St. Benedict College, Bangkok

Towards the end of our journey, on that first day, the school van, unsurprisingly, broke down, sputtered and stalled and we, the men, got out and pushed it to the side of the road and had to wait in the hot sun for 20 minutes or so for the school to send another van.

But it was no van they dispatched. It was a pickup truck. A very humble one at that.

And we all, dressed in suits, ties, formal dresses, the Bangladeshi lady in a floral-patterned hijab, we teachers, we all piled into the bed of the pickup truck and rode in silence, sun and sweat for that last 5 km of our commute...

THE FIRST DAY: Being the first day, maybe there'd be a party, welcoming ceremony.

There was nothing.

We didn't have schedules until 7:45am, that morning, when we arrived the school, which seemed half-abandoned, the office still rocking and rattling through its last trimester of renovation.

The shifty-eyed IT guy, this time in a button-down blue shirt, khaki slacks and black Adidas sneakers, was handing schedules out to teachers as we entered the office to scan in via fingerprint.

(He'd cut his hair like Ronaldo, smelled of pineapples, and gave me an enthusiastic handshake, his clammy right hand having slightly too firm a grip...)

I saw the accounting lady who'd driven me home, who'd been friendly, but she didn't offer much of a hello, only a gruff, "Good morning, Ajarn."

(I'd later discover a cold formality at the school. The admins never called any teachers by name, simply referring to us as "Ajarn," the Thai word for "professor," completing nearly every sentence with it.)

I sat down for a minute at a vacant desk, next to Mumbles and the cagey Brit.

The Brit admonished me, saying how that wasn't my desk, and how I should be careful, because if "they" caught me sitting at a desk that wasn't mine, or if I purposely switched desks, without asking permission, I'd be in "big trouble."

I'd not been assigned a desk or told I was required to be at one or be required to request to change seats, like a kindergartener. There was nothing in the orientation or contract about that.

He was right, though. This incident, the mere sitting down at a desk that wasn't mine, not being at my desk, even though I was never assigned a desk, this would come back to haunt me later...

The office was in shabby condition.

I'd have thought with the renovation that they'd have fixed it up.

But not so, or perhaps not yet.

The place was crumbling, had grimy walls and stanchions, rutted floors, and part of the AC casing was missing, exposing the inner pipes, and nearby the junky AC, the ceiling was rotting and leaking.

I'd come to find there were occasional cockroaches, huge flying cockroaches and micro-ants.

And there were wasps, which would sporadically fly into the office, meetings, and classrooms, and the Indian phone-zombie guy once saw and snapped a photo of a cobra slithering into a field nearby the school.

The most troublesome, however, had to be the rats.

Big bamboo rats, the size of little dogs. Rats that'd chew through your backpack, bite at your feet, legs sometimes as you sat at your desk.

Mumbles mumbled about rats in the office last term because the Filipino teachers had been eating in the break room behind the office, leaving half-eaten food out, which had attracted the gargantuan rats of the rice fields, and the rats had been running amok, dropping pellet-shaped rat turds everywhere.

One of the teachers, a farang, one of the 6 or 7 who'd resigned after only a month or two, in the last year, had gotten into a heated argument with the Filipinos about not eating in the office.

There was even a sign, posted in the stairwell, in English and Thai, warning us not to eat or bring food above the first floor, and that violators WILL BE FINED.

But that hadn't dissuaded this set of Filipinos from munching on their morning chicken and rice.

And the farang took them to task about it, and a melee ensued, one of the Filipino teachers grabbing a protractor, using the sharp point, waving it like a knife, threatening to cut the farang's throat and the farang being restrained by the other farangs before he could get his hands on the protractor brandishing Filipino.

Neither teacher was fired or fined. Though for a time the Filipinos quit eating in that room. They were doing it again, now, this morning, and the Brit and Canuck discussed who'd go to HR to complain.

Mumbles, the Brit and Canuck, called the Filipinos the "Flippers," and spoke disparagingly of them, spoke of them monolithically. Although not in front of the two Filipinas (a jovial, chunky 40ish lady, and stern-faced, tiny lady, probably about 50) who shared our office.

There was a definite tension in the air, which I noticed my first time there, and the past conflicts I was becoming aware of explained why.

While I'd talked to and gotten along well with a couple of the Filipino teachers I met, many weren't friendly, at all, not even making eye contact or any effort to introduce themselves, or being cold, distant, when I took the initiative.

The Brit said not to trust a single one of them. That any who were friendly were just being fake...

IN THE CLASSROOM: I'd only minutes prior received my schedule, so I hadn't much time to prepare and drew up a quick lesson plan for introductions, class rules, and a "what you did over the vacation" class discussion, activity.

When I got to the classroom, the reality of my situation became further apparent.

First off, there was nobody there. It was 7:58am, and the class was to begin at 8:15am.

"Thai Time," I guessed, applied to students, too, as it did to most everything.

At my previous school, the students would be there well before class began. There'd be students studying, reading aloud from books, practicing their English.

At St. Benedict, the classroom was full of ghosts.

Humans eventually arrived. In body, if not in mind.

About half the class turned up, filing in anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes late.

To my dismay, despite St. Benedict touting itself as a top international school in Thailand, out of the nearly 30 students who came, only 2 or 3 could really have a conversation in English, speak fluently.

Maybe 10 could speak some English, low to low-intermediate levels.

The rest, around 17 or 18 of them couldn't speak a word. Not a word. They couldn't answer simple questions like "How are you?" or tell you their name, introduce themselves.

It was disheartening. Many of my previous students, in Korea, were shy, but spoke quite well, were motivated to study. This was a much different situation.

These were second year students, too, at St. Benedict. They'd, in theory, passed 3 semesters of English courses, been through 10 years or so of English study in primary, middle and high school. How did they get this far, not able to speak a single word?

In Korea I had occasional situations where a student had squeaked by, not able to string together a sentence or say more than a few words. But usually they could read and write. I'd never had a single student that couldn't read or write.

But many of these students could barely read or write. Or do anything.

They were poorly behaved as well.

They wouldn't be quiet. Most would ignore me as I spoke, speaking over me, in Thai, chatting away with each other, playing on phones, some sleeping.

I was beginning to understand why they couldn't speak English.

They had no interest in learning.

Basically, the entire school must have been a fraud. A diploma mill.

It was a private school. It was about money. They brought these students in, and, as long as they paid, they'd get a diploma. It didn't matter how they behaved, how little effort they made. If they paid, they'd graduate.

We'd been told during orientation that these students would need to take and pass the IELTS test, read 7 English language novels per semester, and complete several online learning activities on Moodle in order to graduate.

I couldn't imagine how any of that would happen...

Unless, of course, they paid the right price, or person.

NO MORE MR. NICE GUY: Generally, I'd be pretty laid back in my classes.

I found that Asian students, at least Koreans, were ashamed of making mistakes, that it made them "lose face" and that the best way to help them overcome this fear and aversion to speaking up, trying to talk, is to create a caring, relaxed and fun, humorous atmosphere in the classroom.

In ESL classrooms, there's a lot of "edutainment." Many teachers being clowns, dancing monkeys, sometimes entertaining more than teaching.

I'd try to balance joking around, humor, lightheartedness, with a healthy dose of actual content, useful info, correct students' grammar, pronunciation judiciously, tenderly, and here and there speak and mangle a little of their native language, to show that it's okay to make mistakes, and that we can learn from those mistakes, improve.

Mostly, I'd done well with this approach. I'd avoided conflicts with students, staff, and had very few problems.

But it was quite clear that things would be different at St. Benedict.

I didn't appreciate the students talking over me, using my classroom as their relaxation time.

So, I switched my approach, and slapped, hard, on my desk, and let them know, in certain terms, what the rules for the class were. No talking when the teacher or a classmate is talking, no playing on phones, do your class assignments when told, and don't be late.

I informed them that anyone breaking any of these rules would have 2 points deducted for each rule infraction. (I had a similar set of simple rules for my classes in Korea, though I rarely had to deduct points, as the students were quite well-behaved).

I wrote the rules on the board. I had the students read them aloud, as a class, and then had one (of the few who could speak English) translate, orally and in writing, the rules into Thai.

Then I went into what I'd planned, for introductions...

Using this same approach cleared up most of the behavior issues. Some classes were better than others, didn't require too much prodding.

The attendance rates were terrible, though.

I thought I'd scared them away, but Mumbles told me his classes, and everyone's were the same. Most of the students dropped out. In fact, out of 200 or so per group, only around 20 graduated.

But how could that be? All they needed to do was be there. Sit there. And they'd be passed on. English majors, even, didn't need to speak English.

Mumbles, the Brit, and Postal Stan, who'd all been in Thailand for 5 years or more, told me that the school mostly targeted students who didn't pass or take the government issued college entrance exams.

(This could be that their school had issues. Many Thai secondary schools are akin to Lord of the Flies.)

((Students running wild in the hallways. Never going to class. Playing soccer when they're supposed to be in math class.))

(((It's easy to see how after 10, 12 years of that they couldn't pass any sort of college entrance test or why they couldn't speak English. Heck, a handful often couldn't write proper Thai when called to the board to write a translation.)))

((((Then there were others who were simply lazy. They hated school. They wanted to do whatever else. Their parents forced them to be there...))))

What was most upsetting, though, was that many of the students had taken out loans to come to St. Benedict.

The loans could be too big, too much for their families to repay, and they'd need to drop out because of financial reasons, leaving the school with no degree and a staggering pile of debt that their families, often impoverished farmers, would struggle to repay.

The whole scheme made me highly uncomfortable and reminded me of a string of for-profit colleges in America that were shut down for predatory lending, deceptive business practices...

SCAM: St. Benedict was closely aligned with a lending company, I discovered from an online deep dive.

Many of my students, despite unruly classroom behavior at times, turned out to be quite lovely people, and, in talking with the few who could speak English, it seemed many of the students were sold a fake bill of goods, misled to believe they'd be attending a prestigious international school with state-of-the-art facilities, dorms.

In reality, though, the dorms were dilapidated and full of roaches, at times visited by rats, snakes and bats. There were constant power cuts, blackouts, brownouts, water cuts that could last up to one week.

The students, many of whom came from hovels, moved out of the dorms, into nearby housing as quickly as they could.

St. Benedict had also placed them in majors they didn't want, forced them into classes they didn't want to take.

(It made me think, like, if I were in their shoes, and I was forced to take classes in Thai, from a Thai teacher, who only spoke Thai, and tried to make me speak Thai, write Thai, how would I react to that...)

((Many of the students were not only very friendly, but outgoing, too. Contrary to Korean students, who'd be shy, difficult to motivate to stand in front of the class, do roleplays, presentations, or play games, the Thai students relished it, were fantastic performers, and were extremely creative, especially talented at drawing, handicrafts. Many were left-handed, too, which I rarely found in Korea... Once you got past the initial rowdiness, had the right group, hit them with the right material, lesson plan, they could be a fun bunch.))

(((The majority of St. Benedict's students were females. The few male students were, by and large, clearly gay. This led to Mumbles making the off-color observation that the school had brought in one or two handsome young foreign male students, per semester, to satisfy the girls' needs. Last term it was a handsome young German. This term it was a handsome young, muscular Lebanese Christian with a noticeable, but ruggedly attractive scar on his cheek.)))

((((Mumbles theorized the school had a room, love hotel, set up for them somewhere on campus. That all day, all the Lebanese guy did was "nail broads." Like 3 or 4 a day. Mumbles theorized that if the school hadn't brought in the handsome young bucks, the girls would kidnap the middle-aged teachers, lock the doors, feed them Viagra, and gang-rape the men, and not that he'd mind...))))

(((((Many of the male teachers at St. Benedict, in addition to Dracula, were pervy. Most of the Indians were gropey, a few to the extent they got fired, but that was rare. Usually they'd pat girls' shoulders, hang their arms around girls in photos, clutch them extra tight. Mumbles was pervy and would make his students do activities where the girls would get up, move around and dance, so he could watch them move. Mumbles said how the school planning to relocate all the teachers into on-campus housing later was a "bad idea" because he'd be out raping and masturbating far too much, with so many "chicks" around...)))))

St. Benedict had a handful of international students, 4 or 5 Africans, one or two Filipinos, a couple Indians, the handsome Lebanese, and one American girl, who was part Thai.

The American girl, despite being born and raised in America, only coming to Thailand for college, was placed in basic English speaking, reading and writing classes, as were the other international students.

Although they'd flown 8, 10, 20 hours to come to St. Benedict, whomever in the admission dept seemingly hadn't checked their transcripts, tailored their schedules accordingly.

(I had the American and an Indian in my English classes and decided to make them into de facto assistant teachers, had them help me and their classmates.)

The state-of-the-art facilities didn't pan out, either. The classrooms were in poor condition.

The whiteboards were warped, stained.

The projectors often were not working. Wires hanging from the ceiling. There were amps and audio equipment that looked to come from Radio Shack or the year 1996.

Desks were broken, beat up. There was graffiti on the desks, chairs, walls. Green and black mold on the floors and walls, ceilings. Occasionally a stray dog would run in.

A chair I sat in once collapsed, fell apart, and I'm only 5'9, 160 pounds.

Ceiling panels were missing. Water poured from a battered old AC once. The power would cut off. Water would go out in the filthy bathrooms.

There were no computers inside the classrooms. Teachers were required to bring their own laptops, but often the projectors were unreliable or too old to connect with newer laptops. Mine required an adapter the IT dept didn't have, and I had to order, buy the adapter myself, so the first week of class I wasn't able to use my laptop.

I used the board and sent out assignments via email and social media groups I created for each class. But the school WIFI often ran slow or not at all. Uploading could be a chore.

The working conditions, facilities were challenging. For students and teachers alike.

The facilities, maybe, were a cracked mirror, metonymy...

RACE WAR: I came to discover that the school had a prison yard mentality.

In the cafeteria, the offices, common spaces, the Indians sat with the Indians, Filipinos with the Filipinos, Thais with the Thais, and Westerners with the Westerners. There wasn't much mixing or friendliness between the groups.

Things came to a boil one day, at the end of the semester's first week.

At the end of the working day, staff, teachers, secretaries, drivers, cooks, cleaners, everyone, lined up to scan out, feed their fingers to the fingerprint scanner.

The line could get quite long, snaking out into the hallway, over 50 people deep.

It could take around 20 minutes waiting for a turn to scan out, especially since sometimes the fingerprint scanner didn't work upon first or second touch and one'd need to resort to inputting their work ID number manually, via the machine's numeric keypad.

(There was one Westerner, who'd since resigned, who'd punched the fingerprint scanner a few times, in frustration.)

((He'd also smashed and sawed apart a few chairs in the hallway, outside his classroom.))

To notch their place in line, staff members would often leave a bottle or bag near the scanner, then come back a couple minutes prior to scan out time, so they could bypass the line, which, at approximately 4:56pm, would be lengthy.

The Brit, who was waging a sort of cold war with the Filipinos, would always be first to line up, arriving at 4:45pm to stake his spot.

(He'd claimed that if he didn't get there early, his van driver, who was "controlled by the Filipinos," would leave without him and that it'd happened a few times before...)

Usually he'd get his spot at the head of the line, but today, his spot had been taken by Alfredo.

Alfredo, one of the Filipino teachers, Alfredo the near midget, or little person, as they're now called.

Alfredo, a flamboyantly gay, middle-aged, former hairdresser of the school's president; Alfredo who'd done an online PHD course at a Filipino university to attain Thai teaching licensure;

Alfredo, with a high-pitched, sing-song accent, lisp and slicked-back hair; Alfredo with a puffy face and marshmallow body; Alfredo, dressed daily in well-ironed, perfectly starched and creased, fabulously dapper suits;

Alfredo in Gucci belts;

Alfredo draped in glittering gold necklaces, studded gold earrings, and bulky 14k gold rings;

Alfredo in alligator skin shoes.

Alfredo, who habitually touched other male teachers, male students on the arm, shoulders and lower back; Alfredo, whose hello/goodbye touches lingered slightly too long...

Alfredo that day was there before the Brit. And the Brit's sneer displayed his displeasure.