Wai Kru

On Thursday it was 'Wai Kru Day' at our school. Wai Kru means Respect for Teachers and the focus is a ceremony where the students 'wai' their teachers and present them with flowers. *(Wai is the traditional Thai greeting; a slight bow with palms pressed together as if praying. The position of the hands in relation to the face and the extent of the bow depends on the status of the person/amount of respect they are showing)

There is no hall in our school big enough to cram all the students in so we had 3 round of ceremonies and as K1 and K2 teacher, I ended up taking part in two of them! Class by class all the students file on to the stage where their teachers are sat. They kneel in front of them, wai to them and then present their flowers. Each year has 7/8 classes of 40-50 so altogether it took about 5 hours! At times it was complete chaos trying to organise so many children in a hot assembly hall but it the whole day was a great experience!



The Wai Kru ceremonies finished just in time for the school election. Grade 5 students have been campaigning for the past few weeks and the winning class will conduct assemblies next year. It is taken very seriously - there have been many marches around the school complete with big drums and what Matt called 'chariots'! For the election they even hired an electronic voting machine from the government!