March 23, 2004

Where everyone contributes

FROM TOP:Acharn Kumaree Chinawat and her team of newsletter editors check out the format of the Bangkok Post Chitralada students clarify their assignment with Acharn Chiraporn Wacharasindhu.

A student-produced newsletter at Chitralada School provides an excellent example of what goes into the design and execution of a successful project

Story and pictures by TERRY FREDRICKSON

Project work is an important element in the government’s reform curriculum, but it is not always implemented as the reformers may have intended. Too often, students are left almost totally on their own with only the vaguest instructions – easy for the teacher perhaps, but not an especially productive activity for the students.

When projects are implemented intelligently, however, they can provide students with a remarkably stimulating and fulfilling experience. Students learn teamwork, planning, execution and they take away the pride of developing a tangible, quality product.

Recently, the learning post stumbled across an especially impressive example. It began with a visit to the Bangkok Post from H.S.H. Princess Siriwanwaree Mahidol and her Mattayom 5 classmates at Chitralada School. This was no ordinary company tour. The class wanted a first-hand look at the newspaper production process before taking on their own ambitious project of producing a full-colour, tabloid-sized English-language newsletter with a print run of 1,000 copies.

Subsequently invited to the school for a session on news and feature writing, the learning post was able to gain some useful insights into what it takes to carry off such a complex project involving more than 50 students with diverse interests and varying English language abilities.

Product of experience

If you are fortunate enough to be admitted beyond the gates of the Chitralada Palace compound, you’ll find it to be a bustling place indeed. A steady stream of people come and go throughout the day, many of them associated with the dozens of Royally-initiated projects headquartered within.

Deep inside the compound beyond the Occupations Training Center sponsored by Her Majesty the Queen, lies Chitralada School. It was established in 1955 as a kindergarten by Thanpuying Tasniya Punyagupta at the request of Their Majesties, King Bhumibhol and Queen Sirikit.

The most prominent of the eight children in that first class was H.R.H. Princess Ubolratana, their three-year-old daughter. H.R.H. Crown Prince Vajiralongkorn followed a year later and subsequently H.R.H. Princess Maha Chakkri Sirindhorn and H.R.H. Princess Chulabhorn enrolled as well.

The school grew with the children, eventually encompassing the full Thai government primary and secondary programmes. Today, Chitralada enrolls close to 1500 students with a teaching staff of approximately 200 permanent and part-time teachers.

The M.5 newsletter is the final segment of a course entitled English rop ruu. “Each term we do two or three themes,” explains Acharn Kumaree Chinawat who team-teaches the course with Acharn Chiraporn Wacharasindhu.

“We start them on shorter projects to get them used to the fact that they are working and producing something. Then we get them into groups and get them work together as a team, determining among themselves who is the leader and what kind of responsibility each person has in contributing to the whole project,” Acharn Kumaree relates.

The approach comes from experience, Archarn Chiraporn adds. “This is our third year. Actually, we started about four years ago in another course in creative writing. That was M6. The teacher who was responsible for that course left the course. She only meant it for a one-off. But as a department we've always wanted to have something like this.

Actually, in our English rop ruu course, we had the theme “news as a media”. We used to do TV news and print news, but we taught it as text and there was never a project to follow up. Then we started to do a newsletter instead of just reading about it. I think it's more fun and I think the students learn more – a lot more.”

Acharn Kumaree agrees wholeheartedly. “They’re very actively involved. It’s much more active learning than passive learning,” she says. “I think that at the very least they have this sense of accomplishment that they’ve been able to produce a newsletter which shows an ability with written language. For some it’s easy and for some it’s not. But everybody gets to make a contribution. It’s a group effort. The pride that they gain adds a lot to what they’ve learned.”

The mechanics

The key to almost any successful project is having a clear purpose. Clearly, the production of a school newsletter fills that requirement but at Chitralada they go a step further, adding a specific target date and target audience.

“If you’re producing a newsletter and you don’t have any readers, where’s the satisfaction?” Acharn Kumaree asks rhetorically. “On graduation day, there’s probably about 500 parents who come to the ceremony. That’s a captive audience, one which will definitely want to know what’s going on in school. So that’s why we choose that day for distribution.”

Once that date was set, planning began in earnest. “We started off with meetings among the three teachers involved,” Acharn Kumaree relates. “We’re lucky to have Acharn Karina Suvpataya to help students with the computer layout. She actually graduated in computer graphics, so she has the skills in that department which we don’t have.”

“We work back from graduation day. That’s when the final product has to be out in the market. We work out how long we need for publishing, when the students' exam times are, what we have to do, how many students we have, how many groups we should break them into and so on.”

“We have about 50 students in the class and we’d like everybody to have some type of participation. We wanted to divide the class so there would be seven or eight people per group, but because of the class dynamics we allowed them to stay in their closely-knit groups. There are two students to one story and in each group there has to be a news desk editor and also a layout editor who works with Acharn Karina with the Pagemaker program.

The class divided the newsletter into five topic areas: entertainment, social news, home (school) news, sports and academics. One group was responsible for each, selecting stories, doing the reporting and the writing. They were also responsible for any photos that might accompany the story.

“They really do most of the work,” Acharn Chiraporn says. “It’s only a one-credit course whereas the other English course is one and a half credits, three hours. So there is quite a lot for the credit.”

Much of the editing falls to the teachers, however. “When they submit their articles, we go ahead and edit them and then we have a final eye from Geoffrey Hattersley, an English teacher who has been here for 13 or 14 years,” Acharn Kumaree explains. “He helps with proofreading and the final copy.”

The quality of the student copy varies, Archarn Chiraporn observes. “Sometimes we have to really redo the very weak ones. But, in general the work is reasonable to quite good, really.”

Not surprisingly, the writing reflects the students’ young age, Acharn Kumaree says..

“I would say the writing is quite good, but it’s not mature. I think what we do is to add a bit of maturity to the language.”

Excerpts from the newsletter

Princess Siriwanwaree Mahidol tries her hand at page layout during her visit to the Bangkok Post.

Here, the student editors explain how the name of the newsletter came about and what they learned from the project.

This is the first newsletter of our class (Chitralada 35). It is our first attempt at publishing. We had to learn the process of making the newsletter from the beginning just like when we started studying English. We first began with the ABC’s and D. CD of course stand for our school ‘Chitralada’. This is why our newsletter is called ABCD.

Through every step of the process, we gained a great deal of first hand knowledge and experience. Producing the newsletter gave us a taste of real life work. We had to face and solve problems together. We also learned to be responsible for our own individual tasks. We knew we had to do the best and put all our effort into our work.

In perhaps the most eagerly read story in the newsletter, Panita Sorasongkram detailed the romance between two young and recently-engaged American teachers at the school. Obviously a good interviewer, Panita really got the young man to open up, including this rendition of his proposal speech:

It was Monday night, January 12^th at a restaurant, after we had finished our dinner:

I took a deep breath, my hands were sweaty, my heart pounding.

She: “Are you OK?”
Me: “Yes.”
I went into the speech I had practiced…
Me: “Baby, we’ve been together for almost four years now…”
Waiter: “Excuse me, sir would you like some dessert?”
Me: “Oh! no, thank you. No, thank you.”

She was looking at me with a ‘what’s-going-on look’ in her eyes.

Me: “We’ve been together almost four years now and all this time I’ve grown to love you and cherish you…”
Waiter: “Excuse me, sir, would you like some dessert?”
Me: “No, it’s not a good time.”

I was very nervous and shaking.

Me: “I know that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?”
Not surprisingly, the newsletter had several stories involving the Royal Family. Thitaporn Boonsong and Pat Sukonthaman sought out a person who knows one member of that family very well.

On the occasion of H.R.H. Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn’s 50^th birthday anniversary, we have taken the opportunity to interview Mr Chaowalit Garagate, the cameraman to Her Royal Highness.

Mr Garagate feels extremely honoured and delighted to have been chosen as her cameraman. “Her kindness and the way she treats her staff makes it a great pleasure to work for her. She always seems to be at ease and often jokes with her entourage. That helps me not to be so nervous while working for her,” said Mr Chaowalit.

Of course, all the Chitralada 35 members know one member of the Royal Family very well themselves, their classmate H.S.H. Princess Siriwanwaree Mahidol. Here, Patcharinruja Juntaronanont and Putthipong Damrongphao detail the sporting side of the young princess.

Athletes come from different backgrounds – the sports person we interviewed is certainly very special. H.S.H. Princess Siriwanwaree Mahidol kindly gave us an interview and spoke to us about how she became interested in badminton.

Princess Siriwanwaree started playing badminton when she was nine years old. She was inspired by seeing her cousin playing badminton and it looked fun…. She started to take it seriously when she was 13 years old. She used to practise with a Chinese coach but now she practises with a Thai coach.

She first took part in a competition when she was 15 years old. She has continued winning many tournaments since then…Last summer she had an opportunity to train in China with a former world champion. There were times when she felt exhausted and discouraged. However, with support and encouragement from her friends, the Princess was able to continue and improve her skills.

Read our other cover stories here.

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