Be like Christi: Honoring SPIM BFITS Teachers Highlights with a 2023-2024 Memory Capsule

The 2023/2024 school year has passed by faster than a caffeine-fuelled Monday morning! It’s crazy how time flies when you’re having fun. As I bid farewell to another chapter, I can’t help but grin from ear to ear; I have made so many memories and learned so many life lessons this year.

Joining the vibrant BFITS family, I am filled with gratitude that I ended up teaching at Satit Panyapiwat Institute of Management, aka Satit PIM/SPIM, located in Nonthaburi. I knew I was not the only one who enjoyed the year; from exciting projects to unforgettable cultural exchanges, it was clear that everyone was making memories and learning something at SPIM.

To capture some of these moments (and make them last forever), I made it my mission to sit down with as many SPIM teachers as I could to hear their highlights from the 2023/2024 school year. I asked them to share anything they desired, whether it was a classroom project, a heartwarming conversation with students, or an out-of-class event that left a lasting impression.

Now, I will share them here so they will hopefully always be somewhere on the internet.

Honoring SPIM BFITS Teachers Highlights

In no specific order, let’s see what the teachers at SPIM had to say:

“I think a big highlight I had was at the end of the school year. I made little notes for all of my students on the last day of class. One girl came up to me and she started crying because she was so thankful and happy with what I said to her, I told her she’s one of the smartest students that I’ve ever met. She said that she’s been under so much pressure and stress because she’s always working so hard, so she appreciated the kind words, which touched my heart.” 

Tacarie, M5 Science Teacher
Massachusetts, USA

“I think one of the biggest highlights for me was having the kids welcoming me and accepting me as their teacher. The year starts with them not knowing who you are and you don’t know who they are. Initially, there is a bit of hesitation and uncertainty, certain things don’t work in the way that you want, and some classes need to be managed differently but then eventually you realize where adjustments can be made. Eventually, you reach a point where everyone is comfortable and you find that happy place, they just enjoy your presence, and you enjoy their presence. I also really enjoyed some out-of-class activities like sports day, which allowed for interaction with students that you never saw as well as some of the Thai teachers. Yeah, I enjoyed these days, it made me feel more inclusive in the school activities and the school culture.”

Vic, M3 English Teacher
Pennsylvania, USA

 

 

“We had a bunch of highlights, but my personal favourite was a section on news reporting that I did with my M3 classes. I had them put together fictional news reports, they could choose a topic and the creative ideas that these kids came up with were just incredibly interesting and creative. They went for a certain type of humor that I resonated well with, and they seemed to love the project.”

Shaun, M3 English Teacher
Florida, USA

 

 

“My highlight has to be the similarity project I did with them. The kids came in and they used 3D machines to make prototypes of objects. They did all the measurements correctly and they followed the process and it was enlightening to see the joy on their faces and how they appreciated the project.”

Sam, M3 Math Teacher
West Virginia, USA

 

 

“My highlight is seeing the student’s evolution throughout the year, be that academic improvement or even more importantly social improvement where they start opening up and feeling more confident in themselves even if their academics don’t increase at the same rate. You know being someone who teaches M1 the students come from a different style of learning where they were also learning in a different language and starting at a new school can be very intimidating for them. The other thing I would put up there is the relationship with the M1 teachers on the Thai side, they truly made me feel welcome.”

Nevyn, M1 Science Teacher
Chicago, Illinois, USA

 

 

“For me, one of the highlights was specifically in M5 English Presentation. I went into the class hearing about them from the M4 teachers before, and I was preparing myself for a class that would underperform and generally be more difficult to work with. I was very pleasantly surprised to see that firstly, that was only the problem with the first class I had with them and second, their English presentation skills improved dramatically. If I had to guess, that would be the most improvement I’ve ever seen in any one class.”

Mustafa, M6 Math and M5 English Presentation Teacher
Virginia, USA

 

 

“In the classroom, we focused on a lot of projects and critical thinking. One of my favourite ones is from quarter one, where we built the houses. The students hadn’t done things like that before. When they put the tools in their hands, I saw them being like a little, oh, what’s this, what do we do? But after we went through the material with them, and after they saw, how we’re doing things, we made some amazing houses. Another project we did was a helmet project and I saw when we did the helmet project, they had taken what they’d learned from the previous projects, the critical thinking skills, the task prioritization, the working together, and they did an amazing social media campaign afterwards as well. I thought that was absolutely amazing this year. Outside of the classroom, I love the community with the BFITS teachers here. We have this big office full of everybody from all around the world. I mean, I’m talking to a South African right now, and I’m British myself, you know? Yeah, with an American there, another American, you know, it’s… Yeah, it’s awesome. Not often that you get this type of experience. It’s one of the things I love about working with BFITS in general.”

Jason, M6 Science Teacher
Manchester, UK

 

 

“The highlights I liked were when students had projects such as their Pythagoras project where we did a demonstration and folded the paper to prove the Pythagorean theorem. That was really good. I also used animation in a project for the first time, so I had to show the students how to use animation. I quite enjoyed some of their projects, they were really good and some of them had extra animations on top of what I requested.”

Matt, M2 Math Teacher
Hampshire, UK 

 

 

“My highlights of the year were all the events and activities we did outside of the classroom, things like International and Christmas Day. On these days we had activities for the kids, you could play games, do dances, sing songs, all those kinds of things, allowing you to get to know the kids outside the classroom and learn a bit more about them as people. Christmas in particular stood out as  planned the Christmas ski ball activity and, on the day, it was  nice to engage with the students and have some fun together.”

Jamie, The Head of Science and the M4 Science Teacher
Irvine, Scotland

 

 

“My highlight was one of the assignments my M6 students did. We did a problem solution essay assignment in which the students identified problems that they saw at SPIM and then created creative and feasible solutions through which they could solve those problems.  The essays that they wrote were very inspiring, really well-written, and honest in a way that I think was empowering to the students. They felt like they had an active role at the school and although things are not perfect they could make a difference and could change things to be better in a way that is beneficial for not just themselves but for the students that are going to be here at the school after they leave.”

Ian, M4 English Teacher
Florida, USA

 

 

“A project I enjoyed doing with the children this year, was on the whole process of collecting data. They created surveys about topics that they enjoyed and wanted to know more about. The survey was then completed by the entire group of M1’s and they analyzed the data. The topics they chose included things like how many students enjoyed playing football and we even had a good survey about chairs. Another very good one we had was that we tried to see the correlation between how much time you play games and how that relates to your grades. In the end, they did find a correlation between playing games and grade levels. Another one was sleep patterns, which was also very interesting. The correlation between how much sleep you get and how well you do in school. Again, the correlation was found. So that was interesting. I enjoyed how enthusiastic the kids were about presenting their findings. They did wonderfully. The M1s this year were a really good bunch. I had good connections with many, many of them. And I think they’re going to make a great M2 next year.”

Desiree, M1 Math Teacher
South Africa

 

 

“I have to say one of the biggest highlights is one of the first projects I did in my class; students were to create a poster in groups for a job posting. Once everyone had done that, students would take sticky notes and apply to these different jobs. For the final part of the project, students had to conduct interviews and record them. It was a lot of fun and some of the posters were hilarious, some of them were minimal but generally, they got everything they needed. It let them be creative while still kind of getting an idea of what it is like to be on both sides of the hiring process and gave them a little bit more real-world experience with using their English.”

Grace, M6 English Teacher
Chicago, Illinois, USA

 

 

“This year I was teaching the M2s again and I was a bit worried about teaching M4 creative writing but I enjoyed it in the end. My biggest highlight was the topic 2 project I did with the M4 class, where they had to choose their own adventure stories and they were all very good. It was a group project, but all the students just did it themselves and the results were very good. I appreciate how much effort they put in for me.”

Gavin, M2 English Teacher
Dublin, Ireland

 

 

“I think a highlight for me was leading the math department, we had some new faces, but all of the math teachers are very pleasant, good people, making it easy to work with and collaborate with them.”

Fred, Head of Math, M5 and M6 Math Teacher
Free State, South Africa

 

 

“I think for me, anytime that I’m teaching the M6s, the highlights are always watching the students get their acceptance letters to university and seeing how excited they are, especially this year since I had the students two years in a row. Watching their progression and seeing those university dreams, first as these kinds of very abstract ideas and then seeing them come to fruition is absolutely amazing. Seeing the excitement of my students running through the hallway with their acceptance letter in hand and being so excited to tell me is definitely the highlight for me of this year.”

Lisa, Head of English, M5 and M6 English Teacher
New Mexico, USA (Originally from Canada))

 

 

“The highlight for me, specifically as the headteacher, is seeing that progress that happened throughout the year. At the beginning of the year, I would hear our teachers having difficulty trying to reach or connect with some students. Now towards the end of the year, we start hearing the teachers who had those issues or struggles boast about what they have accomplished, the really cool things that some of their students created or how they’ve connected and made a bond with those students. From a headteacher’s perspective, it’s just really cool that they’re able to get over that hurdle and further just reach out to those kids. They just care about their students no matter what, even though they don’t say it all the time, you know, it is there and I see it and I feel it and I just, I’m glad that everyone just kept pushing through.”

Anthony James, Headteacher at SPIM
Arizona, USA

 

 

“I think my highlight is a combination of different factors that are connected. One of the things that made an impact on me was seeing this team come together this year and become a cohesive team working towards the same goals. I saw a very compassionate leader in AJ who has so much empathy for all of us. Seeing the team come together under his leadership has been my highlight and has led to one of the things that I’m proudest about. You guys at SPIM stuck together from beginning to end and nobody left the team. Everybody who started this school year is here on the last day of school. So that to me is a huge success and all the little things that we need to improve, we will continue to work on.”

Giselle, BFITS Thailand Director and SPIM Program Manager
Zamboanga City, Philippines 

If you made it to the end, I hope these highlights made you smile. Being a teacher in Thailand can be an extremely fulfilling experience, and I’m certain after reading these memory capsules in time, you would agree too. I wish everyone the best of luck for the upcoming academic year!