The Halls of Samchai School

In the halls and classrooms of the vibrant school of Samchaiwitaedsuska lie books, pencils, whiteboards and... insanely hyper Thai children. 

The Samchai school is a private school located in the Samut Sakhon province of Thailand.  It is near the ocean and is about a 45 minute to an hour drive out of Bangkok.  It teaches from kindergarten all the way through high school.  The school has approximately 1,000 students.  And as of mid-May this year, they have a smoking English program!

Consisting of two Americans (both coincidentally named Tyler) and a dynamic language program, this school is rockin and rollin' with a fantastic amount of A to Zs, not to mention every letter in between.

The Learning Space program, the one's I work for, were approached by Samchai in desperation to put in a successful English program.  Every school in Thailand is required by the government to teach 3 languages: Thai, English and Chinese.  Each school will have a corp of Thai teachers, Chinese teachers and English teachers.  Samchai was severely lacking good English teachers and a good curriculum to teach.  One indication of which can be seen in this picture -- a banner hanging in the school:

It reads, "Academic Strength Have Morality Leading in Language to Widen Your World."  They've got some solid words in there, but not necessarily the best grammatical syntax.

So after a few months, and the advent of a fresh new school year, we rolled in there with our program to pave the way to a bright, English-speaking future!

Here are some shots of the school.

The admin building.

The hallway of the second floor, where I teach.

The school has everything it needs.  There's a full-size soccer field, an outside basketball court, a kid swimming pool, an Olympic-size swimming pool, auditorium, cafeteria, movie theater room, music room, computer room and plenty more.

The kid pool.

The Olympic-size pool, which I swim in from time-to-time.  I'm starting to perfect my butterfly and breast stroke!

And they are building some kind new structure on the property.  I'm not quite sure yet what it's going to be. 

The staff are very friendly and the kids are freakishly friendly.  I am constantly mobbed before, after and between every class by kids of every age.  Yesterday I literally had 5 kids grabbing onto me pulling me in 5 different directions.  One of them likes to cling onto my leg as I walk.

Here are some of my students.  They are soooo cute!

I always poke this little guy in the belly when I see him. 

These are my grade 1 kids, fresh out of kindergarten.  They've got their English books and they're all ready for action!

Except this little guy.  He was a little sleepy before class...

Before my grade 4 class the other day, I told them to lick their elbows, which as everyone knows is impossible -- but not these guys. They went for it -- haha!

These are some of the kids during our afternoon break.

I still have so much more to say and many more photos and videos.  I think I'll put them in my next post.

Signing off for now.  Thanks for reading!