BORDER PATROL SCHOOLS
BORDER PATROL SCHOOLS
There are 222 Police-border schools in Thailand and 53 are particularly in Northeast of the said country. Police border schools are commanded by the Royal highness, King and his sister, the princess. We visited two farm schools or police border schools which fueled my passion and competence when it comes to teaching.
Patrol Police Ban Mueang Thong School
For the first farm school that we visited, it was established on October 22, 1983, with Kindergarten upto grade 6 level. There are 10 teachers in total (2 teachers in nursery, 1 volunteer teacher, 1 digital teacher, 1 basic education and 5 police. There were a total of 107 learners - 49 male students and 58 female students. They offer various projects for the betterment of the community.
1st project: Agriculture for Lunch. Police patrol schools implements various good services for the people such as free lunch for locals, grow vegetables, grow pigs and chicken plus cultivate mushroom. Moreover, they also have fisheries such as catfish and other fishes.
2nd project - Educational Project Promotion. The Udon Thani Rajabhat University is the partner of the farm school. Through the combined efforts, the farm school were able to send students in international competitions such as handwriting competition and English skill competition. The school also have sports festival during Decembers and they also participate in the regional sport festival of the region.
3rd Project: Reserve the good environment and natural resources. Learners are imprinted with the mindset to keep the environment clean and preserve it.
4th project: Occupation Workshop. They taught the students some basic skills in order for them to find their particular interest that they would soon explore in their later years of education.
5th project: Scholarship - Learners can also take an examination that would make them a scholar all through the years of their education. This was a project of the King.
6th project: Students have to put iodine on their drink so that they would have higher immunity and avoid goiter. This is a preventive action for rural areas are far from nutrition centers.
7th project: Students were taught to be thrifty through saving their money and becoming responsible in handling it.
Last project: Healthcare services to check the health of pregnant women and to distribute milk. Mothers were also given things to do such as weaving and other things that may caught their attention. Moreover, students were also checked and vaccinated through the said services.
Border Patrol Police Ban Huay Wiang Ngam School
Aside from that, we also visited another farm school which was established on Sept 19,1989. There were a total of 52 students and 7 teachers with 1 teacher per grade level (1-6) and a principal. The principal and teachers welcomed us and discussed their projects such as fish fond, Mushroom farm, Chicken farm and Golden Apple Snail.
We entertained the learners through the hephep, hooray! game and the boat is sinking. I kept the moments close to my heart as the learners were very far from the city, but were still able to be well-educated and well-mannered.
The existence of such schools tugged my heart as it was visible that Thailand is putting a great emphasis to the education of learners. Police-patrol schools serves as a great avenue to preserve culture and learn at the same time. Teaching is not always about teaching, it is about your dedication to educate and give love to learners.
EDUCATION FOR ALL