In this interview, you’ll hear from Skyler Sieradzky, a Peace Corps Education volunteer in Thailand. Skyler shares what daily life looks like, the work being done, and how service has shaped their personal and professional growth. You’ll learn about housing, cultural differences, project work, language learning, and what it’s like to live and work in a new country. This interview offers a real look into Peace Corps service and what future volunteers can expect.
Table of Contents
- Volunteer Experience and Motivation
- Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
- Surprises and Challenges
- Advice and Support
- Practical Tips and Language Learning
- Social Identity
- Final Thoughts
Volunteer Experience and Motivation
1. What do you do as a Peace Corps Education volunteer in Thailand?
As a Peace Corps Education Volunteer (TESS) in Thailand, I co-teach English with two Thai teachers from Annuban (Kindergarten) through Primary 6, and I run a weekly English club with Mattayom 1 (the equivalent of 7th grade in the U.S.). In class, we play games, do arts and crafts, practice speaking, and do other confidence-building activities. I co-plan lessons with both teachers twice a week, and together we create and adapt activities, vocabulary, and classroom routines to fit our classroom and students.
In addition to daily classroom work, I help organize English camps for fun holidays like Halloween, Christmas/Hanukkah, and Valentine’s Day. Camps give students opportunities to practice English in a low-pressure environment through creativity, games, and cultural learning, which are often less intimidating than regular classroom lessons. It also gives them a chance to learn English that might not otherwise be taught in the classroom, such as “vampire.”
A major part of my role also involves capacity building. Once a month, I facilitate district-wide teacher training focused on teaching English more effectively. However, capacity building at school is much more informal and looks like speaking English with my counterparts over lunch or about daily life to work on English grammar and pronunciation without a formal workshop.
In practice, my work is a mix of teaching, planning, training, and cultural exchange. The day-to-day varies, but the constant is collaboration.
2. Why did you decide to join the Peace Corps and serve in Thailand?
I joined the Peace Corps because I wanted to do service that felt respectful and sustainable. The Peace Corps provides a unique opportunity to engage directly and immerse yourself in a community, allowing volunteers to address challenges specific to that community.
I’ve always believed that some of the most meaningful changes happen on the human level. Confidence and curiosity don’t transform communities overnight, but they can shape how students imagine their futures and how communities build on their own strengths. That kind of change takes time, and it tends to ripple outward through students, families, and schools in lasting ways.
Living Arrangements and Cultural Integration
3. What is your housing like in Thailand?
My site is peri-urban, so I am lucky to have access to grocery stores, cafes, and some Western comforts if I need them. I live with a Thai host family, and after the option to move out after three months, I chose to stay.
We don’t do everything together, but we share space and check in on each other. Our routines run alongside one another, and over time, that has become its own kind of comfort. We share travel plans, what I am teaching in school, and I help my host dad with his English pronunciation.
Living with them gives me a level of comfort, security, and connection that I’m grateful for. When I go for a run, my host parents always ask how many kilometers I ran and tell me it’s impressive. It’s a small interaction, but I look forward to it, and it makes me feel cared for in a quiet way. That sense of care is a big part of why I chose to stay with them.
4. What moments or interactions stand out during your service?
I’m not sure if there is just one moment that stands out. What I remember the most are the small, ordinary things like my students speaking in complete sentences or yelling “it’s ok” when their friends lose in a game. It’s my students telling me, “I love you, teacher Sky,” after a stressful or long day. Or maybe it’s eating some foreign comfort food after being a little more homesick than usual.
There have been big moments too, like my students winning first place at an international robotics competition in Taiwan, and the whole-school English camps and district-wide teacher trainings that I have organized. But what makes service meaningful are the small moments. They’re not dramatic, but they’re the parts that made me feel connected, supported, and at home.
Surprises and Challenges
5. What has surprised you most about living or working in Thailand?
To start with the obvious: being a visible foreigner, navigating a new education system, and learning a new language all come with surprises. But what has surprised me the most about living and working in Thailand is myself. Being in the Peace Corps has taught me how to sit with uncertainty, how to move forward without clarity, and how to stay when things feel uncomfortable and lonely. It’s taught me that growth doesn’t always look exciting or obvious. Sometimes it looks like showing up, again and again, even when you’re tired, confused, or unsure if you’re doing enough. And somehow, over time, those small moments add up to something meaningful. It isn’t easy to be a Peace Corps volunteer, but I am more resilient than I ever knew I was.
6. What challenges have you faced in your Education work, and how did you respond?
A major challenge in my education work has been building student confidence. Many of my students were hesitant to speak English or take risks because they didn’t want to make a mistake. However, when learning a new language, making mistakes is where you learn the most.
To address this, I use games, arts and crafts, singing, dancing, and positive reinforcement to make participation feel less intimidating. I also focus on effort first rather than correctness. Over time, I have seen my students become more willing to try!
I have learned that confidence can’t be rushed. It requires trust, time, and an environment where students feel safe taking risks.
Advice and Support
7. What advice would you give to future Education volunteers in Thailand?
If I could give future Education Volunteers in Thailand one piece of advice, it would be this: learning isn’t rushed, it’s relational. Thai classrooms don’t usually move at the same pace or follow the same expectations as Western schools, so what matters most isn’t how perfect your lesson plan is, but the connection you build with your students.
When students and teachers feel a connection with you, they’re more willing to participate, take risks in English, and engage openly. Progress can feel slow, but slow doesn’t mean nothing is happening. If students are smiling, laughing, asking questions, or just trying a new word in English, that’s meaningful growth. Those small moments, built from trust and consistency, often become the most important parts of your work here.
8. How did Peace Corps training prepare you for service?
Pre-service training (PST) prepared me in ways I didn’t fully appreciate until I got to site. Looking back, PST didn’t just prepare me to teach; it prepared me to learn. We learned how to teach English in Thai classrooms, lesson plans, and run teacher trainings, but we also learned how to observe, ask questions, and adjust our expectations. Those skills ended up being just as important at the site as anything in the handbook.
PST felt long at times, but it gave me skills and confidence I didn’t realize I would need once I got to site. During this time, we also learned Thai and what language mistakes to avoid, which was more practical than I expected.
If I could give advice to future trainees, it would be to lean into PST’s structure. It’s one of the few moments in service when your only job is to learn. Once you get to site, those skills become the foundation you build the rest of your service on.
Practical Tips and Language Learning
9. What would you tell future volunteers to pack—or leave behind?
Looking back over a year ago, when I was packing for the Peace Corps, I read every packing list I could find to try to feel prepared. I don’t think there is any amount of preparation that makes you feel 100% prepared to leave home. However, the one piece of advice I have is that everything you need to live in Thailand, or wherever you are placed, is in that country. The only things that aren’t in that country are the things that are uniquely important to you. For me, that is my blanket. It’s less about the perfect packing list and more about having one or two comforts that make the transition feel less overwhelming.
10. How has language learning been for you in Thailand?
I didn’t start studying Thai until I got to pre-service training. I vividly remember arriving at my host family’s home and crying because I wasn’t sure if I would ever be able to communicate with them (after only a few hours of language learning…). The next day, I put my mind to work and committed to learning Thai.
Every evening, I would go to the neighbor’s house (who also hosted a volunteer), and we would speak for 1-3 hours in Thai. I would practice speaking and listening as much as I could. By the end of training, I felt confident in my Thai abilities and could communicate with my host family. But of course, there were plenty of mistakes and a lot of laughing along the way.
I still make mistakes, and we still laugh about them, but that’s part of the learning process. For me, consistency, immersion, and humor are the most effective tools.
Social Identity
11. How has your personal identity shaped your service experience?
I am a female Jewish volunteer, and both of those identities have shaped my Peace Corps service. Being a woman in Thailand has not been a challenge I have had to face at my site. Men and women are treated fairly similarly in my community, though I recognize that may vary across Thailand.
My Judaism has shaped my experience in a more internal way. Most people in my community have never met someone Jewish before, so not only do I have to navigate this, but also find ways to explain this piece of my identity in a respectful way. I appreciated that my community has been very respectful in return, particularly around what I will and won’t do due to religious practice, especially surrounding food.
However, the identity that has shaped my everyday life the most is simply being a foreigner. Thai people often excuse behaviors that would be considered impolite by someone Thai, for example, being direct. One moment that stands out is when I asked to take a picture of my school with only teachers and students, which escalated into a small incident. It was a reminder that I move through my community with a level of exception and leniency that others don’t have, and that my presence carries weight even when I don’t intend it to. This dynamic has made me more self-aware, especially when a request or comment can create an unintended ripple effect.
12. Did your identity lead to specific challenges or situations?
The biggest identity-related challenge I have faced has been my relationship to Judaism. I knew before I left for Thailand that I would have to make compromises surrounding religious practice, but I underestimated how prolonged sacrifice would make me feel.
Over time, being away from my Jewish community, not observing Shabbat or holidays, made me feel isolated and disconnected from a part of myself. After sitting with those feelings for a while, I realized I needed to adapt rather than abandon that part of my identity. I started lighting Shabbat candles and finding realistic ways to observe holidays.
I also occasionally travel to Bangkok to participate in Shabbat or holidays with the Jewish community there. Connecting with other Jews in Thailand helps me sustain my identity in a way that feels integrated into my host country rather than separate from it. These practices help me feel grounded, less isolated, and more supported.
13. What advice do you have for volunteers who share your identity?
Everyone practices their faith differently, but I think the sentiment is true across identities: you can’t show up for others if you do not show up for yourself. Compromising a piece of your identity might work for a while, but over time, it can make you feel disconnected. Finding outlets to practice my religion helps me feel more like myself, which makes being at site feel more natural because I no longer have to suppress a piece of who I am.
Service will change and stretch your identity, but you don’t need to abandon or shrink it to fit some idea of a ‘perfect’ Volunteer. Letting my identity adapt rather than disappear has made my service more meaningful and more sustainable.
Final Thoughts
14. What final advice would you share with future volunteers?
If I could offer one final piece of advice, it would be to embrace the joy and the discomfort of service. There will be days that feel slow or lonely, and other days that feel full and rewarding. If you show up, stay present, and pay attention to the small moments, it will change you. You’ll grow in ways you didn’t plan for and didn’t know you needed.
I’m more patient, more resilient, and more grounded than when I arrived, and that growth didn’t come from big accomplishments; it came from small, consistent moments with my community.
Are you thinking about joining the Peace Corps? If you’re curious about service and ready for something new, apply today. Like Skyler, you can live abroad, work with communities, and grow in ways you didn’t expect. Apply to the Peace Corps and take the next step.
The content of this post does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government, the Peace Corps, or Thailand Government.
