Life in Phana

Study Centre in Phana: Teaching and learning English

The Rin-Homhuan Mahanil Study Centre in Phana has been taking up so much of my time this year that I have not blogged since Pensri and I took a Christmas break to Laos. Much of the activity at the Study Centre is concerned with teaching and learning English so I am going to start a mini-series of posts with some pictures and a few comments on that.

Back in January we welcomed a couple who were touring Thailand but they took a month out to do some teaching for us. They went to a local village school for two mornings a week and to the tetsaban-run nursery one morning a week. I don’t have any pictures of them at the  school but teachers and pupils there agreed that they had done a great job in motivating the kids. Here is Sarah at the nursery in Phana:

 

The Study Centre was visited by the director of the local ‘Continuous Learning Centre’ which provides various courses for adults. As a result of the visit, the staff of the CLC came to our Study Centre for classes in English. They were doing this after finishing work, so attendance after the first few weeks dwindled and finally other things took priority for this group of students. But in the next two pictures you can see Sarah working with these Thai teachers. (The clock had stopped – it really was after work, about 4.30 pm.)

  

Another interesting experiment was proposed by a village primary school about 6 kms from Phana. Instead of us sending teachers into their school, they sent classes to us twice a week for six weeks. This worked very well, especially because the children were very excited to be able to get out of their classroom, out of their school and out of their village for a whole morning at a time. Teachers and parents brought children to us and collected them again, though their timing was not always very reliable.

Here is a volunteer called Bekah with some of the youngest children:

 

Maria and Liz and Pensri (out in the lane next to the centre):

  

Bingo is a popular activity and very good as a way to practise their listening skills as well as number recognition; and if they call Bingo! they have to read back their winning numbers:

Some children, who mostly live nearby to the centre, have organised a class of their own and currently they come for an hour and a half twice a week to learn and practise some English and to play games. UNO is their favourite! Here are some of these children:

So this aspect of the Study Centre has been very successful. Sometimes we have been a little disappointed that more people have not taken advantage of the opportunity to practise their English, but we have to remember that people have busy lives with lots of family and community commitments that make regular attendance for classes difficult. So we should be very pleased that we have attracted as many ‘customers’ as we have. And we are. And we hope to attract more in the future.

Previous posts about the Study Centre can be found

                        HERE     and      HERE           

Study Centre is Busy, Busy

After opening on 8th March, the Rin-Homhual Mahanil Study Centre in Phana was busy two days later when the Phana Bicycle Rally came by. Then there were a few quiet days when we wondered where everyone was who had said they would visit. Slowly ‘business’ picked up. The Director of Phana Suksa called in with a good luck gift to the Centre, for example, and several people stopped by to do a little weaving.

But this last week has been very busy and has been everything we had hoped the Study Centre would be: a place for people to study, to hold discussions and meetings, and to drop in to browse through the books and magazines and study the exhibits and ask questions about them.

Three groups of children on school holiday are now attending the Study Centre twice a week for English lessons and practice. The largest group (16 of them at the last count) are of Primary One age or a bit younger. One group of them comes in from a village about 7 kms away in/on this vehicle driven by the mother of one of them. I guess you would call this a little-people carrier.

The oldest group (M1) is currently the smallest, but these three girls are very keen. They are joined by ‘Judy’ in the background, a Phanasuksa student who has just returned from a year as an AFS student in Brazil. She is helping out at the Study Centre and especially helping me with the teaching.

The other group, about to double in numbers next week, is Primary 4 and 5. After their class finished on Thursday they stayed on to play some English-language games on the computer.

On Wednesday we hosted a group of teachers and students from Benjamah Mahavat School in Ubon. They were following up an earlier exploratory visit to assess Phana as a possible focus for their off-site study programme. We started the day early after they had had breakfast across the road at the house of Acharn Kalyani, who is involved in the running of the centre.

After introducing them to the centre and looking at the history and monkey exhibitions in some detail, we took them on a tour of other possible educational sites in the village.

The Traditional Medicine Centre had not been expecting us, but when we arrived they had just done a presentation to a group from Si Sa Ket, so they kindly repeated it for us.

 

At Fai Rong Hin the group was most interested in the cooking, using methane gas produced on site with the help of a lot of pigs… (APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE)

… and in posing for a group photo:

After lunch we visited the weaving co-operative in Moo 9. Again, they had not been expecting us and it turned out that a training session was in progress. But again, we were welcomed, given lots of attention and lots of answers to our questions, and a couple of the teachers were sold some cloth produced by the co-operative.

And finally, to Don Chao Poo, where we took them on the Path of the Buddha:

Then it was back to the Study Centre for a plenary discussion. It looks very likely that a group or groups of students from the school will be making a visit of several days to carry out a varied study programme using all the facilities we visited early in the new school year which starts in mid-May.

And finally, on Friday evening the first of a planned series of meetings took place at the Study Centre, organised this time by Khun Chorkdee Pornsri. The idea was to discuss the ways in which the traditional 12-month festivals were celebrated ‘in the old days’.

Thirty-two people turned up, but they didn’t get past the first month! The next meeting in two weeks time will be to listen to the Chao Kana Amphur (the chief abbot of the District) talking about his recent pilgrimage to the places in India associated with the life of the Buddha.

So, a very busy week at the Study Centre, and a very productive one which promises well for the continued use and interest in the Centre.