Shan Culture - Social Life

Information on Souncha Government School.

Friday, April 10, 2009 at 5:28pm

by James Hallamore

Souncha School

The students at Souncha laughing and smiling, but they need your help.

The students of Souncha pose on the school steps. From left to right is Khum Mod, Khum Gop, James, the director and Jamie. The students were always happy and liked to have fun.

If there is one school that needs a volunteer's help – it is definitely Souncha school. Compared to MoungChoum, the school has a lack of resources and the children would benefit from a volunteer teacher there. Jamie and I taught at Souncha every Monday, doing P.E in the morning and English lessons in the afternoon. Cycling through the school gates in the morning, we were greeted by happy faces and smiles that showed how much they looked forward to farangs. A fun warm up before P.E began got every student in the mood to have fun and even the teachers got involved.

Souncha School. The school only has 3 classrooms and to the side of the school there is the nursery for the younger children. Directly behind the school there are slides and a play area. Furthermore, there is also a lake and areas to grow food. The problem is the poor state of school and it would really benefit from investment of time and money.

Khum Jack, the P.E teacher who was a great help during our time at Souncha. He worked in MoungChoum but would come to the Souncha school every Monday. He really was a great guy, getting to know him and all the teachers was a great experience. The whole teaching team were like 'family'.

Khum Jack, the P.E teacher was a great aid in helping us teach. Not only did he translate the explanations of the games to the students, but gave us help when we needed it. He was more than just a teacher, he was a friend. The P.E lessons generally had about 50 students in them and we came up with about 5 different games for the morning to keep the students entertained and having fun. When the mornings became too hot to do P.E on two occasions we went up to the local National Park. The children was so excited and happy that they ended up running to the National Park, which took them about 20 minutes.

Souncha students at the nearby National Park during the P.E lessons. We took them up there when it got too hot to play any sports. They enjoyed jumping into the lake and using the rope walks around the park. Apparently, at the weekends the National Park gets busy with the children from the local area, especially from the Palaung hill tribe village.

Jamie teaching class 2 about numbers.

In the afternoons, we had English lessons with two classes. We both had our own classes and taught them a varied range of subjects such as colours, the alphabet, animals, clothes and body parts. The standard of the children's English, I believe is slightly lower than that of MoungChoum, which is why we decided to do the: 'Reach for the little stars' English camp for Souncha. Furthermore, a lot of the children that go to Souncha are quite poor and a fun two day event was something we thought would be worthwhile and mean a lot to them. Most of the children come from the nearby Palaung village.

If you want to make difference, Souncha is the place to help.

Students sit on the steps at the end of the school day. Souncha is so different to MoungChoum School - I really had a great time teaching there.

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