CCT Volunteer Kyra DiFrancesco Blog Post FORRU placement

These past few weeks have had their ups and downs. At FORRU, we alternate between office days and field trips. So far, I like to go on the field trips more than I like to stay at the office, although for the field trips we have to get up very early. On field trips, we tend to plots (raking leaves, prepping for planting, etc.), have planting days, or transport seedlings from nurseries to planting sites. In the future, I hope my fellow TEAN interns and myself can participate in more science-based field trips. For example, FORRU also has to do monitoring, GPS tracking, set up camera traps, and test pH levels in the soil.

On office days, we are either stuck in meetings or just doing data entry. The meetings are interesting but they can be very long. For data entry we are copying field notebooks from the 1990s into Excel. This doesn’t feel like very important work nor is it of immediate necessity. However, the past two days we got to stamp tags for seedlings for our next planting day. It was fun to work with my hands. Over the next few days, I’m definitely going to start asking for more responsibilities, whether from my supervisor or from the head of FORRU. Right now I’m a little apprehensive we are being treated like typical interns.

In addition to stamping tags for the seedlings, some other highlights of the past few weeks include our first field trip, in which we helped teach a group of American students about FORRU, and our big planting day on 24 June. We did a lot of work leading up to that day, and it was great to finally see the trees being planted. I had never planted a tree before, so to think that I planted a baby tree that could live for decades and help restore the forest is really exciting!

CCT Volunteer Duncan Brody Blog Post Temple School Wat Thong Gai

   I guessed before coming to Thailand that the story of this trip would be ‘not knowing anything and just going for it’. It turns out I was very right about that. Even the day just before my internship began I knew close to 0% of what I needed. All of the interns woke up on that 4^th Monday (1^st Internship Monday) and drove to the Arts Relief International house. From there, the twelve of us received our general orientation. Luckily, the teachers had a second day of orientation to accomplish a more specific understanding. Our orientation/group leader notified the three of us (ESL Teachers) that our internship was particularly challenging, and that it would require a significant level of resilience and preparation. Since we’re teaching multiple classes of varying age and ability levels everyday our lesson planning needs to be differentiated as well.

    You appreciate the work that goes into being a teacher rather quickly when you’re thrown in to the mix without any warning. I approached my first day of teaching without a knowledge of what speaking/reading/writing level any of the students were at, what my schedule would be, how many students I would have/what their names would be, where my school was or how I would get there. So, when day 1 rolled around I figured it all out the hard way. Here are the answers to all the questions that burned in my head leading up to the start of my work: I teach solo for 6 classrooms ranging in age from 7 to 15 (1^st to 6^th grade). Each class has around twenty students. I teach 2 to 3 of these classes each day (2 on Tue. and Thurs. because I study Thai at the University and miss the morning class block). Mondays are definitely the hardest because I teach grades 1, 2, and 3 all on the same day. The ability level varies from knowing basic conversations/directions/animals etc. to knowing close to no English (this includes letters and numbers). Telling these students what to do is nearly impossible. To get to work I take a twenty-five minute Uber each way every day. This is kind of a blessing in disguise because it gives me the opportunity to meet and have interesting 20 minute conversations with ten different people during my commute each week. I need to spend about 1-2 hours a night working on lesson plans, materials, or doing research of some kind to help improve the classroom.

     These logistics don’t even come close to giving an accurate picture of what my day looks like, however. When you line up the responsibilities and stresses in a list you wonder why you would ever do a job like this, but the reality is something you couldn’t replace with the world. Although I spend the majority of my day hearing little kids (and teachers) spouting out Thai words, one on top of the other, that I simply don’t comprehend, I have met some of the most colorful personalities I have ever known in my short two weeks at the school. The teachers seem to be obsessed with having an American teacher as a ‘play-thing’ to test their English on and tell jokes around, and the kids treat me like we’ve been best friends since birth. Although I give the 1^st – 2^nd graders a lot of flack for being difficult classes that are uncontrollable, the kids have the hugest hearts and are too darn cute to not love. My favorite class is the fifth graders, however. They are such a smart group, and they are all incredibly dedicated to learning and growing together. I’ve never seen such a special group of kids who care so much about their education.

    Something that I realized on my first day on the job is that you can learn more about a culture by witnessing one full day of school than from spending three weeks taking classes at University. As I walked around the school yard and saw the way that the children learn, spend their free time, perform standard daily rituals, and react to their peers and teachers, I became so acutely aware of what that means for the society they live in as a whole. School is where so much of your childhood is spent. These are the years that form the foundation for the rest of your life, and over half of the waking hours of everyday are spent here, learning your values and your desires. That is why I think that teachers are some of the most important people in the world to shaping what children grow to become.

CCT volunteer Sam Walters (Art Relief International)

We did a lot of things during our first two weeks volunteering at Art Relief International. The first week seemed more stress free since all the workshops were run by Madeline. It was still a lot of work but really exciting to meet all of the groups, seeing them smile and having fun. The second week was a little scary, because we were writing lesson plans but fortunately I am part of a very great team. We all helped each other out because nothing is more important than creating a great workshop where everyone has fun and learns something new. I am glad that I get to work with such great people that help me when I need it and I can help when they need it. We make a great team and we all are so happy to be working for ARI. I am very happy to have met everyone at Hope Home, Urban Light, Elderly Care, etc. It always makes me so Happy to see them.

CCT Volunteer Julia Taladay Blog Post (Art Relief International)

Since starting my internship with ARI only 2.5 weeks ago, I feel like my understanding of so many different things have changed. The people I’ve gotten to meet and work with have made me realize that I can be an extremely adaptable and relaxed person, while also being a leader that people look up to. Before starting the internship, I did not think that I would work well with disabled people at all. Being an athlete, most of my friends are also athletes and we often bond over physical activities like sports or competitions. For children who are physically disables, I was unsure if I would be able to make a connection with them. At Hope Home and Healing Families, I proved myself wrong. I have learned new ways to bod with people through different avenues. I am learning how to communicate and bond with others in a way that in still physical, like helping the kids paint and giving them different fabrics to feel, but in a way that is less competitive and more educational and therapeutic. This has been a recent revelation of mine. One of my favorite moments with ARI so far has been with Healing Family, playing games with the participants. It is physical, but in a way that encourages bonding and solidarity rather than competition. I’m excited to see how ARI will redefine other concepts for me in the coming weeks.

CCT Volunteer Dakota Van Deursen Blog Post (FORRU placement)

The past two weeks have been a true whirlwind. FORRU, the Forest Restoration Research Unit based out of Chiang Mai University, does such great work for the region and the world; it's a true honor to be a part of it all!

                My first week, the other TEAN interns and I were flung head-first into pretty intensive field-work days. Tuesday, we hosted an education day for American college students at the FORRU nursery at Baan Mae Sa Mai. Nestled way up in the hills of Doi Suthep-Pui National Park, it served at the best orientation imaginable -- we got to learn more about FORRU's 'framework species' planting method, then take hikes to visit old planting sites.

                The rest of the week, we spent preparing the plots at Mon Long (near Moncham). Each day, we left campus near 7:00am and didn't return until past 6:00pm! They were long days, but I don't mind it. We spent most of this time removing pine needles from the forest floor to aid in a soil acidity test being performed by one of the staff members.

                It all boiled down to Saturday, though: Big Planting Day at Mon Long with the help of students from MaeJo University, park rangers, the Rajapruek Institute, and others. We put all of the prepared trees in their holes, then began work fertilizing them all. It was certainly rewarding to take a step back and admire our handiwork!

                Following the labor-intensive yet massively successful previous week, our second week was spent mostly in the FORRU office on-campus, working to create electronic copies of Herbology charts. I've gotta say, I'm impressed by how much the simple act of typing differnet species' binomial nomenclature over and over again can affect how you recognize words (and their associated plants).

                Wednesday was spent on the road to and from Tham Pha Thai National Park in Lampang province. In preparation for the next Big Planting Day, we spent the morning loading 2500 seedlings into the truck (learning important Thai words such as "snail," "millipede," and "snake" along the way). The drive that day afforded some of the best, albeit fleeting, scenery I've yet seen in Thailand.

                So, now I'm two weeks in, and I'm totally hooked. I can't wait to see what the next five weeks have in store for me. Not that I want to find out too quickly, mind you! I'd like that departure date to stay as far away as possible, too.

CCT Volunteer Annie Kaplan Blog Post (Temple School Wat Khuang Singha)

Sawatdeeka World! Hi, I’m Annie Kaplan from Danville CA checking on during week three of her internship at Wat Khuang Sing School. I am a Comparative Cultures and Politics/ Secondary Education double major at Michigan State University who hopes to one day work as a history teacher in America. This summer I have decided to make a daring decision and work as an English teacher in Thailand. Both the country and subject were extremely unfamiliar to me which made this a big decision. It was not an easy choice and has not been easy thus far but I think it will all be worth it in the end.

Our group has now been in Thailand 5 and a half weeks. We took classes and went on excursions the first three weeks but since then have been fully immersed in our internship placements. Through these experiences we are all learning so much and will come away from these 10 weeks having absorbed so much through just living and communicating in a new space.

There are 11 interns in total, but at my school it is just my friend Sarena and I. Every day we Uber to school to begin a day filled with learning, teaching, and facing something completely different than what we are accustomed to in the United States. Our first week, in my opinion, was the biggest culture shock I have had in Thailand thus far. Everything is so different compared to my public school upbringing. Our school is a Buddhist temple school, meaning that it’s a government run school with very strict rules. The kids wear a variety of uniforms throughout the week, and sing and chant whenever there’s a transition in the day. Teachers are tough, but show so much dedication to their practice. My favorite part has definitely been the amazing cook at our school who is able to cook for 300+ people and accommodate my strict vegetarian diet! The most shocking to me has been that teachers do not stay in one room, it’s the kids that do. Teachers rotate grades and classes throughout the day bringing everything they need with them as they travel. While I saw this as unfamiliar, the kids take to their daily tasks with more happiness than I’ve ever seen. As a sixth grader, I liked school but nowhere near as much as some of the students here do. When I was in middle school, I was constantly falling asleep in class but the way teachers command a room engages the students unlike any I’ve ever seen.

I am placed with P.4 through P.6 which are the oldest kids at the school. They are learning a range of subjects from clothing to daily actions to common English phrases. Making the transition from studying social science education to English education has been strange but there has not been a moment where I felt that I didn’t know what to talk about. Part of my time at Wat Khuang Sing is spent teaching, and part is spent observing how to be a good teacher. Structuring lesson plans and building activity blocks are skills I am working on with my mentor teacher, who is showing me different ways to engage students and present lessons. We rotate from PowerPoints to flashcards to working out of the book, a sure fire plan to keep students focused.

Games are another strategy used by the English teachers here which has been one of my harder tasks to tackle. Something about explaining a game in a foreign language just makes it a tad bit harder for both the kids and myself. There have been moments where I have gotten up in front of them to teach and the level they understand of the words coming out of my mouth has been zero. So yea, it’s been tough. I’ve been stressed and exhausted and overwhelmed but there’s something tremendously uplifting about seeing the smiling faces of my kids every day. 

Introducing Srey Neang - CCT's first ever volunteer from Cambodia!

CCT and ARI are ecstatic to introduce you all to our first volunteer from Cambodia! Srey Neang is an incredible young woman with a beautiful story. She comes to Chiang Mai from Siem Reap, where she started begging on the streets at the age of 9 before encountering one of our new partner organizations, The Green Gecko Project. 

This NGO supports over 70 children who previously lived on the streets of Siem Reap. They are providing security, education, opportunities and lots of compassion, so that participants can achieve their full potential in their adult lives. Intrigued to find out more? Check out this conversation volunteers Cat and Shellie had with Srey Neang this week…

Shellie: So how did you get involved with Green Gecko?

Srey Neang: You know Green Gecko started from us begging on the street, for some people it created a lot of pain. Some people are selling stuff, some are sleeping on the street. But Tanya, an Australian woman, came to Cambodia for the 1^st time and we used to beg from her. We would carry around our sister or brother, begging for a meal. But the baby is not eating the meal because we just sell it back to get the money...

So Tanya also bought meals for the first time, but the beggars know the owner inside the restaurant and sell it back. And so Tanya asked, “so the kids are not eating the meals that I buy, you sell it back to get money?” 

So the next time she bought the rice, and brought all the street kids to the restaurant and paid for all the food that they ate. And the next time she tried to get all the kids to study English at a school in Cambodia, and she bought the rice for us at lunch time. And next time she saw us still begging and she tried to rent a place for the kids to enjoy activities, we go half a day and go back home. 

Some kids go back to begging still the same. So she rented a second school, bigger than the first, and we went there to study. And some kids that live far from Siem Reap, she rented a place where they can sleep there, and then they can go home to visit their families. And for me, I had a rent house so I didn’t have to sleep there. I go for learning, and then go back home. 

At night time I still go back to begging, and she saw the kids begging again, so she tried to let kids have a job. They could choose to sell books or postcards, and she made something like a tuk tuk that we could push around and sell to tourists. She tried to stop the begging because the police tried to catch the begging kids, but with selling books we were just earning a little bit, and a lot stopped selling books and went back to begging again. 

But Tanya, she continued to try and find a better place, and the last one that she found was the one we are at now. It is a beautiful, big place and we all go there and study and we have a lot of volunteers go visit and be volunteers there, and all the kids that started from the beginning stay there Monday to Saturday, and Saturday at night time they go home to visit their families for one night and come back on Sunday. 

And that’s why we stopped begging, because Mom (Tanya) organized for families to have 5 kilos of rice, and she also helped with the rent house 20 dollars a month for all the families. And the kids saw that their families are getting food and can also pay for the house, so they stopped begging and started focusing on studies. Our NGO has English, Khmer, and other activities like living values, logic, computer, on Thursdays Bokator (Khmer martial arts), and then music, art, dancing and other fun things on Friday.

We also have Gecko Action. We already have everything like love, food, and now we share back to other kids. We raise money by collecting the rubbish in town and selling something to help old women or old men that have no kids to look after them, and kids that can not go to school, and kids that study in university but can not catch up.

Srey Neang: Green Gecko has meaning – Gecko is the animal that comes out at night time, right? And we are like the geckos – we come out at the night time begging. Green Gecko is the place where dreams come true for the kids, whatever they want to do, it will come true.

Cat: Did you have any dreams when you were 9?

Srey Neang: Yeah, I dreamed to be an interior designer. But when we’re small, we keep changing our dreams. You know, first a teacher, then interior designer. But when we grow we see everything around us, and we know what we are going to do. I want to help Cambodian people, and do art therapy. So, Mom is going to send me to a short course on art therapy before I go to university.

Shellie: Okay, so your dream now is art therapy!

Srey Neang: (laughs) Yeah, but it’s really hard because Cambodia doesn’t have a course or a school for me to study this. There are ones in Australia and Malaysia. At Green Gecko, they are trying to find a school for me, so they’ve applied somewhere in Australia and Malaysia…if they don’t reply back, we will find a volunteer from another country to come to teach me.

-        

Shellie: That’s really cool!

Srey Neang: Yeah, and if I learn it, Green Gecko will open up another place to let kids see what career they want!

Cat: Are there kids at Green Gecko that arrive when they’re older?

Srey Neang: Yeah, but some kids are not good at studying, but they’re good at other things. Some are good at school, but they want to stop studying because of their families. But Mom tries to tell them to help their families now a little bit and earn a little bit. But if you finish university and you have a good job and more money, you can help your family more. In Cambodia, we have those times in grade 9 and grade 12. I tried to stop grade 9, but people told me I should do this and this and should try to study.

Cat: Why did you want to stop?

Srey Neang: Because of our families, we need to help them. And sometimes we see our fathers work hard and he gets older and older, and if something happens to him, what are we going to do? We try to stop studying to get a job, but Mom says “you can not stop now, you’re nearly at the end! If you start from the beginning and you stop before the end, you’re going to be upset in the future.” I keep going, but in grade 12 my father got sick and I couldn’t continue with my studies and I tried to stop. And my brother just told me, “We’re nearly finished, sis. You can not stop. I know that you want to help our family, but if we finish grade 12 it will be better than if we stop right now.” I tried to keep thinking this, but I saw it was really hard with my father. And Mom said, “Continue studying, I will help your families.” And then she just paid some money for my father so I could keep studying and finish grade 12 and I could go to university. I am still thankful, and now my father is much better!

Shellie: What do you dream of doing with art therapy in Cambodia, since it is such a new thing? 

Cat: Would you want to work with Green Gecko?

Srey Neang: Yeah, I think if I finish my studies in art therapy, first I think I will find a job in another career first and will make some money, and will ask Mom to open the school in Cambodia with Green Gecko.

Cat: You guys do school and activities. Are the activities ever creative and artistic?

Srey Neang: Yes, some!

Cat: Are those your favorite?

Srey Neang: (laughs) Yes! On Friday we have many different activities like cooking, dancing, music, computers, and art. I have 2 hours. For 1 hour we can do one activity, and the next hour you can choose another one. But for 2 hours I chose art, because I really enjoy it! I’m not good at dance or music, I mean I can, but I’m more interested in art.

Shellie: Do you like painting the most?

Srey Neang: Yeah, I really enjoy watercolor the most. I really feel (leans back, humming in peaceful delight!)

Cat: Did you ever experience that calm feeling from creating art when you were begging?

Srey Neang: No, I didn’t feel anything like that. But I felt hurt because we couldn’t have good times with our families like the rich people. Because when you’re begging you just see this around and you feel jealous. But when we are at Green Gecko, we feel that we are lucky and now we feel another way. I feel that when we share our lives with others, we feel much better.