Thread: What it's really like to fix old problems in a new school...

I almost decided to return home on a flight tomorrow (Monday) morning
and to leave Thailand for good. I may have to do so yet. Here is
what has transpired:

1. On Monday, after Songkran holidays were over, I had been feeling
ill for a few days, despite my trying to rest and get my strength
back. The doctors here are quite good, and two of the best consulted
over me while I was in the hospital for a few days. The problem is
that I have lost over 40 pounds--perhaps more by now--in just 4 weeks;
I have not been eating properly or getting enough water, which is
absolutely necessary when you work in the sun much of the day in the
tropics, during its hottest season; and the doctor I had in America,
who recently diagnosed me as having adult Attention Deficit
Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), made a mistake in putting me on
Adderall, an amphetamine, and a high dosage at that. They don't even
allow the prescription of Adderall or other amphetamines in Thailand
because they are not believed to be therapeutic, as American doctors
and pharmaceutical companies believe, and because the heat, coupled
with amphetamines, can be lethal. So I was very dizzy, dehydrated,
had serious problems with my blood pressure, and my heart was racing
and would not stop, for a problem that I likely do not even have, in a tropical
environment. That put me on the gurney, and I was well taken care of
by the hosptial staff, the school paid for it, and I had many visitors
from my teachers and staff. The Thai consider it to be very bad luck to stay
in a hospital alone, and I had to convince them to let me sleep alone
in my room and give me time to rest before they would leave me in the
evenings. They believe in assigning people to stay with you throughout
the night.

2. Meanwhile, just before and during my time in the hospital, I have
discovered that not only was I brought in to get a program off the
ground and to pass muster with the Thai Ministry of Education, but
that there are other, much more serious problems at the school, this
school of such high repute, within the department that my program
falls under, and that those problems have been shuffled to me. The
Thai person values most highly the act of "saving face," because to be
disgraced in Thailand brings a reputation to you and your family that
threatens your very employment and future employability, as well as
your social standing--all are interrelated. As a result, I have
learned, it is often the case that the falang, the white man, is set
up to take the heat, while the Thai retreat in silence and wash their
hands of the matter, regardless of responsibility and the origin of
the problem. You may think this is wrong, but you are thinking in
Western terms, not in Thai.

3. The problem begins here: Before the formation of my program, there was (and
currently remains) another smaller program that teaches only English
to select Thai students whose parents pay extra for the service. This
program is, on paper, a sister program to my program.

The students at my school are very wealthy and they are to be trained in English, in all of their
subjects, under my program, in order to take over their parents'
international businesses or take positions in the Thai government, etc.

Many members of the Thai Ministry of Education who audit students'
progress are not happy with the lack of proper English education that
Thai students have received for the last decade or longer, that
education having come mostly from falangs who go through a 4-6 week
course and get a "certificate to teach English as a foreign language."
These people come to Thailand often because they are not employable
in their home country, the wealthier foreign countries will not employ
them, and they have some serious problems with vices, namely hard
drugs, and Thailand has a subculture where one can easily indulge the
vices for only a few bhat, a fraction of the cost at home, and with
little or no scrutiny. These sorts of people are known to be a
problem in the lesser schools at Thailand, but not at the better schools, or so it is said.

And so I was brought over to build a new, total immersion,
all-subjects English program while the old program was slowly allowed to die out or be
re-organized. The old program has a serious problem not only with
some poor teaching, but with drugs. They are staffed with many people who
are tourists of the vices, not teachers. I learned only yesterday
that many of them had not even been properly vetted through the
personnel and recruiting department. Rather, a small group of them
landed here and for the past two years have been bringing over their
friends to join them. They have had no performance reviews and the
Thais have turned a blind eye to their behavior to avoid embarassing
the school by eliminating the problems, thereby "saving face."

You understand, of course, that job descriptions never reveal any such
things as this. People do such wonderful things to each other when
they go through a hiring process.

4. Two members, two highly problematic members, of the old program
were transferred to be under my watch before I even arrived here.
Their lack of performance and absenteeism was immediately obvious, and
once the Thai teachers came to trust me, they quietly reported to me
what I was already seeing at the campus teaching accommodations, that
these two were part of a larger group of teachers who had entrenched
themselves here and were using, and likely dealing, narcotics in the campus
accommodations.

Now, many of you who read this may recoil in horror at my indicated
lack of tolerance of drug usage, based upon your own culture and beliefs.
The facts are clear, however,
that our teachers are not to use drugs, deal drugs, or in any way behave in a
manner that brings disrepute to the school, in their contracts.
Further, the new prime minister of Thailand has enacted a
zero-tolerance policy for drug users. If your blood tests positive,
you go to jail. The standard sentence is 10 years.
Sheer common sense should dictate your behavior in such an
environment.

And so I heard about, observed, and reported the problems to my
superior, and asked my superior to report to the Man who oversees
the entire school. My superior was out of the country, and she sent me a memo
directing me to dismiss the two problem employees, which I did, with
witnesses present. What she did not do was inform Director of the entire school of the
problem, in order to save face for herself, since she oversees both programs.
Fortunately I kept the memos that were exchanged between my superior
and me.

5. The Results are not good, and never are, in such a situation. One
of the boys who was fired threatened a lawsuit and refused to submit
to a drug test. He remains at the school temporarily, and is causing
quite a disturbance. The other boy said that unless he were allowed to
resign, and thus were allowed to remain in Thailand without being
"blacklisted" by the school and possibly incarcerated, he would report
15 other teachers in the old program who are also part of the problem,
and thus, he said smugly, "bring down this whole bloody school."
Sorry, but I have to tell you that all of this problem
comes from a gang of the most loutish you could imagine--what
Senator LeRoy Percy once referred to as "raw, undiluted Anglo
Saxons"--and one other director who is their buddy in all things, rather than
their boss. And to top it all off, many of them can't teach their way out of
a paper bag.

The Director who runs the school backed down from the confrontations
made by the boys and their friends, who all marched into his office
and demanded my head on a platter. He also demoted my superior for
failing to notify him of the problem. She has been given the choice
of either working for me now or leaving the school, which she has
invested more than 20 years in; ie, she has completely lost face.
Meanwhile, incidentally, to add to this soap opera, her mother is
dying, and she is beside herself with grief
already. She returned from overseas urgently to stay with her mother
around the clock.

I met privately with the Director and asked him whether he was going to
help sort out this mess, which has been allowed to fester for so long,
and which is now endangering the welfare of the students, my teachers, and the
reputation of the school.

He again washed his hands of the matter, saving not only his face but
perhaps his own skin, which leaves me standing to hear the complaints from the old
program about the Director’s new drug testing policy and the firing of
the two boys. And I should tell you, they are behaving like members
of British Parliament--all shouts, accusations, denials, and whatnot.
One member of my staff who spoke up on my behalf had to be moved this
weekend to a safe location, because he was threatened by the group.

I have also proposed the simplest solution to the problem: Conduct a
drug test of the employees and act upon the results. I offered my
hair and blood sample to him on the spot, and asked the others who were
in that particular meeting whether they were prepared to offer theirs.
They got very uncomfortable about that and shouted louder to redirect
the conversation. I listened, said nothing except that I was
following the orders of my superior, and then practiced sam ruam,
which the Thai also highly values--the control of the temper. The
Director may have understood it, but the others went away still railing.

The Director, I understand, has to make some difficult choices, and I
spoke with him privately about this to let him know that I understand.
If the problem is ignored, the school will continue to suffer, and
eventually a legal situation could occur to embarass the school
regardless. If the problem were addressed and resolved, he could then
position himself as a leader who rooted out an old problem for the
betterment of the school.

The Director said nothing. So I spoke to him in proverbs,
one about the moneychangers at the door of the
temple, the other about King Solomon judging the two women who both
claimed to be the mother of the same child, where one was willing to
having the child cut in half and the other was willing to release the
child in order to save its life. I offered to resign and defuse the
situation, and he only said, "up to you. You can stay. You can go.
The school will go on." This is true, of course, but it does nothing
to solve the current mess.

And so I have called in reinforcements. My friend who has lived and
worked in Thailand for some time has explained to me that I will not
be respected unless I demand respect, and that a demand for respect
must be made. On a meeting to come this week, several members of the school’s foundation, who overwhelmingly support me and have already
written reports of the high quality of work that I have done in only
one month, and who have also been troubled by many months about the problems in the sister program, will be present, as will my former boss, who will be expected to acknowledge
her role in the matter.

After I know the results of the meeting, I will decide whether to act
on my alternate plan, which is simply to call the FBI in the American
Embassy and to contact the authorities in the British Embassy and let
them work with the Thai police to put an end to all of this rubbish,
thus going over the Brother's head and everyone else's. I informed my
friend in the American FBI of the situation today, and he is making
his report now, because I have been threatened by this little gang as well. I am refusing to
leave campus for a safe house, however, because I will not be
intimidated by weak and small-minded pub-crawlers. The guards who
work at the school--which is walled and gated, but the inmates are
already inside this particular asylum--have all been alerted to the
problem, but I do not know how effective they are. I am keeping to my
room and my office today.

And, most importantly, my staff has stated openly that they will
remain working diligently, regardless of any changes that come, and
they have asked me--several crying--not to leave. They are very, very
good teachers, and the students are responding to them wonderfully in their summer school.
This could be a gangbuster of a program, if you'll pardon the pun.

Drama, drama, drama. Good Lord.

I do not know exactly what I will do about staying or going, but I am
not inclined to leave--not at this moment. I change my mind every
half hour or so. But I felt too strongly that I was called to be here
when I arrived, and now that the real tests have come, I was at first
very hurt, and now am very ticked off. I have had a
belly full of this madness, and something must give. If I was called here, maybe
it was just to clean up this mess and prepare the way for someone else
to come join the school. I have already submitted the name of a very,
very capable man to either join my staff or take my place, whatever
happens.

Pray for me in the meantime, and pray for the students and teachers of
this well-regarded school, who have no reason to suffer for the idiocy
of their leaders, perhaps myself included.

As for now, I am doing everything I can to remember what
my respected uncle told me about always maintaining my integrity, and I have stuck to
that ferociously, but I must tell you that I feel like I've been run
over by a truck right now. The hospital trip and this problem, put
together, are leaving me quite low. PM me if you want to discuss this further.

easy solution:
phone your mate in the FBI, get him to phone the cops here and find out which nightclub/bar is going to be raided next and compulsory drug tested for every patron. Next appear to make peace with those Anglo Saxons and invite them to the affore mentioned bar for a "peace party" wait for the cops to arrive and hey presto their gone.
Then i would get on the plane and go somewhere else anywhere but here. From your story you seem to have really upset the applecart in the whole school. Thais will never accept that they have screwed up (especially if there is a westerner to blame!) They dont like confrontation and i dont think your boss will be too happy having Proverbs or whatever quoted to him from a newbie in his own school.
I dont advocate anyone using drugs especially when they are around children (i have my own - children not drugs!)
However, there are a lot of unsavoury characters here who are desperate to keep their jobs for whatever reason. If you pi** the wrong people off they will come looking for you. You should have let the Thai staff sort it out. If they didnt sort it out to your satisfaction you should have left and found another job. at least that way you wouldnt be living in fear.
Maybe you should give Billy graham a ring!!!!!!