English teaching in Primary and Secondary Schools ( Bangkok , Chiang Mai)

Project At A Glance

Location: Bangkok , Ayutthaya Start point: Bangkok End Point: Bangkok Duration: 2-12 weeks Hours: 30-40 hours per week Food: Local food (3 times a day) Room: Host family or hostel Date: First and Third Monday of each month

Project Summary

Teaching English in Thailand is highly rewarding! In this project, volunteers will teach English to the students of primary and lower secondary schools for five days a week - Monday to Friday. Thai English students possess a unique passion for learning. As our world economy become cozier, the need for English fluency increases every day as English is truly the language of economic opportunity!

Primary and secondary schools in Thailand are struggling to meet the growing need for English education. In Thailand , the primary schools provide education to the children between the ages of 5-12 years, grades 1-6. The class sizes range from 10-40 students, depending upon the size of the community as well as the quality of the school. Secondary schools are located in larger communities, towns or cities. These schools are comprised of children/young adults between the ages of 12-19 and are usually quite large, with a student populations ranging from 1000-4000 in each. Most schools are co-ed and have a foreign language department in which English is included. English is the main language offered, yet some of these schools offer French, German and Italian as well. In addition to teaching, English speaking volunteers also encourage the students to take part in extracurricular activities and possibly organize sports activities for the students too.

Skills/Qualifications Needed

Volunteers wishing to teach English in Thailand must have a mastery of English language and thorough speaking fluency. Though no teaching experience or skill is needed, it is beneficial to have taught or trained others. Volunteers are expected to be flexible, patient and possess a passion and love for children .

Volunteers' Responsibilities

Volunteers will teach English to primary and lower secondary students schools for five (5) days a week, Monday to Friday. Additionally, volunteers will also support extracurricular activities and organize sport-related activities. Volunteers will teach practical, conversational English skills in an interactive way with stories telling, playing games, performing plays, etc. Volunteers will also teach specific vocabulary, grammar and pronunciation. A supervisor at each school will be assigned to help develop teaching lessons and provide guidance during the project.

Volunteers working in secondary schools can also possibly teach other languages in addition to English. There are sometimes approximately 10 teachers in the foreign language department, but only 1-2 teachers may actually speak English properly. Others simply translate stories and teach English grammar components and sentence structure. This a lack of conversational English skills makes fluent volunteers a highly valued prize! The presence of native, English-speaking volunteers will create an environment where the children will correctly learn and speak English with ease. In Thailand teachers are highly respected and revered.

Room/Food/Supervision

IFRE manages living accommodations, provides meals and supervision for volunteers for the entirety of their stay in Thailand . IFRE's Thailand office is located in a beautiful area about 50 km from the Suvarnabhumi International Airport in Ayutthaya City – the former capital of Thailand . We offer home base in Thailand . Our Home base is very safe. It is a clean, sparsely furnished home but will meet all your needs as an IFRE volunteer. We try to create a “home away from home” for volunteers staying at our home base. It is a perfect situation for volunteers to live safely and comfortably while making many new friends and sharing experience every day. Most of volunteers project in Thailand are located within 1-10 KM of our home base so you may walk or ride a local bus to your project. In the evening when you return to home base, you can relax, eat dinner, explore local areas or simply share experience with volunteer comrades.

Occasionally, depending on volunteer traffic, available projects or distance to a volunteer's assigned project, we may also place our volunteers with carefully pre-screened host families. Our host families are socially respected and are experienced with hosting international volunteers. They have strong interest in our volunteers' safety and well being and demonstrate this with caution and care. In most host family situations, volunteers will share a room with another volunteer of the same gender. Volunteers staying with a host family will be able to have home cooked meals with the family. Those who have stayed with a host family describe an enriched experience as a result of having done so. Once you have applied, you will receive specific details of your accommodations in your personal placement documents.

Our field staff visits volunteers regularly and always happy to help our volunteers in any way needed. We offer 3 meals a day of local cuisine. Typically, volunteers eat breakfast and dinner at the home base (or host family) and have lunch at their project. We offer fresh, nutritious and safe local foods to our volunteers to eat.