Teacher Appreciation Day

Coming in to this experience I was told that teacher's are highly respected in Thailand. Supposedly, teachers lie third in the social ranking. At the top there is the king, second is the monks, and then third is teachers. Students used to be taught by monks, but now they are taught by teacher's like myself. So in Thailand, I guess I'm pretty important! :)

Last week they had teacher appreciation day, in which a traditional Thai ceremony was conducted. Since I teach kindergarteners, this was their first year learning the ceremony. In preparation for the big day, we spent the week practicing all of the technical details. My students struggled a bit, but they  will perform this ceremony every year for their teachers, so in a few years they will have it figured out.

For the ceremony, the entire student body gathered in the auditorium. Once everyone was seated, the head director spoke some words, that I couldn't understand because they were in Thai, and then it began. It started with the kindergarten teachers going up and sitting on stage. Next, two students, one girl and one boy, were selected from each class to come up and perform the ceremony. These students crawled in a line across the stage, and then one student stopped in front of each teacher. They handed the teacher a large flower arrangement and then did a series of bows. As the student would bow, the teacher would pat their head. Finally, the students crawled off the stage and the teachers went back to their seats.

Then first grade went up and performed the same ceremony. Brad teaches math and science to a few of the first grade classes, so he went up and got to be honored by his students too. The ceremony continued with each grade going up individually and the students performing the same series of bows and the presentation of flowers to their teachers. The bowing and the patting of the student's heads made the ceremony seem a little strange and foreign to us, but it was a very cool experience to take part in.

After each grade had honored their teachers, we went back to the classroom where we did the ceremony again. This time each student participated in the ceremony, instead of just the two that did it in front of the school. Each student had brought a bouquet of flowers for us, and when I left school that day, I had a dozen bouquets to take home. That's definitely the most flowers I have ever received in my life time!

Here's a picture of two of the students honoring myself and the head teacher in the classroom.