The workshop took place at Umphang Secondary School in Umphang, Thailand, a few miles from the Burmese border. Due to the long-running civil war in eastern Burma the area is home to over 200,000 mostly Karen refugees and migrant workers many of whom are “stateless”. Because many migrant schools follow the Burmese curriculum rather than the Thai curriculum (to prepare for the hoped for eventual return to Burma) they receive little support from the government and thus volunteer teachers provide a valuable resource.

The workshops focused on adjusting to team teaching with local and volunteer teachers working together in the classroom. Issues were approached from two directions: Thai/Burmese perceptions of western approaches to work and teaching as well as Westerner’s perceptions of Thai/Burmese approaches. Because Thai culture is based more on relationships among co-workers than on the results they produce there is considerable room for tension and misunderstanding between local and western teachers leading to poor relationships and thus poor results for students.

Brown has worked for the past nine summers with Openmind Projects, an local NGO that places volunteer teachers in poor schools in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia where he led training programs for volunteer teachers going to work in local schools. The workshop consisted of a presentation on cultural differences in teaching styles followed by team teaching exercises in which local and western volunteer teachers worked in teams to prepare and present lessons to classes at the school. A discussion followed to process the presentations.

The area around Umphang is among the most isolated in Thailand with a single road leading five hours across the mountains to the nearest city. Most primary and secondary schools have dorm facilities for students whose villages are too far away for a daily commute. Classroom facilities are often very simple with many sharing classroom space among grades and often having too few teachers for every grade. Because of the isolation of the schools volunteers usually live at the school in similarly simple conditions. Due to these quite simple living and working conditions different from those western volunteers are used to, Brown gave a second presentation on the lifestyle and cultural issues that volunteers experience in the schools and the local community.

The subject of Brown’s talk was teaching using problem-based and active learning methods. A part of his presentation dealt with advantages of, methods for, and obstacles to using non-Thai volunteer teachers in the classroom in support of Thai teachers.

The presentation was followed by discussion of the dominant current teaching methods in Thailand and strategies for moving to a wider use of problem-based and active learning.

His paper, entitled “Solitary Families in Nineteenth Century Lower Austria,” was part of a panel that included papers from Canada, Japan, Portugal and the United States.  Brown’s paper demonstrated the difficulties in classifying historical household structure according to the most common typologies used by family historians.

Students in the class raised $6,500 to fund the construction of the kitchen in the largest public hospital in the western region of Honduras, which serves more than 21,000 patients a month. The kitchen enables students from the Centro Universidad Region del Norte under the direction of Dr. Sergio Navarre to prepare daily supplementary meals for an average of 100 children in the emergency room and the cancer, neurosurgery and general wards of the hospital.

In accepting the keys to the new facility from Dr. Brown, Dr. Juan Carlos Zúñiga, director of the hospital, expressed his deep gratitude for the project, calling it a model for others to follow.

In addition to the hospital kitchen project, the Periclean Scholars were busy with other service work in Honduras. The class donated $1,250 to purchase full school uniforms and bicycles so 11 boys from Flor Azul, a rural community and farm for 80 abandoned and abused boys, could go to high school. Another $600 went to buy shoes for boys at Flor Azul who didn’t have them. The Scholars also painted a house, donated a half-ton of clothes and held events to entertain children at Flor Azul and Nuevo Paraiso, a community for abandoned and abused children.

In a second project, he co-authored and edited a handbook for volunteers for OpenmindProjects, an organization based in Nongkhai that places volunteer English and computer teachers in poor schools, orphanages and eco-tourism development projects in Thailand and Laos. Brown also worked with the organization to develop their orientation program for new volunteers and participated in lesson-planning workshops that brought together Thai teachers and international volunteers.

Dr. Brown is also visiting village schools in the area and holding workshops for teachers and volunteers. In addition he is working with Openmind Projects, the sponsoring Thai organization, to develop new teaching methods enabling volunteers to work more closely with local teachers.

Brown traveled there on his own and visited villages with one of the Ombetja Yahinga workers, educating young adults on HIV/AIDS transmission, testing and treatment. The area around Opuwo is the least developed region of Namibia (the nearest paved road was 100 miles away) and is sparsely settled by ethnic groups that rely on nomadic herding to survive.

Brown reports that he regularly traveled 50 to 80 miles over gravel roads to reach isolated villages. Says Brown, “It was a tremendous opportunity to do humanitarian work as well as to learn about the mix of cultures in the area.” He said it was often difficult to reach groups of young people because they were tending herds of cattle or goats throughout the open countrside. He said the land is communally held, so there are no fences and livestock roam freely.

Brown returned with many photos, stories, and fond memories, as well as with feelings of frustration with the magnitude of the work that remains to be done and the scarcity of resources that are available to carry it out.