Am I Being Greedy? Am I Money Hungry? Thailand

I am starting to think I am being too selfish. Well, just a little bit. I do have a conscience, a little one. It has all started over teaching extra classes after school for an extra hour from 4pm until 5pm.

I did teach extra classes the first semester I was at the school a few years back now. The pay is 300 Baht for the hours work. This is okay for Thailand, especially here in Isaan country. I stopped teaching extra classes way back as for the 300 Baht I didn’t consider it a big enough reward to give up my time, I would rather go to the park and run or walk with my mates. I considered this much more valuable than the money. This year the pay has gone up to 350 Baht per extra class.

There used to be attempts to make me feel guilty. Can you please help? We don’t have enough foreign teachers for the classes. The parents are told that foreigners will teach the classes and they are charged foreigner’s rates for this privilege. Most the times this is true but other times they are covered by Filipinos or even Thai teachers.

The last few years we have had to get outside help, people from other institutions or people who may have applied for work at the school but all positions are full. I am more than happy for any person who is offered the work to take it. If they are happy working for 350 Baht then best of luck to them. Okay, it does add up by the end of the month. You teach on a Monday to Thursday, over the month, so around 5,600 Baht extra in your pay. It isn’t a fortune but it is a nice help. It gets you a good way here in Ubon Ratchathani.

What I don’t personally like is the pay scale. The “intensive course” as it is called gets run every year for new students to our school or weaker students that need a little extra help. For this months tuition the cost is 2,000 Baht per student. The minimum for a class to go ahead is 5 students to cover costs and the maximum is not above 30, but this never happens. Usually class sizes are between the 5 to 10 mark with some exceptions, but during the intensive classes they are usually good size. One of the foreign teachers was sick today and the intensive classes started today so I was asked to teach just this one day for him. I reluctantly agreed.

I taught year 1 students, students that I teach each day. There were 17 kids in the class, so that is 34,000 Baht. You minus the operating costs say and being very generous, 1,500 Baht for air-conditioning, a few hundred Baht for power. Other costs such as paper, ink and so forth come out of our operating budget. The Thai assistant teachers get 200 Baht per class, so another 3,200 Baht. So after all that comes out you are looking at a profit of around 24,000 Baht. I believe the carrot for the teacher should be bigger.

I teach for a Thai friend on the weekends, he has an extra curriculum school. He has 5 classrooms at one school and another school he has 6 or 7 classrooms. My class is 20 students, they are taught for 30 hours for the semester, that’s once on Saturday and once on Sunday for 15 weeks. He charges 2,000 Baht for this course. So he collects 40,000 Baht for this course. My class is full and there are 7 reserves on the waiting list. He pays 800 Baht per hour, so I get 24,000 Baht for the course. He makes 16,000 Baht minus operating costs.

His school is busy from early morning to late afternoon Saturday and Sunday and Monday to Friday he has extra classes starting at 4pm and they run until 8pm at night. My course is the most expensive, other classes such as science and math tuition is 1,500 Baht per 30 hour course but he also pays the teachers less. He looks after them well; I have been with him now coming up to 3 years. I used to teach through the week a while back but it was too much, the money was lovely but too much work.

I teach at home on Saturday, 4 private groups 50 minutes each and on Sunday two private groups. For this I make just under 20,000 Baht. I am happy to do this and I get my Sunday morning off until 2pm. So I can go play golf, or shopping or to a movie.

So going back to the extra classes at the school, am I being selfish by not helping, am I not meeting the expectations of being a teacher, these are questions I have already answered myself. There are some teachers who teach everyday for extra class, but others only teach twice a week. So this doesn’t make me feel as guilty, well truthfully I don’t really feel guilty.

It is our choice as there is nothing in our contracts about teaching special classes, I would like to offer a new pay scale for our administrators, if you are a good teacher and can get a good size class together to study extra class, you should be rewarded. If 5 students can pay 350 Baht, then say 10 students pays 400 Baht and 15 to 20 students pays 500 Baht per hour. This would motivate teachers to recruit or encourage students to study and it would bring in profits for the school, which they want.

Truthfully sitting here and thinking even if I was offered 500 Baht to teach an extra class I am 98% sure I wouldn’t take it. My afternoons in the park, usually it’s after a pretty mentally draining day is worth more than any monetary value. Just speaking to a fellow foreigner about anything revitalizes my body, mind and spirit.

So readers let me know if you think I am being greedy, an asshole and so forth, I would be interested in your feedback. Oh, and even you Star are free to comment. I am sure you have something choice to say.

Brunty.