Black American teachers in Thailand

Postbox letter from Evan Majors

Throughout my travels I did very much get stared at. Heads often turned as I walked down the street. When I was in Ko Samet I definitely felt the hesitation and/or fear of dealing with me by some of the Thai people, even at restaurants.

A great opportunity

Postbox letter from Rey Murillo

Thai schools nowadays have opened their eyes towards the capacity and fluency of Filipinos in terms of English language than before. This I say to remind you of our purpose of coming here.

News from the TCT

The latest in the ever changing world of teacher requirements

Thanks for stopping by this month, and reading my article. The last month has been a busy one for myself and many other teachers I have met. There have been many conferences hosted by The Ministry.

Regulations update

Some amendments to last month's article

All Teacher’s License applicants must have 1 year of teaching experience, prior to application. Several readers had emailed me that they heard that it was two years. I got the one year answer from The Teacher’s Council, just yesterday.

chatting with the natives

How long you ever go Thailand before?

I think it's a terrific idea to send students out as part of a class project and get them comfortable with talking to foreigners. But why not ask questions worth asking?

The new teacher licensing regulations

How the new rules will affect teachers

The first memo about these new regulations from The Ministry of Education and The Teachers Council of Thailand came out about 2 years ago. Until a few months ago, no mention of this has ever been made to me at either Immigration or The Labor Department. When I tried getting new visas and work permits for my teachers, (a few months ago) the Immigration officials told me that the teacher had to have their teachers license under the new regs before they could be issued a Non-Immigrant Visa.

Beware the ajarn forum cynics

Postbox letter from T.Knott

My biggest problem now has become the foreign teachers on the ajarn forum. I am an educated man and I am also a student learning daily lessons of life. I expected that people here would be professional as they claim to be.

Notes on a semester

What can you do when teaching starts to get you down?

How can I or any teacher that feels he's underachieving turn things around? I doubt there is any magic formula, but I've come up with a few ideas. Many of them are blindingly obvious but it's often the easy points we miss during difficult classes.

How to motivate students

Keys to improving language learning

Motivation can either be internal or external. Students who are internally motivated usually learn English because they want to, because they enjoy learning or because they want to achieve a certain goal, not because they have to. Examples of personal goals could be pursuing a promotion at work or planning to enrol in a foreign university’s graduate programme.