The Thai Way

As I prepare to take on my last academic year as school principal, please bear with me while I think (rant) out loud…

As usual, before the launch of a new school year (my 38th, may I add!), I take time to reflect on the coming year and go about setting professional goals and objectives that I would like to attain during the ensuing 10 months, and this either as a teacher or as one of the ‘top dogs’ of the school community of which I have been entrusted to serve as principal. 

In the course of my career, I have been at the controls of some pretty solid and well established (= smooth sailing) schools, while in some cases, a few have not been as solid and well established (= what have I gotten myself into?).  In most cases, I’ve done well as I strove to become proficient in areas such as educational law, budgeting, scheduling, curriculum design, instruction, and policy-making.  Although way back in the past when my personal modus operandi was endowed with a zesty mind and a youthful brain that could readily absorb a lot of information in one sitting (alas, no more), I read a lot about education and very much about educational leadership in an attempt to define true leadership. I quickly came to realize (the zesty mind and youthful brain work that way…quickly I mean) that one does not truly learn something from reading a book, just as reading a biography of a professional hockey player does not make one an effective hockey player. Preferably, the best place to hone one's pedagogy would be ‘in the trenches’ of teaching (classroom) and, in the case of leadership, at the actual controls of an organization.  As my buddy Sigmund once said, “The only source of knowledge is experience”. In the end, my learning to become a ‘good’ school principal depended mostly on my ability to develop into a moral leader who included others in maintaining a positive learning environment in whatever situation I found myself.

Standing in front of the flagpoles of the school,
challenged by the meshing of two cultures.

Today, I find myself working in Thailand. Thailand society is very hierarchical by nature and all organizations are run very much on the top-down authority model.  It is no secret that the Thai educational system is in need of a major overhaul and one of the major challenges to bringing reform will be addressing the way schools are managed. For true reform to happen, the hierarchical nature of school administration must be corrected.  Consultation with and input from the people who are in the trenches (teachers, parents, students) are essential elements in educational reform. Schools that work best are schools where all stakeholders are on board and inline to a shared vision and direction. 

Like duh...pretty obvious stuff here that really doesn't take much of a zesty mind nor a youthful brain to figure out, right?

Which brings me to the subject at hand for this blog entry: what challenges lay ahead for me as the principal of this little international school in the land of smiles? For sure, one of my challenges if not the biggest challenge this year will be navigating around this top down hierarchical administrative model which is very much ingrained in the present day Thai education realm. Case in point: in the past, whenever I expressed concern about the ways things were done or offered suggestions to improve procedures and protocol, my comments, advise, and suggestions were often brushed off as ‘not understanding the Thai way’.  

Sorry guys, but this lame excuse for wobbling in your old ways doesn’t cut it for me this year. Welcome to 21st century learning.  Should be an interesting year. 

To be continued…