Monastic Schooling

The principal and head monk of the monastic school where we volunteered said that he began the school in order to bring modern education to the poor of Myanmar. He has done a significant job. There are over 7000 children attending the school, which does not charge any fees for attendance. In order to control the unruly students, the staff consists of 150-170 teachers and there is generally 2 teachers per class. This is probably a good thing, considering most classes have between 50-60 students and there are rumors that up to 100 students may attend one class. There are so many children attending the school that they must attend in shifts (similar to the way it worked in the town I lived in in the Philippines). About half of the students attend school in the morning and the other half begin after lunch.

We were not privileged to teach a class of 50-100 students, but instead taught the “special classes.” These classes consist of 20-30 students who were identified in preschool as having a higher potential than their classmates. These students are very lucky because they still receive 2 teachers for every class and they attend classes all day.

The school is fairly well known and so foreign volunteers are a common sight. They only teach the special classes, which may or may not give these students an edge over the others in the English language.

We taught at this school for 5 weeks before we decided it was best for us and for the students if we left the teaching to the teachers. Upon agreeing to volunteer, we had only had experience teaching young adults with a basic knowledge of English. We had not expected to teach young students who were still learning their colors. Aside from this, we realized that the Myanmar teachers are very adept in their English and could command the class much better than we could Also, it appears that they are receiving training in student centered learning and activity based learning methods meaning they are now incorporating different methods into their classroom. Therefore, it seemed to us that they were much better equipped to teach English to the students than we were.

Overall, I think that it would be more beneficial if the volunteer teachers taught English to the Myanmar teachers. This way, they could teach all teachers, not just the special class teachers and thus potentially have a larger impact than direct teaching has. Another benefit is that then foreigners are not coming and going every day, week or month, which can be very disruptive to the class.