Patanadek School

I thought it would be interesting for everyone to read a little bit about what my school (Patanadek) says about itself. It’s a very progressive, private education in Thailand.

School Philosophy:
Patanadek School believes that all children can learn. Being sensitive to progressive child development, Patanadek will strive to promote academic excellence while instilling both self and group discipline in its students. The goal of Patanadek is to prepare students to learn and live in a global society, to be active in protecting the environment, while preserving their rich Thai culture and nationality.

Teaching Philosophy:
Patanadek will strive to develop students who are critical thinkers as opposed to students who memorize facts. Teachers will encourage students to learn by doing, thus playing an active role in their own education.

School Slogan:
Our school is comfortable like home. Our teachers are caring like parents.

General Info:
Patanadek School, which means “Child Development School” in Thai, was founded in 1977 by Ms. Tasiri Suvarnasara. For the first 20 years the school consisted of a very progressive kindergarten. In 1997, the school opened its doors to elementary students and the English Language Program was established to provide students with the opportunity to learn English with native speaking teachers. Today the school houses not only a Thai kindergarten, an English kindergarten, an English elementary, but also a nursery program. The entire school strives to help students learn using the latest, most effective educational techniques and practices.

The Thai kindergarten program consists of levels 1, 2, and 3 and takes children from 3 to 6 years of age. Classes average 25-30 students and are taught by a professional staff of caring teachers supplemented by special subject teachers.

The English Program school consists of kindergarten levels 1, 2, and 3 and elementary grades 1 through 6, accepting students from 3 years old to 12 years old. Classes are limited to 25 or less students and each class has a Thai homeroom teacher. The English Program classes are taught by native speaking foreign teachers with help from the Thai homeroom teachers. English, Math, and a portion of Science, Social Studies, Health and P.E. are taught in English. Other required and special subjects are taught in Thai. All students study music, art, and computers with special subject teachers. Kindergarten students are all taught to swim. (**most Thais don’t know how to swim so this is a very big deal to have children who are not afraid of the water!)

The school aims to:
-develop a growing awareness and appreciation of Thai culture
-provide the best education to young students, developing their minds and life skills as well as traditional academics
-prepare students to deal with modern technology
-prepare students to cope with the present global society
-help students become life long learners and problem solvers.


**Hopefully you are thinking the same thing I was thinking when I found all this out…it sounds like a great place to work at! And it is. I was recommended by other foreign teachers and they were right. The school is very progressive for Thailand and is similar to the Montessori preschool I worked at in Des Moines. I like the approach we use in teaching kindergarten. I think we are preparing them for 1st grade by learning different subjects with different teachers but there are also lots of constants in the day.
My job is actually two jobs right now. They haven’t hired an additional foreign kindergarten teacher so I’ve been doing both kindergarten classes. It’s been tiring but it’s nice to be able to teach some things twice and really perfect what I want to do the second time. It’s interesting for me to get to see both classes and to experience how different they are too. I have to adjust little things depending on the class because the overall understanding of the classes are not the same. Each week, my 2 Thai co-teachers (one for each classroom) make our lesson plans. We work closely so the students have very similar experiences and then can go to 1st grade and be at roughly the same level. One of the classes also has a student teacher so it’s nice to be able to have just one more person in the classroom.

A typical day for me is:
8am Arrive at work and do any preparations and hang around the kids in hopes someone wants to speak a little English!
8:45am Flag Ceremony with all the other kindergarten students
9am Homeroom with me. We go over the calendar, count how many boys and girls, and talk about the weather.
9:45am Movement related to our topic for that day. For example-when we learned class rules we played Simon Says to practice listening to the teacher
10am hot chocolate milk time
10:10am Theme with me. Teach about the topic for the day making sure to do some listening, some speaking, a little writing and drawing.
11am Theme with me (different class!)
12pm Lunchtime in the canteen
12:30pm back in the classroom to just be around and play
1pm special subject-Thai, Art, Computer, P.E. or Dance
2pm Wrap Up sometimes with me and sometimes with the Thai teacher. Just review vocabulary and the topic today. If I didn’t do homeroom with this class then I’ll do the homeroom routine with them.
3pm Wrap Up with Thai teacher explaining homework, have a snack, put on socks and shoes, and get ready to go home
3:30pm take the kids to the playground to play until they’re picked up
4pm I go home


As you can see, I am really getting to experience life as a somewhat “real teacher”. I’m very fortunate to have had so much experience teaching preschool and then knowing Thai culture and education at KKU that it hasn’t been too difficult for me. Don’t get me wrong though, there are still LONG days! I think I’m lucky because my set up is even better than student teaching because I am put right in there but I get lots of help from my co-teachers. They have much more experience teaching this age group and so I can learn from them. It’s really great for me to be able to have this experience to be able to decide if this is what I want to be doing with my life. We’ll see what happens I guess but I just received a GRE prep book from a friend in Thailand. Is that a sign? Perhaps, but it won’t matter unless I start studying.

Back in KK

So much has happened and I'm not sure where to start. I will start with the easy part of putting up some pictures of recent events.

Pictures from a week long trip with a friend (Arielle) working for an orphanage in Vietnam. We traveled around Northern Thailand until I had to come back to KK for the start of my new job. We had a great time and I found an amazing travel buddy.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=52812&l=25f78&id=512610984

I started my new job, my roommates are gone in India and I missed people from home...this all easily become homesickness and I medicated it by meeting Arielle for a long weekend in Nong Khai followed by a short visit by her in Khon Kaen! It was exciting to have a visitor and now I am feeling more adjusted to my sort of new life here.
Pictures from Nong Khai:
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=52818&l=baa0b&id=512610984

More updates to come my faithful readers who have probably now turned unfaithful after 3 exact months of nothing. I apologize.