Somtawin Witead Suksa Huaymongkhon School

[CDNinKS]

Just wanted to let people know that recently a teacher at this school was assaulted by the parent of one of his pupils. Apparently the parent was upset that the teacher had disciplined his daughter in class for bad behavior. The parent arrived at the school while the kids were lining up for the bus and exchanged words with the teacher, which led to the parent physically assaulting the teacher ( in front of the kids).

The worst part is that the school did.........wait for it........NOTHING!!! Did not expel the student, did not call the police, did NOTHING!! When questioned why they did nothing, they said because they were afraid the parent might come back and be even more violent.

This is the first and last year my daughter will attend that school!

[Expat7]

Isnt Somtawin a fee paying school popular with expats? Was the assailant Thai or Foreign. No excuse for violence and the school not taking action, just is it more to do with loosing revenue thatn anything else.

[CDNinKS]

The assailant was Thai.....hence the schools reluctance to act. You probably are correct about the loss of revenue, but that is short sighted in my opinion as they will lose my business at the end of this school year. I can't keep my daughter in a school that clearly is not a safe place.

[Falcon]

CDNinks, This is not exactly how things happened in the school, nor did the school refuse to do anything about it.

This all started with the teacher telling the pupil off for talking in the line up, something which the child seemed to take offence to so she told her Father. her Father came to the school at 1pm and went straight up to the teachers classroom and when meeting with the teacher, he asked what he had said to his Daughter. The teacher then said that as it was a couple of days ago he couldn't remember and had to get to his class. The parent then got angrier and made a threat to the teacher and walked away. The teacher then contacted the admin dept and told them of the threat and thast he wanted to get the police down to the school. The Admin then made a comment of "ok, its up to you". This was taken, at the time, by the teacher, to mean they weren't doing anything. The teacher then contacted the PTC chairman and asked him to come to the school to talk about it. This he did and went to the Admin to discuss it. The comment "up to you" was not taken in the right context by the teacher as, far from the admin not supporting him, what they actually meant was that it was up to the teacher, if he wanted to contact the police then he could and the school would suppor the teacher. This is a far cry from the school doing "nothing"!

The parent came back at around 15:45 the same day after most of the children had already left for the day and wanted to speak to the same teacher. The teacher not wanting to have a confrontation with the parent refused to comment further when asked the same question by the parent and the parent made a move forward towards the teacher. The teacher jumped backwards and 2 other teachers, one which was the headmaster + the chairman of the PTC were present throughout and spoke to the irate parent. An appointment was made to speak with the parent and the teacher + admin was made for the following day which went ahead a day later as the meeting had to be delayed for a day due to other appointments. Discussions were had between the school (headmaster and admin), the parent + in attendance were the chairman of the PTC and his Wife. After a heated 10/15 minutes rant by the parent, he was made to see that the way that he handled the situation was totally wrong and he accepted that he did this, in his own words, with an angry heart. It was put to him that, in future, if there was anything that he wanted to discuss with a teacher or in fact the school, that he should make an appointment with the headmaster and both the headmaster, the parent and the teacher would all meet in the headmaters office for an amicable talk. The parent accepted his error and offered to come to the school and to give his version of events and to apologize to any parents that knew about what had gone on that day. The PTC chairmans WIfe had over 20 calls from Thai parents questioning what had gone on that day, and these parent were contacted again to be invited in to the school to hear from the parent, the admin, Headmaster and the PTC chairman and his WIfe over what was to happen in the school as far as security measures happening and, for the people that actually showed up, this was conveyed and the parent made a full and frank apology to both the school and to the parents of children in the school. Now, I dont know how long you have been here CDNinks but this kind of an apology is next to impossible to get from a Thai due to the loss of face that they deem to be so important. However, this parent not only apologised, he was man enough to have first made the offer himself to apologise without being forced or asked, which really says a lot about his sincerity.

None of this happened in front of the children other than the initial talk when the parent went to the classroom and even then, the children in the classroom only saw 2 people talking. There was never any mention of the school admin doing nothing because "they were afraid the parent might come back and be even more violent", this just didnt happen! In fact, the admin were determined to do something about it as their first priority is to the children and the staff.

The children were of course, not expelled over this. Why would they be? Children are not accountable for their parents actions and, besides, this was all something out of nothing and really just a simple misunderstanding by the parent whose child didn't like being told off by a teacher.

As was told to the parent, Somtawin is a school with an international student population of over 20 nationalities. Therefore, there is nothing like a Thai school with teh 'saving face' system that goes on there. If a child is well behaved they get on well, if they are mis behaved they get told off, its no different to anywhere else. There also is no vindication in the school no matter the race, the financial standing of the parent, the religion or anything else. Children are children and are all treated teh same way and with the same respect and discipline procedures.

The school is a good school and has some very good teachers who care about the children. Its small enough for everyone to know each other and big enough that everything is covered in regards to lessons.

I hope that this helps to clarify matter that you have written about above and explains the real details the small incident, which, again, was made to be something out of nothing really by miscommunication and the parent dealing with things in the wrong way.

Regards,

[CDNinKS]

Thank you for your very detailed account of the events that differ greatly from the account I had from my Thai wife.

Don't you think that it would have a good idea to advise ALL the parents of this incident, not just the ones who called? Would this not have avoided my post that was made with the info I received, flawed or not? I'm sorry, but I still hold you entirely responsible for my post as YOU (the school) made NO effort to get out in front of this. Unless you were trying to hide this, why not send a letter home with the students with the same explanation you gave here?

Surely I don't need to mention the name Sandyhook Elementary for you to see why this really got under my skin. I need to know my daughter is safe there, so don't you even attempt to reprimand me for my post!

I stand by my original statement, my daughter will not be attending next year.

[darrendsd]

Thank you for your very detailed account of the events that differ greatly from the account I had from my Thai wife.

Don't you think that it would have a good idea to advise ALL the parents of this incident, not just the ones who called? Would this not have avoided my post that was made with the info I received, flawed or not? I'm sorry, but I still hold you entirely responsible for my post as YOU (the school) made NO effort to get out in front of this. Unless you were trying to hide this, why not send a letter home with the students with the same explanation you gave here?

Surely I don't need to mention the name Sandyhook Elementary for you to see why this really got under my skin. I need to know my daughter is safe there, so don't you even attempt to reprimand me for my post!

I stand by my original statement, my daughter will not be attending next year.

With a dad like you i'm surprised they would want here there anyway

The School handled the situation very well and getting a Thai to admit to his mistake is a good sign that they did

Unfortuantley incidents like this will happen from time to time, the School could not have handled it any better than the way they did

Maybe you should get your facts right before jumping to conclusions?

They did not hide it at all, read the posters post in full

Edited December 15, 2013 by darrendsd

[Falcon]

CDNinks, Further to your last reply;

>>Thank you for your very detailed account of the events that differ greatly from the account I had from my Thai wife<<

This is the problem when getting 2nd hand, 3rd hand and often more 'hands' information. Its like Chinese whispers, stories change as it goes along and where there is very little that actually happened, once it gets passed down and down, it becomes a huge problem. This is why it would have been better, if you had a concern through what your Wife told you that she had heard happen at the school, that you actualy went in to the school and discussed your concerns with either Steve, the headmaster, or Mark in Admin.

>>Don't you think that it would have a good idea to advise ALL the parents of this incident, not just the ones who called?

No, not at all. What would be the point of this? There was never any problem for any child, no child was aware of what was being said by the parent or teacher and this was simply, as I have already said, something of nothing and, as such, why make the problem bigger than it ever needed to be by making people aware of the fact that a parent came in to school to complain? The only reason that so many Thai parents (Mothers) knew about the incident was simply becasue most of them are connected to the same social networks - facebook/line, and they mostly all talk through these channels.

>>Unless you were trying to hide this, why not send a letter home with the students with the same explanation you gave here?

Again, why would the school feel it necessary to do this? How many parents or children actualy knew that there was a parent went in to the school to complain? If you were to go in to the school and get annoyed with a teacher or any member of staff in the school, would you like to see a letter going out to all parents saying something like "dear parents, CDNinks, the Father of xxxxxx, a student here at Somtawin came in to complain about the school today and got annoyed, just thought you all would like to know"!?!? Doesn't really sound very feasible does it? What about a letter going out to all the parents saying that "Today, Mr. CDNinks made a negative post on Thai visa"!? Again, not very feaasible is it? This is the same reason that I am sure the school felt it totaly unnecessary to notify anyone of the small incident.

>>I still hold you entirely responsible for my post as YOU (the school) made NO effort to get out in front of this.

I am not the school,, nor do I work for or speak for the school. I am simply a parent, just the same as you. The only difference is that i am the chairman of the PTC. All parents are members of the PTC but very few get involved unfortunately. My Wife had over 20 Thai parents (Mothers) calling her the day after the incident and they were all called and notified of the meeting between the school, PTC and the parent involved, How many parents actually bothered to turn up to the meeting? A grand total of THREE! I would suggest that if you would like to get to know the school better and to take part in the activities in which your child takes part in, such as sports day, science day, halloween, Christmas fete day, etc. then you make the effort to come down to a PTC meeting and join in. Letters go out every time there is either a meeting or an activity.

>> for you to see why this really got under my skin. I need to know my daughter is safe there, so don't you even attempt to reprimand me for my post!

Where do you see that i reprimanded you for giving an opinion? My issue would simply be with you making a post about something that was from heresay. Wouldn't it have been far better and easier to just go to the school headmaster or Admin and ask them to explain about the situation? This would have resulted in first hand and accurate information.

>>I stand by my original statement, my daughter will not be attending next year.

That of course is your decision and that which you need to take up with the school. However, before acting on taking your Daughter out of the school, I would actualy think of my childs education first as, in my view, there is no school that is better in Hua hin than Somtawin. My own Son's education has come on in leaps and bounds in his 2 years there.

This will be my last post on this subject as the post just highlights a very small incident but, through constant talking about it makes it appear bigger to anyone reading. If you would like to get in touch to discuss anything about teh PTC or to discuss and issue that the PTC could possibly help with within the school then please feel free to either send me a PM here or you can see me at any time at the schoo, I am there every afternoon from 3pm.

Regards,

[fullnoon]

in my humble opinion this is by far the BEST school around and everybody involved is highly responsible and taking care for the students. this school is engaged in international students exchange and meets high european standards. All kind of unfortunate events may happen at any school but i am convinced it is taken care of in the most suitable way.