Monday Vital preparation time. We never go into a teaching situation without everything prepared. We mostly use
laminated A4 photographs with words to match. We use large plastic boards to fix them on. The children run to the board to stick the pictures under the relevant word - it all has to be lively and good fun. Sometimes they all charge at once. We often finish early on Mondays, enjoy a break and have a meal together so new volunteers can meet everyone and have a good time.

Tuesday We go into action with the Moken children, the first class of 45 junior age students. The second class is 25 high school age students who have chosen to study English. At 6:00pm we go to the Home and Life orphanage where we split the kids into older and younger groups and run similar lesson to the earlier ones. The kids are wonderful and we all love going to Home & Life. Usually, we get back around 8pm and volunteers often go off to a local restaurant and join me later at the Lazy House bar.

Wednesday We begin at 10am with adults in the community. The Lazy House Bar is the venue for the Lazy Class. The owners allow us to use it when the bar is not open for business. People, usually in businesses needing to communicate with tourists, just walk in to the open bamboo building. It is free (like everything we do) and no appointments are needed - one of our students is pictured at work (above right). Just now we have two tour operators, two hairdressers, two masseuse, one advertising sales lady and one electrician. From the Lazy we go to the shops where about 15 shop workers gather. After lunch we teach the staff in an optician’s shop, then a small team goes to teach staff in a restaurant and the other half go to the next village for a five o’clock lesson in the community centre (a new building donated by the Samsung corporation.)

Thursday 9am start at a junior school. The highlight of the morning is the small school band marching the students away from the assembly area in front of the Thai flag.
We teach year six, then year three, then year four, then have lunch with the teachers. Set menu, could be anything. In the afternoon we teach year five, who are desperate to get to their next lesson – sports. 5pm, the community centre again then home.

Friday Lazy Class at 10am; then the 12:30 sessions at a sea gypsy village, two classes, Animals and Prices. Then lunch in a Thai village centre and the final class, Money, at Lam Pi junior school.

Saturday and Sunday These are days off.
Maybe go to an island with some of the volunteers, chill out on the beach, go to a waterfall for a swim, or find a beach restaurant and relax with a Thai meal while looking out on the Andaman sea.

By the end of the week you can see the benefit of Monday's preparation. This week (at time of writing) we are teaching the children Animals, Colours, Occupations, and Prices (money). We have the stuff ready to roll, each lesson in a box. We follow the Thai Government curriculum but deliver it western style, student centred learning.

The Occupations box contains pictures of Thai people at work. In one school a girl stood up, pointed to a picture and said “Is...is my...is my” then to the Thai teacher “Alinha --------?” “Aunt” “IS MY AUNT.” The photo was of a market stall holder in the next village. We don’t use cartoon pictures like the text books do, we use pictures of real people.

The Colours lesson involves students running to a selected colour en mass, after smaller group sessions with “Give me the green shoes, where is the red bag...” etc

With the Animals we may hold up pictures at each end of the room, one volunteer saying “Do you like dogs? Come here.” Another volunteer saying “Do you like cats? Come here.” Then “Do you like elephants?” or “Do you like snakes? Come here, come on, somebody! Nice snake!”

*This is an actual week but our week's work changes over time and your time may have different elements - though they will be similar.