Laem Tong School

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January 5th 2010

Published: January 5th 2010

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maryewhiston

Visit to Laem Tong School

Simon on Long Tail boat

Simon, Caroilne, Rob and I had a great visit to Laem Tong School which is situated on the North of Koh Phi Phi. It is the school for the Sea Gypsy Village children and has 54 pupils with 2 teachers and the occasional volunteer teacher.
There is very nice accomodation for the volunteer teachers to stay in which was rebuilt along with most of the school after the Tsunami.
Laem Tong is a beautiful beach, quite remote and accessed by a long tail boat which we took from the Sunflower Beach Bar which our friends own and run.
Tony and Sheryl Brown a New Zealand couple have been instrumental in organising the regeneration of the school and they look after it ensuring that the children have shoes and socks!! and the teachers have enough resources and also receive a small salary. They do this through fundraising and relying on donations.
Bonnyrigg Primary have given money to the Laem Tong School in the past and I was delighted to be able to hand over about £600 from donations I received from colleagues and Friends in Midlothian as well as from family and a neighbour in Edinburgh.
We arrived on this beautiful palm

Visit to Laem Tong School

tree lined beach and were met by an elder of the Community who guided us along the beach and up a dirt track where we came to the school.
There we met the teacher, Miss Jai who showed us around. There are 3 classrooms and in one were the younger (age 4 + 5 year olds) children having an afternoon sleep on mats on the floor.
In the next classroom were slightly older children probably (P3,4+5) some were playing with plasticene - making letters and animals and some were doing some sort of exercise from a book written in Thai! What a complicated Language- Simon, who has been studying tells me they have 12 vowels and about 30 consonants and all written in what looks like Japanese writing.
In the next room were 10 11 and 12 year olds who were working on Maths from a black board. Although the school has a couple of computers in the office Smartboards are unheard of!. Its obviously 'Chalk and Talk' and I saw no evidence of differentiation
The children were lovely and able to tell me their names in English - They seemed very happy to see us and I would have

Leaving from Sunflower Bar

loved to stay and play with them or even teach them a little English.
It is important that these children learn English as I expect many will make their livelihood in the future, from tourism.
Miss Jai told us that last year they, unfortunately, had no volunteer teachers so when I get back to Scotland I will try to promote the benefits (to a young teacher and ,of course, to the Thai children) of spending a few months (or even weeks) at the Laem Tong School.
We saw their playground which had a see saw and swings and of course football goals set on a small piece of scrubland. Football is completely global and loved by all boys world wide!!Manchester united seems to be their very favourite team.
On Fridays, one of the upmarket resorts provide lunch for the children and parents at the school.This is called the Laem Tong School Lunch Project and another of the resorts regularly send up fresh fruit. The fruit is fantastic here - mainly pineapple, mango, papaya and banana and all grow abundantly.
After having a good look around I made a list of all the things they looked liked they needed and I

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had many suggestions from Caroline, Simon, Millie and Rob!The one thing Miss Jai wanted were socks and shoes! the children were very well turned out in uniform of blue and white and generally looked very smart which made me realise that the parents value education.
After a couple of hours we headed back in the long tail boat and I know for certain this is far from my last visit to the Laem Tong School. I was really pleased to hear from Sheryl and Tony that money my family had given was used to set up a scholarship in Dominic's name to send a youngster to Bangkok to study at the university - Isnt that great?
I am going to try to upload the photos I took of that visit.

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