On the travails of being an ESL Teacher in Thailand

Having seen a couple of these before for various different jobs, I decided to have a go at creating one for ESL teachers in Thailand.

I think our situation lends itself particularly well to this little template, because there are so many perceptions of who we are and what we do. NAVAL GAZING AT CLICHÉS, AHOY!

Imagine you’ve never been to Thailand. What’s the first mental image? Gorgeous, sunny beaches, obviously! So if you live in Thailand, you must spend all your free time lying on the tropical sands and drinking cocktails from coconuts. Of course there’s another reason many people (particularly white, Western men) come to Thailand- the vice. Now I’m not going to cry about stereotypes here (because fuck knows that racism and actual discrimination are much bigger problems in the West than they are here), but there is a certain perception that if you’re a white man here, you’re probably up to no good. To be fair, that’s often a correct assumption…

Then of course, there’s the flip side. I decided to represent this with the big JC. When some people find out you live in Thailand, there’s kind of an air of ‘aww, how nice of you to do that’, as though you’re somehow doing a fucking favour. Let me be honest: I live here -and love it- because I’m a selfish arsehole and my happiness comes first. If there is some benevolence in what we do as English teachers (and there isn’t, in my opinion), let’s at least be clear that we stay in Thailand because we like it.

I guess the bottom three apply to teaching in general; fighting jadedness, wanting to inspire, and confronting certain difficulties and realities.

Of course, we’d all like to be Robin Williams on the table in Dead Poets Society, leading youth on an educational journey and inspiring a love of learning. For myself, I know that I can’t do that now for a host of reasons- lack of skills, impractical context, deficiencies in interactions with students. I do a version of it though, and I think that, at the very least, I’m not a bad teacher. I’ve improved a fair bit since I started, and with the Masters I’m studying for I’m getting a better academic base for what I should be doing and why. It’s frustrating at times that I can’t be a *natural* teacher though. A lot of what I do is telling kids to sit down, or reminding them that they should be working on page 21 of the textbook. But I suppose the ease and skill comes over time; I firmly believe that teaching is a craft, and not only a skill; some people are naturals, yes. Some of us are still working on it, but the important thing is that we love what we do and care about getting better.

Anyway, hope you enjoyed the funny picture!