Mae Hong Son, 18 December, 2010 -- With thousands of people resettled a year and new people arriving in the Mae Hong Son camps regularly, retaining and constantly training new staff are almost impossible tasks.
Because JRS’ main focus in the camps is education, JRS along with the Karenni Education Department (KnED) look for ways to have strong teachers educating the next generation.
“Resettlement is always a problem. Every year we must train new teachers,” said Jimmy, the primary school coordinator, who is being resettled. “We lose teachers. We replace them. We train others. Then we lose them. Honestly, we can do nothing for this.”
In 2010, 35 teachers out of 173 have left to be resettled in a new country and in 2009, it was almost double that. Eventually, so many teachers were resettled either during training or during the semester, that training was cut to two weeks to make sure there was a teacher in each classroom.
Many of the new teachers only recently graduate from high school and have the task of educating students roughly their age or older.
“We have a problem with resettlement. We always get new teachers. New teachers come in part way through the term and don’t know what the previous teacher was teaching,” said one student who recently graduated from high school.