A letter from Scott and Khanita Satterfield in Thailand
September 17, 2007
Friends,
“I don't know what I can do to help one of my students,” the teacher said. “I began tutoring him in English during my lunch break because he was having problems in my class, and that’s when I realized he had a bigger problem. He’s in the seventh grade and can’t read Thai. None of his former teachers knew what to do with him, so they just passed him on to the next grade. Now he’s frustrated, angry and doesn’t understand why he can’t read. I would like to know what I can do the help him.”
This was the opening question of a special training workshop I arranged for Thai teachers of English in our church schools through the Minnesota-Thai Teacher Exchange. Working with education professors from Minnesota State University and ESL specialists from schools across Minnesota, I organized a three-day seminar last June here in Chiang Mai. It was one of our most challenging and successful training programs in recent years, and the teachers were eager to learn from their American counterparts. Nearly 100 teachers rotated between 15 workshops that demonstrated a variety of techniques for teaching English.
For the last session, we gathered all the teachers from both countries for a special question-and-answer session on students with special learning needs. For years, nothing has been done nationally to help teachers recognize learning disabilities in their students and provide strategies and services to help them. Dyslexia, sensory disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and others have been discussed at the policy level, but not brought into the classroom where a younger generation of teachers now understand these students are not just “problems” to be passed over each year. They are children in need of help, but teachers have not been equipped to help them. Schools aren’t able to help them either.
I had requested our friends from Minnesota to give time to this topic, and we were fortunate that they all had experience and training working with special needs students. Though we only touched on the problem, they were able to help our teachers identify these problems and suggest ways of talking with parents and finding experts and doctors in their cities who might help them.
Training teachers, I am learning, is much more than providing them with the tools to teach English. It is preparing them for their students and finding ways to help them make a difference in the lives of the young people they spend all day with. Coming from the United States, where we tend to take education for granted, to work in Thailand—where education is valued by some, sometimes misunderstood, and too frequently seen as an irrelevant luxury by others—I have come to understand the amount of love that goes into teaching. If you had seen the expressions on the faces of the teachers as they shared the stories of children marginalized for their disability, children who could be helped, then you would know what it’s like to see the love of Jesus Christ expressed.
Khanita and I work hard to learn from our Thai colleagues. It is not possible (and a bit arrogant) to come to a place and give people answers without fully understanding them. We have to learn. As a Thai, Khanita has an advantage, and I often find myself suppressing my American urge to have all the answers. So, when we visit a school, we observe, we ask questions, we listen, and then we share. This has helped make our training programs more relevant, and like our program initiated with Minnesota State University, much more helpful.
This new program with MSU was so well received that we’ve agreed to make it an annual event. I am discussing with the head of their teacher-training clinic the possibility of having MSU education majors doing an internship in our church schools. It would provide our teachers and students with a great opportunity to improve their English and give the interns a chance to learn about a new culture and experience teaching from a completely new perspective.
We are also discussing with the Thai school leadership how to revive our mission volunteer teaching program. The schools need experienced teachers who are free during the summer months to help. It’s an opportunity to work with English teachers and students and share knowledge and skills with others. It has been a long discussion, but it is now bearing fruit. We hope to have a program soon where teachers can be mission volunteers in a school for periods of two months, three months, or twelve-plus months. If something like this appeals to you, stay tuned.
Thank you for your many cards, letters, and emails over the past few months. We have enjoyed them and hope you’ve enjoyed our responses. Keep checking our Web page for more newsletters, and please keep writing!
Yours in Christ,
Scott, Khanita, and Chris Satterfield
The 2007 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 119
