Wai Kru (Teacher's) Day

Wai Kru Day was on Thursday 05 September 2013 and is a really important ritual in Thai culture in which students pay respects to their teachers in order to express their gratitude and formalize the student–teacher relationship.
At our school all students and teachers gathered in the Assembly Hall and at 8:00am the ceremony began.  The students were all sitting in neat rows with a cleared central 'aisle' for the teachers to walk down from the back of the room to the stage where we took our places. 
One student from each division (primary, junior, high school) read their essay of why teachers are great, then the students sang a couple of traditional songs.  The grade 12 students sang a song about the love they have for their teachers and the ending was acapella...very well done. 
The student body paid respect to the teachers by bowing down low (a very impressive sight). 



You can see Emily at roughly 12 o'clock 6th from the back.

They showed their appreciation by presenting to the teachers lovely bouquets of flowers.  One of my students presented me with the bouquet...he was so proud and I was so proud of him.

The presentation of flowers was all precisely orchestrated and Emily was one of the chosen ones! 

 

 

The ritual is very serious; no joking or talking.  Those of you familiar with children will appreciate the enormity of controlling over 300 children between the ages of 5-18.  This was achieved by claps and hand signs issued by the senior students.
Once all teachers received their flowers, we were to bless the children by tying on the holy string.

Basically, we tied a piece of string onto the wrists of the students and said a few words of inspiration (i.e. study hard, practice your English etc).  It was beautiful!  It was a 2 hour ceremony.

 

 

My beautiful flowers!