Tom, a Thai friend of mine, asked me if I wanted to teach English for a day or two at his Tom Karen Center. I wasn’t sure I wanted to do it, or if I could do it, but I said I would try.

Tom Karen Center is a learning center that Tom  built as an extension of his home in Ban Huisak, a village of about 500 Karen tribe people. It started out three years ago when he decided that it was his destiny to teach English to the kids in his village so that they could get better jobs. First he bought some chairs and a long table and put them in a spare room in his house, and I donated some paper and colored pencils. As time went on, he got more donations and bought books, pencils, paper, white boards, and built an out-building to use as a second classroom. Last year I donated some money for him to build 3 toilet stalls. This year, he has kids coming from neighboring villages as well as from his own village, and has about 40-60 students every day when school is not in session.

I arrived on a Thursday, and observed four volunteers from Canada and England teaching English to about 40 kids. Classes start at around 9:00 in the morning and go until about 4:30 in the afternoon. These volunteers  were university students in the filed of teaching and had been there for a week. They admitted that it was a challenge to teach kids a single subject for that long. They were going to teach one more day and leave Friday night. I spent Friday in Chiang Saen and came back to Ban Huisak on Saturday.

I was asked to teach the young group, ages 5-9.

I started off with a review of the ABCs, then the numbers 1-10, then the days of the week, then more ABCs, and more numbers. Then I got out a set of Thai/English flash cards that I have used to teach myself Thai.  We went through these twice, and then I had them play charades (something I stole from the volunteers bag of tricks).  It was 11:30 and I was exhausted and out of ideas. They were due for a lunch break at around 12:30, so I got some toys out of my duffel bag and declared free time. Later they had lunch and I took a nap. In the afternoon, Tom took the kids on a walking field trip, identifying things and speaking their English names. He suggested that I help Stang study.

Stang is in her last year of high school. She speaks English with a thick accent, but has a large vocabulary. She is going to a University next year, maybe studying English. She opened up a PDF of an exit exam that majors in English have to pass before graduating. There were about 25 little stories with 3-5 question about each story. 100 questions in total. She was getting about 60% of the questions correct, and I was able to confirm her answers were correct or ask her to try again. Then came a question, “Which month has fewer days, June or July”. Stang was unsure, and while she was trying to figure it out or guess, I showed her the knuckle mnemonic device. You know the one—where you put your two fists next to each other and count January (long month), February (short month)… She was delighted to learn this, and I was delighted to have taught something. If that question comes up again, she WILL get it RIGHT! I made a difference!

Today is better than tomorrow.

Kevin