There is no doubt that Thailand is a wonderful country for travel and tourism.
Not many people know that it is also a fantastic place to live and teach long term with a thriving ex-pat community and a wealth of opportunities to progress as a teacher.
Many people arrive on a two-year contract and end up staying a lot longer. In actual fact, it is rare - in our community at least - for colleagues to complete only two years, with an average stay closer to five years.
Many stay a lot longer. In fact, we are now in our third year of celebrating the Fifteen Year Club.
Long-serving staff
The Fifteen Year Club is the brainchild of our principal, Chris Seal, who - when he arrived in 2017 - recognised there were several colleagues who had remained loyal to Shrewsbury since the very start and were (and still are) integral to creating and maintaining the school’s reputation.
One member of the 15-year club has completed 2,700 teaching days at Shrewsbury alone. That’s quite an achievement - and something worth celebrating.
What else teachers are reading
So, why do people stay? I asked around the members of the club and there was a variety of answers, but my favourite came from Chris Langridge, head of examination and a teacher of economics: “It is the school keeping me in Thailand and not Thailand keeping me in the school.”
To me, that makes perfect sense. So much of our time is spent working and living with colleagues, it’s important that individuals feel part of something bigger than themselves; part of a collection of people moving in the same direction and with similar objectives.
All staff included
However, it’s not only teachers who make the cut. Members of the club include our visa staff, our examinations team and support staff. Everyone is integral to making Shrewsbury work.
As such, recognition of colleagues who have spent so much of their lives working for Shrewsbury is fundamental to show that this long service is noted and appreciated.
And what a recognition it is: afternoon tea at a swanky hotel with the governors and the senior management team for all members, treats galore and enough food to make your eyes water.
This year, though, things looked a little different and it would have been easy to put the Fifteen Year Club on hiatus. But that would not have been right.
In fact, with everything going on, it seemed to us even more important that we celebrate these staff and provide the same sort of celebrations and joy that schools thrive on.
Adapting to the pandemic
This meant that while the high tea at the fancy hotel was halted, our boardroom was turned into an intimate lunchtime dining experience, with the fancy food brought over and served by the hotel staff to the five new members of the Fifteen Year Club and the senior management team.
A four-course meal was the order of the day: a starter of feta salad, followed by sushi, followed by a choice of warm main course and then a quartet of desserts meant we all left for lesson five with tighter trousers and in need of a nap, but with the sensation that we had done the new members of the Fifteen Year Club proud.
If the larger gathering rules are changed and we can get all members of the club together later in the year, the plan is to host the high tea as usual, so the new members will have double the recognition, which is no bad thing - they’re all definitely worth it.
Vicki Rotheram is an assistant principal at Shrewsbury International School (Riverside) in Bangkok. She leads the newly established Shrewsbury Institute. She has taught internationally for six years
