May 26, 2019

The reality of what I’ve seen from Thai students has been far different from what I expected. I was anticipating stereotypical well behaved Asian students that would be timid to speak up and were very respectful.

In reality, students especially M3 (9th grade) are very noisy and I’ve found disrespectful. My more experienced colleagues warned me, but I didn’t want to believe them. Now I’ve seen it from my own eyes and heard the stories. The instances of 13 year olds being caught in hotels with condoms, of 12 year olds vaping in the bathroom and 14 year olds drinking alcohol. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed.

This is not to say it’s all bad, most of my M1 and M2 (7th and 8th grade) are pretty solid. Many of the M3 students seem worse than the students in “Stand and Deliver.” I take it as a challenge to right them in with my developing leadership skills.

Things aren’t off to the best of starts, but they can only get better from here. 

Kingston S. Lim

May 26, 2019

Bangkok, Thailand