The average person in Asia never gets a chance to actually talk with a native English-speaker, much less ask them questions about how a word should be pronounced, the meaning of certain slang terms, or how best to phrase a particular sentence. It is this principle that enables bright, open-minded, yet grossly unqualified Westerners to land jobs teaching the English language at private and public schools throughout Thailand. It is a chance to gain deep cultural understanding as well as a resume booster.

Thailand

Thailand, nicknamed “the land of smiles,” is a tropical kingdom in the center of Southeast Asia. The only South Asian nation to have never been colonized by the West, its culture holds a unique appreciation for foreigners.

Seven percent of the economy is derived from tourism, while a much larger portion is based on foreign trade.

With English quickly becoming a common language of business in the region, the demand for teachers has far outstripped the supply.

While it has never experienced the extreme poverty of neighboring Laos, Cambodia, or Myanmar (Burma), the kingdom of Thailand is not a rich country. Most schools cannot provide adequate English lessons, so the language skills must be imported.

Native English speakers, qualified or not, are routinely hired by both public and private schools and universities. Because Thailand is a developing country, the salaries offered cannot compete with richer Asian nations.

Most foreigners come to Southeast Asia strictly to indulge. They spend most of their stay lying horizontally, living in poverty and smoking lots of drugs. Or they devote themeselves to sex, staying out of the daylight in Bangkok’s endless maze of girly bars and sleazy karaoke joints. They are in Thailand, but not a part of it.

Living and working in the society is true cultural immersion. This is your opportunity to no longer be limited just to what tourists see. By being part of the work force, and in turn part of the community, you achieve a deeper understanding of their culture, one that will help answer a lot of questions about your own.

Teaching

Any job is hard the first few days. I taught in ten different classrooms over the course of each week. There were 45 kids per class, and in total I had 450 students to get to know.

Fortunately, in each class there was also a Thai teacher. The Thai teacher was there to keep the kids in line and to act as a basic translator for me since I did not speak Thai.

It seemed ironic to me that I had chosen to take a few years off after high school because I was sick of school, and here I was back in school. But this time I was on the other side of the desk.

I thought back to my high school English class, cursing myself for not paying better attention. To this day I still do not know the difference between a preposition and participle.

But teaching turned out to be very easy. I would plan my classes out based on memories of English classes from sixth grade through high school.

Taking ten minutes to write down skeletons of lesson plans in a notebook the night before and improvising throughout the class was the only preparation needed.

Moving On

Eventually I was tired of Bangkok. The air pollution was like smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Out of the six months I lived there, I had probably spent a total of two weeks sitting in its ubiquitous traffic jams. It had been an exciting time, and Bangkok forever had a place in my heart, but it was time to move on.

Bangkok has the never-ending supply of teaching jobs. But they are also easily available in just about every city in all of Thailand’s 76 provinces. While a particular town might only have one or two positions to offer, the school will value the foreign English teacher more because unlike Bangkok, they do not have a steady supply of them.

I lined up another teaching job in the town of Kanchanaburi, two hours west of Bangkok.

The relaxed setting was ideal. I moved in with my Thai girlfriend, Lek, and we rented a townhouse for 50 dollars a month.

My new job was with a private English language-tutoring institute called C-Center. It was run by a Thai woman educated in Rhode Island, USA. Since it was a private institute they did not care that I was only 19 years old with no degree.

I was assigned to teach a course on “the culture of native speakers,” whatever that was supposed to mean. Once again, the school’s administration did not really seem to care what I taught, as long as I was still a real, live native speaker.

The school occupied a four-story unit in the center of town. There were air-conditioning and white boards in the classrooms. It was a luxurious setting compared to the site of my old job. The institute clearly served to educate children of the town’s cultural elite.

The best part was that the classes averaged only a dozen students each, and most were middle-school or high-school aged. This made the teaching much easier since kids that age are much better at paying attention and already knew a lot of English.

Teaching at C-Center was the most fun I can imagine having teaching. I was given free rein on choosing material I wanted to teach. There were some extraordinarily bright students in the class.

Future Opportunities

Thailand is not the only country in Asia for teaching jobs. I once met a Canadian couple that had financed their vacation through Pakistan, India, and Thailand with the money they had saved up teaching English at schools in Japan. Their pay had been adequate enough to save up. But they said a few of their fellow native-English- speaking faculty had managed to blow all their money at the bars.

Ample teaching opportunities also exist throughout Asia, particularly in Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal, Pakistan, and all the former Soviet republics of Central Asia. Japan offers the best paychecks, sometimes $30 per hour, even up to $150 per hour for the most qualified private tutors.

The average pay for unqualified, inexperienced teachers in Thailand is $5 to $7 dollars an hour, under the table.

While that is a livable wage in Bangkok, where the average Thai lives on $3 a day, it is even better anywhere outside of the big city where the cost of living is a mere fraction of Bangkok’s.

For those with a degree, a teaching certificate, and minimal classroom experience, the salaries are higher. Private schools or small colleges offer $750-2,000 a month, and some include free rent and transportation costs. Just like in America, it depends on qualifications.

Nowadays, because of the drastic decrease in travel resulting from unfounded paranoia over terrorism, Thailand’s shortage of foreigners interested in teaching is worse than ever.

That means potential English teachers, qualified or not, can simply take their pick from countless vacant positions.