A few days ago, I got a call from a teacher at Anuban Nong Doan Primary School. “Can you come and teach English to our students? How about one day per week?” The teacher was disappointed to hear that I only had one half day per week available but nevertheless wanted to meet with me to discuss the details and said that they would be able to compensate me for my time.
I arrived at the school the following afternoon, expecting to meet with this one particular teacher but instead found myself sitting at the head of a table with all the school’s teachers gathered around, about 15 teachers in all. We initially talked about day and time, but when the chair of the meeting turned to me and asked how much money I needed, the discussion got more interesting. “I don’t really need any money, actually. I am happy to teach for free but the only thing that I ask is for permission to use stories from the Bible as part of curriculum.” I assured them that I did not intend to pressure the children to change religions or try to get them to convert. I merely wanted to use some stories from the Bible as part of my teaching. The teachers discussed this idea back and forth for a bit. One of the concerns was “What will the parents think?” They feared that some parents could misunderstand my intention and think that there was some foreign teacher trying to convert their kids. Into their conversation, I threw out another option, “Or, instead of using Bible stories as part of the English teaching, for every hour of teaching, I could do 45 minutes of English, and then 15 minutes of a Bible story in Thai.” They liked that I idea more but were still not enthusiastic. The chair of the meeting, whom I was seated next to, turned to me and with a big smile on his face and asked, “Can’t you just teach English?” I gave a big smile back and didn’t say much of anything. This is a Thai way of saying, “No”. He understood and realized that I wasn’t going for it.