Dedicated teacher makes all the difference at a small, rural school

IN A REMOTE corner of Chiang Mai province, a 50-year-old teacher has proven that the key to tackling illiteracy is “dedication”, which she found can overcome all imaginable problems like limited resources and the lack of teaching staff.

Thanikan Taay is also prepared to conduct extra classes for worthy students whenever she has free time. She gives up her evenings for that purpose between Monday and Friday and, if her schedule is not too tight, she even offers classes on weekends. 

She has also become an inspiration for many young teachers at the Wat Ngiew Thao School, who also provide free classes from time to time. The school, in Samoeng district, takes students from kindergarten up to Mathayom 3 level.

The dedication of these selfless teachers works like magic for this small school and its 106 students, many of whom are turned away by other, better-equipped educational institutions. 

The third external assessment (2011–2015) by the Office for National Education Standards and Quality Assessment (Onesqa) shows Wat Ngiew Thao School earned a “good” grade, up from “fair” in the previous assessment. 

In the bigger picture, the “good” grade represents a remarkable success. Nearly half of the country’s 24,805 small schools, after all, failed Onesqa’s assessments. 

Wat Ngiew Thao School is now well on the way to soaring even higher. Dedduang Chomsiri, its director, believes it should be able to earn a “very good” grade in Onesqa’s fourth assessment.

Dedduang said the school had also heeded Onesqa’s advice to use distance-learning TV programmes, which are available thanks to an initiative kick-started by His Majesty the King. 

“Teachers are advised to watch these programmes with their students and provide more detailed explanations if they notice that their students don’t get something,” Thanikan said. 

Professor Dr Channarong Pornrungroj, Onesqa’s director, said Wat Ngiew Thao School was a great example of a small school that has put his agency’s advice to good use and achieved improvements.

Thanikan, who is head of the school’s academic affairs, works diligently alongside 11 other teachers. Since her transfer to the school five years ago, Thanikan has never stopped her efforts to make it better. 

“When I first came here, I found that many of the primary students were still practically illiterate,” she said. “So, I convened teachers’ meetings to identify problems and explore solutions”. 

Thanikan said she held meetings and found that the school had come up with many constructive projects to help the students but those projects were so scattered that they hardly made a difference.

The solution, she pointed out, was to merge all those ideas to make them easier for the small number of teachers to handle. These projects focus on boosting the students’ learning potential and their academic knowledge, as well as taking full advantage of the Internet and mobile libraries. 

“We have made sure that every teacher is mainly in charge of at least one project,” Thanikan said. 

In her opinion, there is no sound excuse for student illiteracy because every teacher should be able to help their students learn how to read and write. 

“It takes about three months to teach students the alphabet and vowels, and the basics of combining them,” she said. She insisted that the mission was not difficult and, with dedication, the teachers might be able to accomplish it faster by producing interesting teaching materials.

Thanikan said she always lets the younger teachers at her school know that they should be proud of their job because they can help children by giving them the tools to build a better life for themselves.

“Working in a small, rural school is, of course, more challenging than working in a city-based school,” she said, “And perhaps that can be a reason for you to feel prouder”. She said her attitude must be rubbing off on the teachers because the number of teachers seeking transfers has dropped. 

Thanikan does not see the limited number of teachers whose majors do not cover all subjects as a serious issue because teachers who hold a bachelor’s degree should be able to teach their students anything. 

She pointed out that when teachers find they don’t know something, they can seek more knowledge from various sources. 

 

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