Gift, a determined and stubborn student
Pim, probably best English pronunciation in the school of any Thai, student or adult.
Mint, center front, is the best student in the class.
Sigh, just an average day of learning English.
The boy with his mouth open is not the top of the class by any means, but when he knows the right answer he's the first one with his hand in the air.
San Kaew, all smiles. Sarah and I realized she was squinting at the whiteboard so we sent the message through the grapevine that she should have her eyes checked. Sure enough, a few weeks later she had a nice new set of specs. Her grades improved as well.
Bake.
Minnie. Very smart kid.
Pim again, too smart for her own good sometimes.
Judo. Has the biggest vocabulary of any student. He probably has a learning disability such as Asperger's syndrome (which in a country like this would probably go untreated), but he is one of our top performers English-wise. He was Sarah's favorite student by far.
San Kaew. I do not have any by-far favorites like Sarah, but she is certainly one of mine.
Don't ask me what they're doing, but no one is getting hurt.
The center-front one who doesn't seem to be noticing what's going on is Can. He was the most confident, energetic students I had. Always enthusiastic for attention without being a disruption; always wanting to participate even when he knew he didn't have the right answer. Great personality.
Front and center is Feel. Very hesitant to participate, but as you can see he is no loner. Garfield (as is on the grade sheet) or Gafeel (as he spells it on papers and pronounces it) has his arm around Feel. Gafeel is another really smart kid. He sits next to another smart one and together they were unstoppable in group learning games.
Er again.
Pictures of campus. No grass on campus, but not a totally ugly campus either.
From left to right this is Ni (girl), Mean (girl), NaMo (boy), Can (boy mentioned earlier) and Chai Yo (boy). Chai Yo's name is funny because it translates to "Hooray!" in English. Ni is the exceptional student that sits next to Gafeel. She always does her homework in class and wants to give it to me 5 minutes after I assigned it.
Standing: Boon, Feel, Copter (yes, as in "helicopter" it's English), Pleum, Kla Keng (the troublemaker of the class, though a born leader), and Mean.
Teacher John. Lived in UK, USA, France, Germany, and Thailand.
Teacher Don. Former electrical technician. Has worked in Thailand and Burma.
Teacher Steven. Former commodities trader and entrepreneur. He is the other 3rd grade teacher.
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| Flag Assembly. Roughly 30-45 minutes every morning. All 3000 students stand for most of it. Sitting, you can get a feeling of how many there are. |
