As of October 2009, I will be traveling to Thailand to teach in schools which do not have enough money to hire English teachers.
The reasons for this pursuit are as follows:
1. I am looking for an endeavor after college that is simultaneously rigorous, challenging, consequential, and enlightening.
2. I am looking for a learning experience that extends beyond the realms of academia and is congruent with one of my strongest beliefs—that education offers empowerment and opportunity--in the forms of social mobility, a chance for better education, and hopefully a chance for a better future. Raised in the Philippines, I learned English as a second language which has given me the aforementioned opportunities. I hope to play a role in affording the same possibilities for Thai school children and I believe WorldTeach is the program that embodies what I am looking for and will allow me to pursue a project that has social consequence.
You are most likely familiar with the political and economic crises that currently grip Thailand. The country has faced a violent insurgency, a catastrophic tsunami in December, a military coup, mass demonstrations, and a stagnating economy just within the past two years. Unfortunately these larger, national turmoil obscures other dilemmas such as an educational system beset with its own problems of inequality, inadequate resources, and a lack of qualified teachers.
I am assigned to teach in the Nakhon Phanom province in the Isan area of Thailand, which is known to be the poorest, least developed area of the country. The standard of education is comparatively very low, and government funding for rural village schools is at bare minimum. It is the objective of WorldTeach to help the rural and city schools of this province to reach a higher standard in order to give the students of these schools a chance for a better future.
