Teaching in and out of contexts

Three education professionals in Bhutan share their experiences

Written by: Matthew Schuelka

For EdPop this week, we are featuring an interview with three education professionals in Bhutan. Last month, I spoke to Julie Chapman, Clint Chapman, and Yeatoeh Penjore, who all work for Thimphu Primary School, a private primary-level school located in the capital of Bhutan¹. The reason for speaking with Julie, Clint, and Yeatoeh specifically was to explore and understand more about cross-cultural teaching. Julie and Clint are both Americans from California that have lived and taught in Bhutan for the past nine years, and the Philippines before that. Yeatoeh had many different educational experiences, first in Bhutan and then in India, Singapore, and Australia.

Pre-Teaching Experiences in Education

The first interesting and thought-provoking topic we touched upon in our conversation was in sharing our own experiences in education as a student. In particular, we discussed the fact that Julie was homeschooled for her entire childhood and did not have a formal school experience until she was, herself, a teacher. Julie suggests that “homeschooling is not for everybody, but it was definitely for me.” Julie was a self-starter and a self-motivated child. Her mom was the teacher and used the hooked-on-phonics series, as well as other subject workbooks and textbooks. Homeschooling was essentially a multigrade classroom with Julie and her many siblings, so there was a lot of differentiation. “School was just part of life. It didn’t feel like a separate thing,” Julie said. 

Yeatoeh had most of her primary schooling in Bhutan, but then did middle and secondary school in India, attending an American international school. Growing up in Bhutanese schools, Yeatoeh says that “in Bhutan it would be ‘lecture lecture, you finish, take notes, then go home’.” However, her experience in India was more of an exposure to international teachers and teaching, which was very different. She noted that the American teachers were kind, and asked questions. “In Bhutan, you feel shy when you speak to teachers. At the international school, we were encouraged to ask questions and could get the answers wrong.”

Clint attended a Christian private school in California. He had good experiences with his teachers. Says Clint, “I can still name every [teacher] and tell you something specific about them that was good.”

The reason for exploring our own backgrounds as students is because research has consistently shown that teachers teach how they taught (although it is never quite so simple)². This is why it is especially difficult to change teaching practice and has particular resonance when we are discussing teaching in various cross-cultural contexts.  

Teacher Training Experiences 

Julie’s first teacher training experiences was actually as a martial arts instructor. She says that this prepared her well to be a classroom teacher. “I didn’t know how to teach academic content, but I knew how to hold students’ attention and manage behavior.” She took a teaching job at an international school in the Philippines where she expected to be the physical education teacher, but it turned out that what they really needed was an English teacher. “I ended up teaching all the subjects. I had no prior classroom teaching experience. I hadn’t even been in an elementary classroom before. My first day in the classroom was my own first day in a classroom. I had no context. I didn’t know how classes go … I read a ton, I watched a lot of videos.” Formal teacher training was much later in Julie’s teaching career. She did an American university online teacher training program while she was in Bhutan, getting her bachelor’s and then her master’s. “It was great to be able to learn on the job. Find out what worked for me. I didn’t have any other voices saying ‘this is how things are supposed to be’ or ‘this is how it is supposed to run’. I figured out how I taught without a lot of other influences.” 

Clint taught for three years before receiving formal training as a teacher. He found that the formal teacher training he did receive was not very helpful. “My training was better on the job, and with master-teachers who were amazing and helpful.” 

Yeatoeh studied business in Singapore, but her family had established a private school in Bhutan – Thimphu Primary School – so she came back to help the school. She later went on to do her master’s in education in Australia. She also learned ‘on the job’, but often referred to how she was taught at her international school in India. 

Teaching In and Out of Contexts

As I said in the introduction, Julie and Clint came to Thimphu Primary School nine years ago, moving from the tropical Philippines to Himalayan Bhutan. 

Julie says that “it was really hard in the beginning. Basically, because I had expectations. I expected them to do it the American way for some reason. To have the same values and same resources, or the same backgrounds. There were a lot of misunderstandings and frustrations for me. I didn’t understand where my students were coming from, where their families were coming from. The cultural differences were not so obvious. More subtle. As Americans, we say that we value independent thinking, innovation, creativity, but I remember my students would give me work that someone else had done. They got help from others and spent all night copying it down because that was what was expected of them – to turn in beautiful work, whether or not it was their own, they wanted to show me beautiful work. I perceived their efforts to turn in ‘perfect’ work as a lack of integrity. I didn’t take into consideration the history of the school system adopted from India that emphasized uniformity. My students put so much effort into doing exactly what they thought was expected of them. I had to learn to communicate the importance of making and learning from mistakes, especially to parents.”

I really connected to Julie’s sentiment here, as I had similar experiences and feelings in my own time as a teacher in Bhutan. As a teacher in higher education, I frequently received student work that copied from others, and as an ethnographer, I often observed students copying from each other to produce their own assignments. Similar to Julie, this caused me to reexamine my own assumptions about education and integrity. What I see now in Bhutan is not cheating or being disingenuous but, rather, I see students working together to ensure that everyone is viewed positively by the teacher. To the Bhutanese students, they are working hard – together – to meet the expectations of the teacher.³

Clint continues on the topic of integrity, “Sometimes I might emphasize values that I have, that I don’t even know that I have from my home country. In the long run it doesn’t benefit a Bhutanese person as much. It’s not what they want.” For Clint, telling the truth in all situations was a value that was instilled in him from his family growing up. In Bhutan, there is often a tendency to tell people what they want to hear that will make them happy, even if it is not necessarily the truth. This is not lying to the Bhutanese, but to Clint it is lying according to his value set. Clint gave the example of a Bhutanese taxi driver claiming he knows where a place is located, even if he doesn’t. (Which I also connected to, based on my own experiences.) “For the taxi driver, he doesn’t want to make me suffer or be disappointed, so he tells me what he thinks I want to hear because it makes me feel good. This is how things get done in Bhutan. Sometimes when you are telling the blunt truth of things, it stops progress.” It took Clint many years of experience to understand this and utilize it more effectively in his classroom. 

Yeatoeh then spoke on the advantage of having foreign teachers in Bhutan, and especially at her school, “Having international teachers brings an advantage in their English. Our kids speak better when they go abroad. I don’t know any disadvantages. When the Bhutanese are all together, it is just similar thinking. When we have lots of chillips [Bhutanese slang for ‘white people’], we really get to see different perspectives. Our Bhutanese teachers would never ask questions.” The Bhutanese government is concerned about the ratio of foreign teachers to Bhutanese students, and have set a maximum of 1 foreign teacher to 10 Bhutanese teachers. “But all of our Bhutanese parents want chillip class teachers. They think that they teach better,” notes Yeatoeh.  

In terms of the attributes that make a foreign teacher successful, Julie notes that “to be a good colleague, good teacher, good friend, it takes time. You can’t really do it in a year or two. There may be some benefits [to short-term experiences] if they are professional and know what they’re doing and if they’ve experience cross-cultural teaching before, there can definitely be some benefits.” Clint adds, “you have to have the right personality, flexibility, and experience. As you are experiencing culture-shock, it’s so easy to just complain. This is how you work through things, to figure out who you are in relation to the context in which you live. I think that most people can’t make that, and their experience won’t be good for them or their students.” 

Both the sentiments of time and openness to new experiences and ways of doing something reinforce the classic cultural adjustment curve, and point to the notion that teachers in any new context need time to adjust. Both Julie and Clint also agree that teaching in a foreign country is not for everyone. 

Teaching Highs and Lows

Julie felt that she really struggled with classroom discipline at first, and didn’t know how to communicate students’ behavioral issues, areas for improvement, or even successes with parents.” She decided that she would send notes home to the students’ parents. “I didn’t realize that this was like the ultimate discipline. I didn’t realize what the parents had experienced and how things were done [when they were young]. If they got a note home, that basically meant that they were about to get expelled. So I started to send these notes home casually, and parents became very concerned, saying ‘what has my child done?’ and they were for silly things like not raising a hand to talk. I thought that I was doing the right thing by being such a good communicator and I would paste these little things in their notebooks. It wasn’t communicating what I thought it was communicating. Students were just so afraid of this and felt that they were being punished. After observing my colleagues’ classes and asking parents how I could communicate with them better, I implemented new and much more effective ways to communicate. This has been a theme of my teaching journey: LISTEN! And don’t assume I understand what will work in an unfamiliar context.”

Clint provided an example of teaching that worked well. “I give them worksheets as practice, where they work on it, they check, I check, then they have a chance to fix their mistakes. We do that until everything is correct. I see a lot of learning that occurs in that constant-feedback practice.” Education research entirely supports what Clint discovered on his own – allowing students to continually revise and revisit work is a highly effective learning and teaching strategy.  

Another strategy that Julie found success with was having students teach each-other. “Any time there is a helping aspect to it, they really rise to the occasion and take responsibility.” Again, education research provides ample evidence that peer-to-peer learning is a highly effective education strategy. 

Julie also found that giving her students an opportunity to engage in free writing helped build their confidence as both readers and writers. In a free-write session there is no grading, and no pressure for ‘perfect work’. Julie says, “Just write something to make Madam Julie smile. If I can take the pressure off ‘perfect’ they do really well.” This is an especially powerful pedagogical technique in Bhutan, where students often feel pressure to produce writing that they think reinforces their teachers’ thoughts and opinions, rather than expressing themselves and their own thoughts. However, free writing is effective in any context. 

Yeatoeh, Julie, and Clint all felt that in Bhutan there is a strong respect for teachers, and for elders in general. As you have read above, this comes out in various forms, but often through a student’s desire to produce ‘perfect’ work that will make the teacher happy. They also observed that there is much cleverness and resourcefulness that is embodied in Bhutanese teachers, parents, and students – they can be adaptable and go with the flow, using whatever resources they have. 

As for the future of Bhutanese education, all three participants were skeptical that any change or reform would happen soon. However, what they would like to see happen is more confidence in the students. Yeatoeh observes that “[the Bhutanese] are always taught to be quiet, don’t speak out, listen to your teacher. That’s kind of ‘in us’ as soon as we head to school. Maybe more creative thinkers. Just not to be afraid to say what you think.” Yeatoeh suggests that teachers can be the agents of change. Clint suggests that teachers plant those seeds, but those seeds are not necessarily going to blossom in even 10 or 20 years. It may only come out when the students are teachers or parents themselves. 

This is an important observation for all education policy-makers and reformers out there, and a lesson that the world can learn from Bhutan in general: we live in a world of change and impermanence, but it is not immediate. The seeds we plant today are ones we plant for those many generations from now. 

For next week…

We will continue our discussion on teaching and learning in contexts. Next week’s newsletter will feature a discussion with Fran Vavrus, professor of comparative and international education at the University of Minnesota, and her many years of teaching and learning in Tanzania. Specifically, we will discuss her new book Schooling as Uncertainty (Bloomsbury, 2021).

1. While I will give some Bhutanese context sprinkled here and there throughout the newsletter, if you want to know about education in Bhutan I will shamelessly self-promote my own work and point you to Education in Bhutan: Culture, Schooling, and Gross National Happiness (Springer, 2016), edited by myself and Tom Maxwell.

2. Here, I would highly recommend the teacher education classic, Practice Makes Practice: A Critical Study of Learning to Teach (SUNY Press, 2003, Revised Edition) by Deborah Britzman.

3. I have written on this before. If interested, check out this article in Anthropology and Education Quarterly or, if you’re feeling particularly self-flagellant (and don’t have access to the journal article), you can read it in my PhD dissertation.