent to teach English as a foreign language at it, just as incompetent themselves as the 'whiteys' they complain about (but oh, they tuck in their shirts, and punch in at 7:58 eh !)

I should add that you are working illegally if it is a visa exemption. At least one other person knows you are working illegally: your agent. He may well try to use that against you and he wouldn't be the first disgruntled agent or school manager to report an illegal worker. I rather fancy that Immigration are a wee bit busy in southern Thailand right now with other issues but you need to rectify your situation immediately.

William teaching in this country can involve eating a lot of humble pie. I've had to eat loads. In fact it is remarkable I'm still working here because I've rocked the boat big style. But looking back, it's not helped me, it's not helped my students, it's given me tons of stress and anxiety. I try to avoid confrontation as much as possible nowadays, I accept my powerlessness sort of thing and focus on the classroom. I love being in the classroom working with the kids - it's constantly challenging and stimulating and only occasionally frustrating.

You have learned something important: don't work for an agency. Pick yourself up, dust yourself off and get on with it.

What's your current visa? Is it a visa or some sort of extension of stay? That will determine your legal status. I would avoid immigration at all costs until your legal status is clear. I would also say as others have said that suing is a waste of time and money. Even in the the UK if you were successful in obtaining a judgement you would be lucky to see a penny of it as most debtors would liquidate themselves to prevent judgements being enforced. Can't get blood out of a stone. It's even less efficient here.

If you have the means and the qualifications you might be best advised to seek a job where you are directly employed by a school. But you need to clarify your current status.

Sounds as if you are also becoming a good teacher as well because I think the test at the start of the term was a very good move - you have some sense of what your students can and can't do and obviously this now leaves you in a position to teach to their needs.

I would agree with LostinIsaan that some sort of phonics content would be appropriate but most of the materials I know are designed for small kids and older students might be offended if you produced this sort of stuff. I am sure there is phonics stuff available for older learners and I suggest you try and source it. I recommend phonics for reading because it equips learners with the skills to try to read a word they cannot recognise. I would also suggest that you need to source a list of 'irregular' words that don't follow normal phonic rules and teach them alongside your phonics - a lot of these are common words such as 'I', 'me', 'have', 'the', 'she', 'go', 'do' etc so they are worth including.

Perhaps you could try some group work with them. Carve your class up into 4 person small groups, allocate at least one more able student to each group and thereafter try to mix abilities; in your allocation you can separate students that you feel should be kept apart. Give them a group task: everyone in this class to be able to read three simple sentences. (You'll need to prepare some simple sentences) Make them responsible to each other for ensuring everyone in the group can read the sentences. Test them individually and record an individual score for each student but average the four individual scores to make a group score. Don't give them an individual score but give each group the averaged score...... You could adapt something along these lines.... might be fun and you might be surprised how effective it can be in helping people learn.

Let me wish you good luck and hope you have some success.

No surprises in any of this LostinIsaan, that's why I was unsure about what point you were trying to make. Much worse is passed off in schools in this kingdom as learning English. I love Fatfather's 'How are you tomorrow?' and I believe 100% it happened, that this it is not apocryphal. Have you ever looked at how children write Roman letters here? The whole shebang of education is truly mind boggling in Thailand and most other places too.

My point about impropriety ( you like that, an adjective into a noun!?) and ethics is simply this: you should obtain permission from a person before publishing their material. I am not concerned about forum rules or the laws of the Kingdom of Thailand. We have all seen a lot of nonsense in our travails as teachers in this aforementioned Kingdom. This forum provides a useful outlet for the understandable frustrations that can arise but I think there is a line that needs to be drawn and I think LostInIsaan's picture helps clarify for me what should be above and below that line.

(PS I had to edit this for the grammar police as I forgot to add a question mark to my question, in the brackets!)

Hey LII I don't know what your point is but if that is a picture of someone else's work, whether a colleague or a student, I really think you should take it down. I think it is improper and unethical to post this sort of stuff. In addition to that I just can't work out where you are coming from - I really can't understand it at all. What is your point? What is this about?

And Kiwis speak Australian!

I thought it was called Strine! And according to the way my sound connects to the brain Strine and Kiwi are very distinct!

Regarding the "pass everyone" thing, that is for the same reason that students cannot be divided within their year and placed in classes appropriate to their ability. Parents would insist on their kids being in the "highest" class in each subject. It's lousy parenting, which fortunately is also their motivation for insisting on western teachers regardless of teaching ability.

This is an excellent point. In English being able to 'stream' students according to ability would make such an enormous difference - for instance a simple classification of 'beginner', 'intermediate' and 'advanced' would help everyone: teacher and students alike. In this way teachers could deliver teaching appropriate to learners' needs. What happens is the 'one-size-fits-all'approach, so you can get native speaker and beginner levels, and every level in between, in the same class and very few students are actually learning because it is virtually impossible to teach meaningful lessons when such extremes of differentiation are required.

I saw something hysterical a few days ago. 'I am a boy girl', just like that, was on the board and the teacher was trying to get the kids to introduce themselves and say if they were a boy or a girl and there were kids saying 'Hello I am Top, I am a boy girl' ......

I remember getting turned over in a very famous bar in Venezia many moons ago when the lira was still the legal currency. Well they tried ....... as some famous opera star entered over whom the waiters were fawning, wrapping his focaccia in serviettes for him and they saw the wisdom of correcting their mistake as I was about to start throwing furniture! Them were the days, not!

Yup aarontendo thx for the link. always good to get access to research about the Thai system written by Thai academics. i don't have the time to read it right now but that third essay on Thai teachers and moonlighting looks fascinating.

Good luck Corkman. I think it was Chairman Mao who said every long journey begins with a first step - hope this is yours.

Your question highlights the absurdity of 'norms'. These are simply benchmarks which take absolutely no account of individual circumstances. For some the amount of daily alcohol intake you refer to may be 'safe' for others it may not be. Depends on a whole range of other factors. The question really is: do you control alcohol or does it control you? After almost 30 years of 'experimentation' I decided it controlled me and have now been free of it for twelve years. Happy to be sober this morning and able to function without a nonsensical debate going on in my head about whether I have a drink problem. The solution, if the answer was yes as in my case, is astonishingly simple.

Here is a good video on it.

"In this talk from RSA Animate, Sir Ken Robinson lays out the link between 3 troubling trends: rising drop-out rates, schools' dwindling stake in the arts, and ADHD. An important, timely talk for parents and teachers."

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_changing_education_paradigms

This is a brilliant TED presentation which anyone who is interested in education should watch - should point out that it only deals with ADD/ADHD in a very indirect way, a passing reference albeit very witty. Great stuff and thanks.

It might be an idea to consider getting checked out by a cardiologist. Sheryl recommends a doctor who holds a Saturday surgery at the Bangkok Christian Hospital in SIlom. If you search this thread you'll get his name.

There is a huge variety of medication available so probably best to get input from a specialist who also has experience of treating Westerners. Also a simple procedure like an echocardiogram usually will pick up anything major - the last one I had cost 2,500 THB. Don't now how much it would cost in BKK but probably not significantly higher and possibly less.

There are always other considerations, variations of 'white coat syndrome' - seeing a doctor or being in a hospital for treatment can increase your BP; worrying about your BP likewise ; you can definitely over test your BP if you are self-testing. Also I am not sure how useful random readings of BP are due to normal fluctuations. I would suggest you pick a time and measure your BP at that time every day for a week or a month and then average it ... that will give you a much more precise indication of whether you have hypertension. It's the average that is important as BP obviously fluctuates.

Whatever, doing nothing would be foolish. Seek proper help and get your BP under control - controlled BP is a significant element in reducing strokes and heart attacks.

The no-fail system is the real deal-killer when it comes to improving the Thai Ed system. As long as the students know that it doesn't matter what they learn or don't learn, they will continue to have no motivation the learn anything.

This: Teachers spend 40 per cent of their time working on the mandatory assessment forms required by the Education Ministry, most of which have no direct impact on the quality of their teaching or on the students. This activity takes up 43 days a year.

is another big problem. The system is set up to grind any motivation or enthusiasm out of both the students and the teachers.

I recently attended a seminar given by a Thai professor who was an adviser to the MOE for curriculum design. She was arrogant, narrow-minded, confrontational when questioned and a boring teacher. Here is one of her choice quotes "the problem with the Thai educational system is that foreign teachers are not educated", and when asked a question about redundant paperwork she said, "you should do this (spend hours copying a book) because it will make you a better teacher!". With people like her in charge of the MOE, Thailand will never improve.

In theory you are completely right. The no fail approach basically removes the need for students to get out of bed in the morning. However the reality of being a school student is somewhat different. The quality of the teaching like the learning is so patchy - some good teachers, some not so good, whether Thai or 'foreign'. Some of the exams that are used to test students, which I have seen, are so awful, both in terms of incorrect academic content and in terms of incorrect English language content that it would be wrong to allow anyone to fail. I have seen things that have really surprised me in schools here.

The problem really is the management. These dodgy exams are invariably approved by a number of managers. Until schools get real educational leadership and direction everything else is just patching up a pretty awful system.

I am sure this is covered elsewhere but: BA., DipEd., Adv Dip Ind Design., thirteen years teaching - all gained in Australia. But no TESOL. Would this be enough to obtain a Thai Teaching license?

Your DipEd is presumably a post graduate diploma in education? It should amply satisfy not having a TESOL qualification. Do you have classroom experience? If so you should be able to secure employment in International Schools where pay and conditions will generally reflect what a teacher can earn in their home county.

Thanks for the reply - I was a bit concerned.

Yes, my experience is all classroom based. And my Diploma is a Post Grad Dip. So looks as though that should cover things. Busy learning Thai at the moment. I can read far better than speak the language. can't wait to get out of my current contract and get to Thailand.

You might want to ensure you get some form of written confirmation of previous teaching experience from school(s) you have worked : basically a reference. Also details of your registration with your home country education authority. These will enable you to apply for a full teacher's licence with a five year validity though perhaps as a new arrival and new start you may have to rely initially on a waiver for the purposes of getting visas and wor permits. I think it takes 2-3 months for full licence to be issued.

With qualifications and experience you will undoubtedly be able to work in international schools in both Thailand and further afield. There is a thread in this forum which makes it clear what a mixed bag these schools can be. They include the best schools in Thailand and others which are not quite so good. Don't let the name 'international' fool you.

Good luck1

I welcome the TDRI findings. It's really important to challenge the common confusion in Thai schools that quality and quantity are the same. It belies a wider misconception that education is a mechanical process like industrial production in a factory. So the more time you devote to something, then the more product you get. Except anyone who works in education appreciates after their first week in a school that learning is a much more complex, variable and unpredictable process in which 'time' is one consideration amidst many other such as content, methodology, affect etc. Another shibboleth that needs to be highlighted, and it is a variation on the time thing, is that there is some advantage to starting a child's formal education at the earliest opportunity. It is not uncommon in Thailand for two year olds to be dispatched in full uniform to pre-kindergarten where they will spend a day in a formal classroom setting where the emphasis is on sitting at a table and 'receiving' education, i.e. being filled up like a petrol tank. It is in fact a waste of time and money, highly disruptive of young kids' lives and can be very bad for their physical health due to the exposure to high levels of germs and of course it has no proven educational benefit.

So let's hope the debate continues to be productive and focused on the real issues.

What he adds is you can always obtain a new 2-year waiver

if you move to another school every 2 years. Is this correct?

Absoluley 100% NO!

1st waiver at one school: Yes

2nd waiver at same school: Yes

2nd waiver at different school; Yes

3rd waiver at same school as first one: Yes / Maybe

3rd waiver at new school; Impossible.

Basically (if you don't have an Education degree or a PGCE) you have 4 - 6 years here. Don't marry anyone. Don't have any kids.

I know several NES teachers who have been teaching here for 10+ years; at least two of them, maybe more, do not even have a degree. How are they able to stay on?

Why are you asking for answers on here when you could ask the teachers themselves .....I am sure there are a few on here would like to know and then once you've got the answers from them you could let everyone on here know how to teach in a school in Thailand.