Professional Development: Peace Corps/ Student Friendly Schools Workshop

Nakhon Nayok Province

Septermber 18 – 20, 2013

In September of 2013, one of my Thai counterpart, Sukanya Waiyarat, and I travelled to Nakhon Nayok province to attend Peace Corps Thailand's first Student Friendly Schools Workshop. I decided to apply to this conference because I was having a lot of problems addressing what I considered to be violent disciplinary and teaching practices at my school, and I wanted to understand more about Thai culture in regards to corporal punishment, verbal abuse and child labor. I also wanted to learn ways to respectfully address any personal disagreements I was facing at my school surrounding these issues.

Unfortunately because of Thai culture and Thai social norms, I was never really able to find any productive ways to voice my own personal disagreements concerning the educational system. However I do feel one mistake on my part was not convincing the principle at my rural public school to attend the conference. With his attendance, perhaps slight changes to the school could take place, or he could have helped support the project plan I created with my counterpart.

The Student Friendly Schools Conference looks at gender-based violence in schools, but covers an array of violence related issues in schools systems not limited to instances of gender-charged violence. During the two day workshop, my counterpart and I learned about the differences between sex and gender, looked at various types of gender-based violence examples and local risks / consequences. We learned to identify causes and influences by looking at stereotypes, and we also looked at the protection of rights of the child. We understood how a commitment to children's rights can empower both boys and girls.

Later in the workshop we were able to look at our roles as teachers and how educators can intervene and address gender based violence. However, these intervention techniques were limited to addressing problems between students and did not really address violence in teacher-student relationships or violence in principal-student relationships.

Lastly my counterpart and I created a project plan on how we could integrate what we had learned from the workshop at our school and perhaps address some of the issues we face. Our project was to have an assembly that taught the students about children's right and about the consequences of student-on-student violence /bullying between students at our school. Unfortunately because of the controversial and culturally different nature of the issues I face at my school which were not limited to student bullying, I was unable to find the answers and information I was looking for. Many of the disciplinary and teaching practices in Thailand have been indoctrinated for many years and to question these practices would be seen as culturally insensitive on my part.