Why you should NOT teach English in Thailand.

Let's start off by saying that I know what I am talking about. I have been here for nearly 15 years and while only around 5 of them were spent teaching ESL (English as a Second Language.) I know how the system works now and how it used to work. I ended up being a teacher here completely by accident and for a while it was nice.

Until it wasn't.

You see, things have changed a lot in Thailand since 10 or 15 years ago when it seemed for the most part that there was a camaraderie between foreign and Thai teachers. Perhaps this is not applicable to all the schools in Thailand and i don't want to paint everyone with the same brush. However, virtually all of the schools have that I have been privy to feature these less than wonderful attributes.

Reason number one: You make substantially more than the average Thai teacher.

I know, this doesn't sound like a negative thing and it isn't come payday. However, they really should make everyone's salary confidential and they simply don't. This results in a tremendous amount of resentment from the Thai staff towards the foreign staff. Normally the Thai staff have additional duties that don't apply to the foreign staff as well and well this just adds fuel to the fire. I know this is just the way the world works... when you can do something that another person can not, and said skill is valuable, you make more money. In this instance you have complete command of the most sought after language in the world. The average Thai teacher, who likely has a degree in education, will need to be in a school system for 15 years before they reach the salary level that you will be at on your very first month of doing it, ever.

Reason number 2: ludicrous expectations from administrators

So you are given a bunch of 8-year old children and they vary from "decent" to "none at all" as far as understanding English is concerned and in one year's time you are expected to make everyone completely fluent. This simply isn't going to happen and sometimes it is seen as you not doing your job sufficiently. The first 2 years I was a teacher they actually had science and math books from the United States for the kids to use as well. This is absurd because they do not have the reading comprehension capabilities to use these books. The children tend to speak Thai in the classroom (not my classroom they didn't... i established the "NO Thai zone that began at the beginning of all my hours.)

This didn't solve a very horrible problem with the Thai education system. Kids are not allowed to fail. You must pass EVERYONE even if they have learned nothing. This results in what I faced in my first year of teaching grade 6. There were 2 students that couldn't understand anything you said to them. They might have a learning disability. They may have benefited by repeating a grade, but this never happens. One girl got 6% out of 100 on the final exam (which i can't even understand how that is possible since it was multiple choice) but I had to basically give her the answers until she receive a barely passing grade.

I have only encountered ONE school in which all the graduates were fluent by the end of their 6 years there. This school was extremely expensive and they had one major program that made it work. Everything in the school was in English ONLY. It wasn't even allowed to speak Thai on the playgrounds. The administrators and the teachers (foreign and Thai) spoke English all the time. Being caught speaking Thai had repercussions. Obviously the students have to study Thai language and this rule was not applied there. The reasoning behind this system was that seeing as how the students live in Thailand and for the most part had Thai parents, they were going to be speaking Thai all the time in their day-to-day lives. I suppose it can be seen as cruel but this is the most highly sought after school in the entire country.

Reason number 3: The trend of having "roaming" teachers

When i first began teaching, i was the teacher of one grade 6 classroom with 17 students. I was their teacher for English, Science and Math. I was also able to keep the discipline in line because it carried from one lesson to the next. In later years in an effort to both cut costs and also add more students to the schools, they started hiring one Math teacher (which was me), one science teacher, and one English teacher. We now had to roam to and from 6 different classroom (not all in the same day) and the classrooms sizes were more than 30 kids each. It is impossible to establish a discipline system in this manor, because the naughty students already know that in 40 minutes they are not going to see you again for up to a couple of days.

Also, have you ever tried to learn 160 people's names when their names are in a different language? It is incredibly difficult to control a group of 30 kids when you only remember half of their names.

You also don't have any sort of central storage area. Sometimes my whiteboard pens would run out and now i have to go down a flight of stairs in order to get more... by the time i return to the classroom chaos rules the land.

Reason number 4: The pay is crap

Now i know I said before that you make substantially more than a Thai person does on day one. However, Thai teachers are afforded guarantees by the government to receive housing subsidies, low or no interest loans on houses and cars, as well as bonuses and after school money-making schemes involving extra lessons. Most or all of these things are not offered to foreign teachers. When i began at a local elementary school nearly 15 years ago the monthly salary was 25,000B. I spoke to someone who was working there this year and the pay is now 28,000B. This is NOT keeping up with inflation. Gasoline is twice as expensive as it was back then.

Furthermore, if you work in nearly any other country in Asia you will make double or even triple what they pay in Thailand.

Reason number 5: The ever increasing regulations and requirements on teachers

It used to be that if you had a degree in anything and were able to do a couple of sample lessons successfully, you were hired provisionally - that is, you got a month or so to prove yourself while receiving support from other foreign teachers. Now you need a degree in a related discipline, a TEFL certification - which can be expensive and honestly, you don't really learn anything in these programs - i didn't, a week long course in Thai culture training (as if that was at all important in the efforts of teaching kids English - and the school also makes money off of you because you have to pay for it yourself,) and an international criminal background check that you pay for (I'm actually ok with this one.) They just keep adding more and more and more stuff each year. So much that I am not even aware of what they need now but it doesn't matter because I would never teach in this country again (or really any other one haha.)

Let's just say that nearly all of the teachers I knew back in the day when I had the job have moved on to Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, and even Myanmar. They ALL make far better salaries than they did here.

Reason number 6: Very little support from administrators

It can be a very daunting task to keep 30 kids in line when you can not speak their primary language. Sometimes you end up with problematic kids whose primary objective is to disrupt class at any cost. Imagine what would happen to you as a child if you openly mocked a teacher in class? You'd get in trouble, right? In many schools, such as the one I was in, we were not allowed to reprimand the kids. A common punishment that was implemented even to me as a kid was to make kids write something over and over again. This was banned. Another was to make the disruptive kid sit in the hallway for 10 minutes. This is also banned. Another one was to give extra homework. This was also banned.

In the meantime I have witnessed Thai teachers having the disruptive kids walk up to the front of the classroom and have the teacher smack their hands with a stick.... hard. This somehow is ok... just not for the foreigners - you would likely go to jail for this.

In summary I would say that teaching in Thailand used to be a wonderful thing for a year or two- then you need to move on for your own sake. Also, (as someone mentioned on my previous post) you could have something very interesting on your resume / CV. You could then take this experience, and if you wanted to be easily hired in another, better-paying country such as Korea. Nowadays I would just recommend that people go straight to Korea and skip Thailand altogether if they are actually interested in the profession.

In Thailand the schools are seeing a dramatic decline in the amount of people that are applying for the jobs because of the reasons listed above. Using agencies that outright LIE to people from overseas has become the trend as of late. These agencies completely misrepresent what the job actually entails on the website and overseas phone calls and then when the poor saps who believed them realize what has been done, they are already stuck. The agencies also take a rather large chunk of your already terrible salary. So even if you ignore all of the above reasons that I already stated and still want to teach in Thailand by all means do not use an agency.

So in summary the reasons to not teach English in Thailand are as follow

• The resentment that you will face from making more than your Thai counterparts
• Ludicrous expectations from administrators
• The trend of having "roaming" teachers
• The pay is crap
• The ever increasing regulations and requirements on teachers
• Very little support from administrators

Like I said, I am not trying to say that all schools in Thailand are like this. There are probably some wonderful schools in this country in different areas that I am completely unaware of. I haven't been to every school here. However, i can only offer you one piece of advice if you want to come and teach in Thailand.

Visit here as a tourist and have a look or even better, move here for a short amount of time like 3 months. Then ask around, visit the schools, see with your own eyes what the situation is like and get hired directly by the school. NEVER EVER use an agency because you will be lied to and you will be put in the worst schools imaginable.

Ok, that's it for now. I hope you found it entertaining or informative, or both!

As always i welcome your comments and in this case especially if you disagree with me.