Volunteer Report - Ms. Lisa Zhao
Photo: Lisa introduced (with others) as a new teacher to the County.
Details and Responsibilities of Work
- Increase the potential of people with low to no opportunities.
- A Self Learning Center: Improving the lives of children and youths.
- Wordless Stories: A linguistical approach to learning language for women in Isaan.
- Regular visitations to encourage low-income families.
Collection of Work Details and Photos
1. Increase the potential of people with low to no opportunities
Nam Boon School is a small village school of 80 kids. The teachers of Nam Boon have a variety of roles from homeroom teacher to nurse, chef and janitor. The school has lost their budget for a kitchen staff and janitor. The villagers of Nam Boon take turns to come to the school to cook the daily meal. The students here at Nam Boon have never had a native English Speaker as a teacher. Learning English has become a necessity for Thai people nowadays because they are able to make twice as much as they would if they had no English skills. Companies are being internationalized and foreign investment in Thailand has been booming. Even the Thai schools pay more for English teachers than other subjects. Unfortunately, most English learning in schools remain on the written level with emphasis on vocabulary and grammar yet they cannot read or speak the words that they write. I, as a volunteer, work with village grade school students on phonics and pronunciation so that the phonetic system of English will be the foundation for them in which to build vocabulary and grammar on.
Mondays through Fridays 11:30am-3:30pm. Typical Thai schools teach English as rote memory. They say the word and the students write down the word and they are encouraged to memorize the way it is spelled. So if they have never seen that word before, they have no idea what it is or even how to sound it out. Using a revised curriculum of phonics from America to adapt to the Thai alphabet, I bring a natural way for Thai learners to pick up the sounds of English using basic linguistic phonetics and the sounds of their own language. By introducing them to sounding out words, I am able to empower the learner to learn on their own. They will learn the skills to pronounce, use the dictionary and the internet to figure out meanings, and altogether, learn on their own. I work with Director Succhitra and Teacher Pat at Nam Boon School teaching grades 1-6.
2. A Self Learning Center: Improving the lives of children and youth
Children are exposed to a lot of addictive behavior these days from drugs to video games to social media which steals precious quality time and innocence from them. The Self Learning Center provides games and puzzles for children to play with one another and they are encouraged to help one another, to be diligent, to be creative and to have confidence in their skills which will help them in life.
2.1 Mondays through Fridays 4:00pm–6:00pm Using the office as a Self-Learning Center, the adult is a moderator in learning. The children who come are encouraged to take responsibility for their own learning. Games such as jigsaw puzzles, chess, Othello, and providing Rosetta Stone or other language learning apps for children to learn on their own. Children are also encouraged to play outside, learning new games such as frisbee.
3. Improving the Lives of Isaan Women
Isaan women who finished their schooling in the villages are usually at a disadvantaged when they find work in the cities. They have less opportunities for extended learning and usually their English skills are less than those who have finished their schooling in the cities.
Mondays through Fridays 09:00am-11:00am For women who are working already, I use a linguistic technique called “wordless stories” for adults to learn to use the vocabulary they have built up in the schools. This is an opportunity to put their knowledge to use and explain the pictures using whatever vocabulary they have. This activity helps learners get over their shyness and provides constructive feedback and answers questions that have stopped them from learning fully. Participants feel more confident when they actually use what they learn in their jobs.
4. Visitation and Encouragement to Low Income Families
In Isaan, the parental guardians of children are usually their grandparents because parents have to go find work in the big cities. This common situation may lead to unwelcome side effects. Grandparents are usually not as technologically savvy and cannot watch over the use of technology by their grandkids leading to an overreliance on media by the kids or even an addiction. There is also a tendency for kids with a darker complexion to experience bullying in the classrooms. In addition, there is a greater proportion of students in the villages that are considered LD (with a learning difference such as ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, etc) than in the cities and are at risk of dropping out of school due to an inability to learn. One of the schools that I had taught at, as much as 40% of the 10 students in a grade had a learning difference. During the weekends, I visit families to give advice on alternative learning methods and encouraging kids experiencing bullying at school.
