A Vietnamese class at Phathumthep Withayakhan High School in Thailand’s northeastern province of Nong Khai

Beginning with a free class he taught in his home, a Vietnamese-Thai teacher has made Vietnamese one of the most popular classes at a local high school.

But everyday, 160 students excitedly enter Vietnamese classes at Phathumthep Withayakhan High School, where they now enthusiastically read and write essays and poetry in Vietnamese, thanks to the efforts of Phan Quoc Loi.

Born in Thailand, 52-year-old Loi spent a good deal of his life worrying that his mother tongue was slipping away from his small Vietnamese community of 500 families in the Laos-adjacent Thai province.

“If Vietnamese children don’t learn their own language, which is the norm for immigrant families here in Thailand, they won’t know who they are,” said Loi.

In 2002, he decided to do something about it.

In the hope of helping the community’s young Vietnamese population understand their origins, Loi began teaching free Vietnamese classes from his home, hoping the language would be the basis on which students could appreciate their roots.

But it’s been no piece of cake.

“At first, many families didn’t want their children to study Vietnamese because they thought it was useless,” he said. “So, I had to go door-to-door visiting each family to convince them it was important.”

In the early days, his classroom in Nong Khai’s eponymous provincial capital was often close to empty, with only one or two students attending. But he kept it open and he kept it free. He made the commitment early on that he would not accept money for the work.

Loi spent his own money to travel back to Vietnam to buy textbooks and teaching aids. As he began composing his own “fun-based” lesson plans and organizing extracurricular activities for his few students, people in the community began talking and word of his classes spread.

By 2006, he was teaching full classrooms of 30-40 students in his home.

That year, administrators from the local Phathumthep Withayakhan High School invited him to teach formal Vietnamese language courses.

He accepted, but refused any salary, saying anything the school might pay him should be given to the families of poor students instead.

Arpanee Kotadee, deputy head of the school’s Department of Language, said: “We began teaching Vietnamese because Vietnam is our neighbor and there are many Vietnamese families here.”

Kotadee said it was important for both Thai and Vietnamese students in the community to understand other cultures. He said cultural understanding would contribute to a more peaceful world.

Loi’s Vietnamese classes are now popular not only with the children of Vietnamese immigrant families, but also local Thai and Chinese students.

He and other teachers now also tutor outside of school as well.

The classes have sparked such popular interest in Vietnam that the school has opened its own Vietnamese cultural center.

The center is home to Vietnamese books, teaching and learning aids and cultural items from Vietnam.

Outside the classroom, essays and poems in Vietnamese composed by the students are posted on a board for everyone to read.

Loi has also received support, in the form of textbooks and teachers, from Vietnam’s Ministry of Education and Training and the Vietnamese embassy.

Le Van Hai has been teaching with Loi for three years on assignment from the ministry.

Hai said he was both happy and honored to be teaching at the Thai school.

His job was not only to help Vietnamese students learn the language, but also to help them understand more about Vietnam and its culture, he added.

“When I first came here, there were only 35 students in the Vietnamese language class,” said Hai, adding that there were now some 160 seventh to eleventh-grade students learning Vietnamese at the school.

“That is our inspiration,” he said.

In 2007, Loi and two of his Vietnamese-Thai colleagues – Dau Van Khanh and Nguyen Sy Tuong – were awarded the ministry’s “For the Cause of Education” insignia for promoting Vietnamese education abroad by teaching the classes for free.

“To learn the Vietnamese language is to remember your homeland,” Loi said.

“Although we live far away from Vietnam, we’ll try our best to spread Vietnamese language and culture.”

Reported by Viet Phuong