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Educational Approach
“I am not content to suggest that we can reach the same level as the private schools in the area. I actually think we can accelerate beyond that.” – Kate Cope, the Foundation’s Director of Education | |
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The primary goal of this Foundation is provide quality and practical English language education in local Thai schools on Phuket Island, focusing on primary and eventually secondary school children. Although there is an English language curriculum in Thailand’s public schools, its implementation is less than adequate and funding is severely limited. Teaching methods usually revolve around rote memorization and there is short supply of native-English speaking educators. As is common in many places around the world, the English language education provided in government schools is also of a low quality relative to what can be obtained in private schools. With only a portion of the population able to access and afford a private school education, a fragmented social structure is developed and maintained over time. Click here to see how we teach (Windows Media Video) Click here for an article about us and our educational approach featured in the Phuket Bulletin, January, 2007. This article is written in both Thai and English. Our Foundation will work with local educators to fund and implement a quality English language education in government schools. Our belief is that a language program that emphasizes conversation and shifts the focus away from rote memorization will allow Thai children to meet with greater success in learning the English language. Through interactive exercises, role playing, and other approaches, we seek to build the confidence and increase the intercultural understanding of tomorrow’s Thai youth. Learning Material About Local Life Our Director of Education, U.K.-born Kate Cope, is designing and implementing new pedagogical approaches for each grade level. This includes the development of illustrated instruction books to supplant what is commonly available to English language teachers in Thailand. Most books are written to be of use to as wide an audience as possible, causing them to become generic, and in many ways alien, to a local community. Ms. Cope is developing books that make specific reference to images familiar to local children and the vocabulary that would be most useful to Phuket residents. This is not only familiar to children on Phuket but introduces the notion to them that local images are important enough belong in a book. Ms. Cope states, “To be encouraged to produce material which is specific to a particular area and specific to images recognizable to children is incredibly important. We don’t have to look at blond-haired, male astronauts, we can have Thai-looking fisherman instead. We can teach the names of things that the children actually know and see every day. It is a huge leap forward and it is an incredible divergence from stock learning and standardized books. That’s why I came here [to Phuket], because it has never been done before and it is very exciting to be doing something for the very first time.” Click here for a video with the latest news on the Foundation’s first English textbook A Lively Curriculum Ms. Cope uses an interactive approach to teaching English, including the use of a miniature, hands-on, “educational playground” for the English language classroom. “We use total physical response which engages the children by hearing, seeing and actually doing. We have a maxim which is, ‘I hear and I forget, I see and remember. I do and I understand.’” Our program begins by testing the student’s level of understanding of written and spoken English. The tests include cards with pictures of local images that they can point to when they hear the English word. A year from now, we expect the children to have moved from barely being able to point to the right pictures, to being able to talk about the pictures and their context. The Foundation’s English language education program is total immersion in English. No Thai is spoken by the teachers. The children in the pilot school certainly have found the new program to be a challenge. Nevertheless, with patience and a smiling, reassuring face, Ms. Cope and her assistants are able to move them along. Visit our Kalim School photo gallery to see images of the students of the Kalim School. | |
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