Teacher Training in Nongkhai

One day while visiting the Education Office (equivalent of our District Office in California) in Nongkhai with Mr. Elvis, I met Mr. Ampone, the Director of the English Language Teacher Training Program. His department is responsible for training and providing follow-up to Thai English teachers in some 180 schools. And I thought working with 30 teachers at ten schools last year was a lot!



A couple days later, I met with Mr. Ampone and his Project Coordinator to discuss potential student grouping instructional strategies they could incorporate into their training activities.



Just prior to my meeting with Mr. Ampone, I had an opportunity to hold a "mini" training activity with the Thai English teachers at the large Pathumthep High School in Nongkhai. This high school has close to 4000 students and includes a special English Program where student take all of their classes in English (the parents pay extra for this program) as well as English within the normal Thai curriculum. During this training, we discussed classroom management techniques as well as instructional strategies. Part of my training included the "Pair-Share" concept where the teacher does a short visual and auditory lesson, followed by the two students in turn teaching each other the same lesson. This is a powerful technique which has the teacher teaching (talking) one third of the time and the students teaching (talking to) each other two thirds of the time.