You know what’s harder than teaching six back-to-back classes? Sitting in a staffroom with a bunch of foreign teachers who hate everything about Thailand and teaching.

Every morning I come in, grab my iced coffee, and genuinely try to start the day on a positive note. I like to think of myself as pretty upbeat. I enjoy my job most days. I like my students, even the cheeky ones who call me “teacher beautiful” just to get out of doing a worksheet. I like living in Thailand. I even quite like the school lunches. 

But I swear, the moment I sit down, I get hit with the usual wall of negativity. And it’s not just a moan here or there. It’s an avalanche of complaints that could bury Everest.

“I’ve been here ten years and nothing ever changes.”

“This school’s run by clowns.”

“Why should I bother? The kids don’t care.”

“The air-con in my room's out again.”

“You’re too young to get it, Becky. Give it a few years — you’ll be just like us.”

God, I hope not. Because if "being experienced" means being perpetually grumpy, disillusioned, and two steps away from a meltdown, then I’ll happily stay green, thanks very much.

Don’t get me wrong - I’m not saying Thailand’s education system is perfect. Far from it. There’s bureaucracy. There’s micromanagement. There’s the never-ending tsunami of paperwork that no one seems to read. There are “open class” observations that feel more like amateur theatre performances for the head of English. All true. But at some point, we’ve got to stop treating this job like it’s a prison sentence and remember why we got into it. Or at the very least, stop ruining everyone else’s lunch break with an endless chorus of “woe is me.”

Because here’s the thing: I think some of these teachers want to be miserable. It’s their whole personality now. If you took away the complaints, I don’t think Dave from Liverpool would know what to do with himself. He’d just sit there in silence, trying to remember the names of his students (which he still doesn’t know in Term 2).

I’ve noticed the same faces in the same corner of the staffroom every day, grumbling into their coffees. It’s like some foreign-teacher Fight Club. Rule number one: You do not talk about enjoying your job. Rule number two: You absolutely do not show signs of enthusiasm. It’s exhausting. And worse, it’s contagious. You sit there long enough and it gets into your head. You start questioning things that never bothered you before. “Am I being exploited?” “Should I be paid more?” “Is that kid really laughing with me or at me?”

Negativity spreads like mould in a leaky bathroom.

So lately, I’ve started avoiding the staffroom. I take my lunch outside and I eat on the steps. I hang out with the Thai teachers (who, let’s be honest, have their own kind of chaos, but at least they’re not trying to out-misery each other).  It’s more fun than hearing Alan from South Africa complain that Thai teachers “just sit around on their phones all day” - while he’s literally sitting around on his phone all day.

I’m not saying we need to be all sunshine and lotus blossoms. But how about just a little balance? A few positive comments to go with the griping. A moment to appreciate the good things - the student who improved, the lesson that landed, the joke that actually got a laugh. Or maybe just… silence. Silence would be lovely. Because I didn’t come here to get dragged into a whirlpool of bitterness by people who’ve clearly been here too long and have no intention of getting out.

We’re teachers. It’s not glamorous. It’s not always easy. But it’s not that bad - unless you make it that way.

And if I spend one more lunch break listening to a man rage about “how much better it was in Korea,” I’m going to fake an urgent LINE message and run straight into the girls’ toilets.

Rebecca