Teach For Thailand Visits Chicago

Teach for Thailand (TFT) is the project promoting Education which is inspired by Teach for America and Teach for All. Teach for Thailand itself is fairly new with only two years of official establishment. Currently, it is trying to promote the program to more motivated Thai students who are studying abroad in the United States and England. This is why they made a trip to Chicago.

The connection that I have about Teach for Thailand came from Alisa who is an undergraduate student from Brown University. I met her during my trip to Boston for spring break two years ago. She interned at Teach For Thailand last summer, and I decided to reach out to her once I know about it on the Newsfeed of Facebook. After talking with a person from TFT, I am really excited with help them while staying in the US in any way that I can. However, once I finished my interview for the Campus Leader (CL) position, I did not feel ready to add one more responsibility on top of everything that I have right now. I almost reject the offer, but then I think that no chance comes twice. If I did not take it now, I might not have the same chance again. This is a chance that I can help the Thai education which I simply only have it in my mind for the whole time while not doing anything about it. In the end, I took the chance, and my first task is to organize the TFT tour which they will come to the US to promote the program on different college campus.

Poster for the visit of Teach for Thailand in Chicago

Teach for Thailand is a two-year fellowship program for newly graduate students or motivated individuals to become a teacher in a poor neighborhood for two years while receiving educational supports and workshop for leadership to develop their personal skills. The goal is to provide schools with motivated and prepared teachers to go to the classroom and make a difference with students in that classroom while also develop their own skills, which makes this program a win-win for both the fellows who are a part of TFT and schools that these fellows go into. It is difficult to tell whether it is a successful program or not since this is only its second year, but it is good to see many people are enthusiastic about fixing the education problem and this will be a good start for more discussion about education in Thailand.


I had to organize two different events in the Midwest region including Chicago-area (Northwestern and UChicago) and UIUC. Before these two events, I barely know anyone from other schools that I might be able to help. I started from reaching out to my friends from different schools and ask them to connect me with the Thai association there. Then, I can just started asking them to find a specific location for the event and started Facebook campaign to promote Thai students to come to the event. The procedure itself is not difficult, but it is difficult to make bigger event that everyone wants to go. Luckily, we get a pretty good response for these two events. Especially for the Chicago-area event which we held at Northwestern University. It was my second time going to Northwestern. The weather was super nice on that day and we had some time before the event to chill near the lake. And the discussion that we had during the event was interesting and engaging. I feel like most people enjoy the event which is as much as we can hope for as an organizer.

University of Chicago Student in front of Northwestern Gate

Finally, I believe that even though Teach for Thailand is not a program for everyone who cares about education, it is a great starting point for people to start discuss more about education. Before, I had a feeling that people know that there are problems within Thai education, but no one really wants to fix anything. TFT is the first one who are courage enough to tackle this problem. I can only hope that people will be more interested and engaged in the problem, and we will try harder to solve the problem.