TACTics Journal
A Publication for and by TOC for Education Practitioners
In this week’s issue:
Connections
(1)
Editor’s Notes
(2)
Kay Buckner-Seal
CONNECTIONS
(1)
By
Khaw Choon Ean, TOCFE
Director for
Sawasdeekaa! (Just a different way of greeting!
And this is the female
version in
I
had only a day’s break on Sunday 21 March after coming back from
on 20 March. In the early hours of 22 March I was back
at KLIA our
international airport ready to leave for
Girls’
Brigade (GB)
Vivien
Lee at a Girls’ Brigade International meeting in
year, had issued an invitation for a workshop in
Girls’
Brigade is an international organization to mould girls into leaders and
comprises a network of about 60 countries.
Their
goal was to “… encourage the development of
each girl's individual
talents, while
equipping them with social, physical, intellectual and spiritual
skills needed
in life to become vital members of the community …”
This
time I had had the pleasure of meeting the people involved last year in
Again
the negotiations had included an air ticket to
beside the
at the Haad Ruethai Catholic Retreat Centre,
spicy Thai food.
This
was my sixth time to
spoke no Thai except to greet and say
“Paeng!” which means “Too expensive”
in Thai (useful for shopping!). However I was given a
very capable translator
in Ms. Kamolthip Prapunpong (“Ying”) who was very good and a very
intelligent
lady training to be a radio broadcaster and who now has
set herself an
Ambitious
Target to do a children’s TOC radio programme,
inspired by YANI!
My
target audience was 47 school and Sunday school lady teachers from 9
provinces in
Commissioner
the Girls'
of Education based in the
members.
The
workshop was really good although crammed into one night (22 March)
and one full day (23 March). We worked on an ambitious
target of
“Introducing TOC to all GB schools in
my cucumbers and it was fun getting the teachers to read
their clouds and
branches in Thai amidst laughter,
good-natured banter and ribbing. They
had a manual (in Thai of course) given earlier to be
translated.
For
the session on Ambitious Targets the teachers gave their obstacles and
IOs in animated Thai and I wrote them in English on the
board. Language
did not appear to be a problem even though I knew no Thai
and they knew no
English. The language of TOC is
universal! As we worked with conflicts,
half-baked ideas and bad behaviour as well as goals, I am further enthralled
by how universal these are all over the world.
Even
though I have never met most of these ladies before I arrived at
Chaam, I left two days later, greatly charmed by the living examples from
the
have all fostered a bond linked by our common goal to make
a better world
for children.
Ajan Sunian and Ying escorted me
on the 3-hour journey by road back to
of TOCFE in the
would help boost the teachers’
confidence in starting TOCFE in their
classrooms. At the course, the issue of how
to start had already been
raised as well as teachers’ fears that
they may not be doing the
implementation correctly.
There
was an exciting (read “frightening”) finale in my Thai adventure. I
almost lost my laptop there after
carelessly leaving it on a chair in a coffee
shop in a small town about one and a half hour’s by road
from
we had stopped for lunch. I did not realize it until a
good 20 minutes later.
It
was my back-up hard-disk that I was most concerned about. Losing it
would mean hours of hard work to
retrieve files that may even be lost
forever.
We
had to drive back like the wind, feeling like the segment of the chase in
the James Bond movie “Tomorrow Never Dies” set in
light had to be red, of course. My
heart was pumping like mad when we
stopped in front of the coffee shop. To
our relief, it was waiting for us, as
thank goodness, the shop people had
kept it for me. My fervent thanks go
to their honesty and civic-mindedness. And I learnt a
good lesson about not
being careless in future.
So,
good luck to
now Ajan Sunian,
Mrs. Sirion Kamolmatayakul,
Vena and Tik. Thank you,
Christina and Vivien and Ms. Hee for
starting the momentum in GB. We will
all remember the ancient Chinese proverb that reminds us
a journey begins
with the first step and my favourite
quotation from Socrates that says:
“To move the world we must first move ourselves.”
EDITOR’S NOTES
(2) Kay
Buckner-Seal
Perhaps
it was a problem with a server or just a cyberspace fluke, but a few
people did not receive TACTics during
the past few weeks for reasons we’ve
yet to understand. We certainly hope all is well this
week. If you know of
someone who did not receive TACTics this
week, please you send their e-mail
address to me at kayseal@comcast.net.
Thanks for your cooperation and
understanding.
We
need to hear from you. So, feel free to share with us! Send your
responses, applications of the thinking
processes, lessons, announcements,
and etc. by mail to: Cheryl A. Edwards,
kayseal@comcast.net.
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