A Cambodian Native: A Visionary Rebuilding His Country, One Child at a Time

Check out this interview with Sambath Meas of Countryside Class in Battambang Province, Cambodia, the organization I’ve been working very closely with.


You can also learn more about Countryside Class at http://countrysideclass.blogspot.com/

រៀនហើយ។⁣ រៀនទៀត។

'Studied already. Study more.'

Seen at a school in Takeo Province.

Chris, a fellow Peace Corps Volunteer who just finished his two years of service in Cambodia, offered up an encouraging moment to the volunteers still in service:

I was on my way to the Province that shall not be named. Along the way I met a Khmer boy on his way to this place. He took up the opportunity to speak English with a foreigner and came and sat by me on the bus. I asked him where he was going and he said that he was going to volunteer in the province with some Japanese volunteers on his short time off from University. He then started to tell me about a certain English teacher that he had in high school that had inspired him to study at University and to volunteer. He told me about how great and inspiring he was and how he helped find scholarships and that he had been inspired to study Japanese.. strange advice from an English teacher, but it seems to have paid off. Anyway.. he went on and finally said that he was a Peace Corps volunteer and asked me if I knew what Peace Corps was.. I was blown away. I had no Peace Corps shirts or hats on and I was certainly not expecting to hear about Peace Corps while going to a forbidden province. I asked him who it was and how long he studied with the teacher and he said Teacher Brian and for 6 months. I couldn’t believe how big an impact a volunteer had after only 6 months of a class that was held only a couple days a week.

Sometimes in your two or three years here, you will or have asked yourself what kind of a difference you made in this country (I know I have sooo many times). It is definitely sometimes difficult to see, but every lesson, every semester, every outreach, every conversation has the potential to inspire people.. even if it’s just one person. Maybe it’s students, villagers, friends, co-workers, tutors or teachers. You may not even realize it and maybe you will never get the chance to see it personally, but you are making an impact in Cambodia.

Good Luck, K7s and K6es! Keep going out there and inspiring people.

The Day's Reflection - 30 April 2013

My school breaks for lunch from 11 am until 2 pm four days a week (the other two school days, school doesn’t resume after lunch, unless it’s a designated student labor day). On Tuesdays, my only class is from 2 pm until 4 pm, and it’s my favorite class, kids who are excited to learn and to learn from me. 

As 1:15 approached and I began to consider prepping to go to school, the thunder began to roll in. By 1:30 that thunder had increased in volume and frequency and the lightning was visible. By 1:45 we were all in a torrential downpour that lasted until 3 pm. 

In the States I never really considered the impact of weather as simple as rain. Sure, we got snow days or icy road days or fog delays, but rain days?  In the States, grab an umbrella and make a break for the nearest cover.

Here, though, that nearest cover doesn’t really exist. Most of the students commute a few (up to around 7) kilometers by bicycle, and many make the trek by motorbike. That journey becomes treacherous with slick roads and decreased visibility, plus there’s the ingrained fear of lightning strikes. Even if they all could make it to school, it’s fairly impossible to conduct class with rain pounding on a tin roof. 

There are simple things in the States that I never before considered as a privilege, and holding class and commuting during rain is one of them.

I’ve begun trying to speak to the baby in English, and most of the time she can figure out my meaning but when she can’t, she pauses, looks me in the eye, nods slowly, and continues about her business. It makes me laugh every time because that’s my exact response when I don’t understand what’s being asked of me in Khmer.

Excerpt from My Volunteer Reporting Form

The question: What challenges have you faced in your project or in other areas of your Peace Corps experience?

This year has been particularly challenging. I’ve struggled with the work at the school (teaching as well as other projects), with my relationships with HCNs, and with personal anxiety.

Coteaching relationships are hard enough, but they’re made harder when sites are selected based on which schools are willing to take us and not on which schools want us for specific purposes. My school and counterparts seem to view me as an interesting addition, someone to take part of their work load and be a beneficial line on their CVs. They want me to teach when they don’t want to come, grade the tests so they don’t have to, and give them interesting anecdotes to share about working with the foreigner girl. (I do have good relationships with several teachers at the school and there are many positive experiences there, but I want to emphasize here some the negatives and how those difficulties have been affecting me.) No one has interest in extra work; no one wants to prepare outside resources, to meet with me outside of class to develop lesson plans, to change their teaching habits in the long term. We both show up each day and follow the EFC by rote. And a lot of that is my fault. I’m not good at confrontation, at pointing out flaws. And I’m too easily paralyzed by the extent of interwoven problems in the Cambodian education system. I find respite in the class I teach alone; it’s in that environment that I can try new things and treat the students differently from the norm. Those are the students who are learning and improving and excited to come to class. So I’ve taken those ideas and methods and tried to implement them in my other classes and show them to my coteachers. They aren’t taken. Either the teachers aren’t interested enough to spend the time to understand my idea or they don’t care enough to implement it when I’m not in the class. I feel like any changes in behavior are meant solely to appease me.

I’m also struggling with the director and the school system in general. Yesterday I sat down with the director to discuss how we could apply for a grant to improve the reading room. He wanted to tell me what the project required and leave it at that. I tried to explain the plethora of details that went into the proposal, but he wasn’t interested in that sort of preparation work. He showed me a number, saying ‘This is the amount we need to do the project. I don’t care how you do the proposal, just get this amount.’ This reaction harkens back to the mini-IST we had in which our directors and counterparts participated and we had time for us to discuss action plans for our service. Every idea proposed by my director involved the receipt of funds from my ‘rich’ American friends and family. He even wanted me to build a road. I don’t know how to be here under a teaching framework when it’s not my teaching that the school wants from me. I’m not fulfilling anyone’s expectations for my time here, not even my own.

Ever since reading Somaly Mam’s The Road of Lost Innocence, I’ve been really struggling with some aspects of life and culture here. I don’t know how to act around teachers who coyly admit to frequenting karaoke bars for the wonderful ‘service’ and ‘company.’ I don’t know how to act around my director who regularly participates in the culture of bribery. I don’t know how to act around my brother-in-law who frequently drinks until he vomits the entirety of the following morning. I don’t know how to act around my male family members who think that married men are still entitled to be with multiple women. I don’t know what to do when I see a man taking advantage of a drunken girl and the response is that she shouldn’t have been drinking around men. I feel lost here. I feel like I’m sitting on the sidelines and observing tragedy.

A lot of the above have been contributing to feelings of helplessness and powerlessness that have been overwhelming me lately. As much as I love my host family and how they care for me, I have no control or responsibility for my own life. I don’t go to the market, cook, or clean. Every aspect of my day is prepared for me. I’m an extremely overgrown child. Since I don’t have control over the society I’m in, I need to find a way to take some control over myself.

I’ve started contemplating action plans to begin to approach proactively some of these challenges, so I hope things will begin to change and that I’ll feel more at ease soon.

(posted March 21, 2013)

On Tuesdays I get to teach my favorite class: 10A. It’s the only class that I get to teach regularly without a co-teacher, so I’m able to do weird things with the students and have a completely casual relationship with them without having to worry about my co-teaching relationship. 

Today, we studied prepositions of place: in, on, above, below, beside, outside, between. As usual, I gave them visual representations of each preposition on the chalkboard and then worked with them to produce the proper Khmer translation. To reinforce the lesson, we played a game (an EXTREMELY rare occurrence in Cambodian classrooms) akin to follow the leader. They simply had to follow my command, which included a preposition of place. (Put your pen above your head. Put your book under your desk. Put your shoe beside your desk.) They were starting to catch on, so I yelled, ‘Stand outside the classroom!’ and made a beeline for the door. I stood outside and glanced in, noticing that they were all still seated and glancing at each other nervously. I popped my head inside and repeated the command. I watched as the first student understood and a smile broke out and he sprinted to the door, closely followed by the others. After I sent them back inside, the bell rang for the break time.

Normally, breaks are spent with me at the desk, writing in the class book or studying Khmer. Today, the students had another idea. Some of them had lyrics from their private class, and they pleasantly demanded that I sing them. So I belted out Take Me to Your Heart, followed by Oun Sarang Bong. Feeling a bit parched, I walked out to pick up a water bottle from the nearest stall. On the way back, I passed one of my other grade 10 classes who were currently on break with one of my coteachers. They called me inside for a brief chat, and I noticed from the chalkboard that they were also studying the preposition lesson. I knew this, because those same diagrams that I use to teach that lesson, that I had used in class with this coteacher the previous week, were on the board. For perhaps the first time, I felt as if my being here and working with these teachers might make some sort of difference – one infinitesimally small – but difference all the same.

After the break, I finished the book’s lesson with about twenty minutes to spare, so I decided to indulge in a cultural exchange moment and teach them about the upcoming Thanksgiving celebrations all across the United States. I explained how it was one of our major holidays, that we met with the majority of our extended family, and that we ate till we were full then rested and then ate more. I taught them the form, ‘This year I am thankful for…’ and called on a few students to tell me what they are thankful for this year. They all said, ‘This year I am thankful for my teacher.’ (I’d be more flattered if there weren’t such a culture of copying answers here.) I asked if they have a holiday similar to Thanksgiving in Cambodia. They don’t. I asked when they tell their families what they’re thankful for. Never. So their homework was to go home and tell their families what happened this year to make them thankful. I really hope this is one assignment they actually do…

(posted November 25, 2012)

Lesson Learned #4 (Part 1 and Part 2, A Defense)

In class, if you don’t know the answer, make one up. With confidence.

Which is why Class 10F now thinks that the District of Columbia was named after Columbia, the man who bartered the compromise between Virginia and Maryland for the location of the capital. 

Somehow Columbus also got thrown into that conversation… He did sail from Spain, right??

*                         *                                *                             *                             *                                  *

After my previous post about my classroom antics, specifically about my predilection for fudging facts about history and geography, I had a few comments from a couple actual teachers (I believe somewhere in the States). I went to respond to each of them in private, but neither maintains an ask or submission section, so I decided to respond publicly.

The comments my glib post engendered: 

Absolutely not.  You do NOT make up an answer.  You make it an opportunity to show how to look something up, say you’ll come back to that question later, or offer a challenge for them to find the answer!

Agreeing with NOT making it up. I have a Parking Lot cork board in my classroom, where we park questions that I can’t answer right away. Sometimes I look the answer up, sometimes a student does. Once we have the answer, I tack it up with the question and tell the class. Students need to see that teachers are still learning, too.

My response:

You’re absolutely right, ladies. There should be the opportunity for classroom learning and research to probe intellectual curiosity and the desire/ability to seek out additional information. However, I don’t live/teach in an environment that allows for such things. I teach English as a Foreign Language in a high school in rural Cambodia. My students don’t have access to research books or free internet in the community let alone in the classroom or on the school grounds. My classrooms don’t even have window panes or electricity. I would love to encourage my students to pursue learning past the lesson, but the Ministry of Education mandates that we complete the required national curriculum, and with teacher/student absences and liberal holiday-taking, we’re constantly in a rush to finish everything. So one lesson can very rarely ever extend to another day. Beyond that, I’m not a history teacher; I’m an English teacher. I want my students to improve their English skills, which they do by listening to my stories and asking follow up questions. I’m not concerned that I made up the date of the Louisiana Purchase today with my 11th graders. I’m thrilled that they had the excitement to figure out how to ask me in English about the Statue of Liberty and how that conversation - one which they were able to understand and in which they could participate - evolved into a discussion of Manifest Destiny. The facts aren’t important to me, not really. It doesn’t really affect their lives what the “Columbia” in Washington D.C. means. But when we talk about what liberty means and how even in a land of freedom there is still discrimination, those thoughts on culture and human nature can affect them.

That all said, I perused each of your blogs. You seem like lovely ladies and amazing, dedicated teachers. Just try not to be so harsh on an untrained teacher trying to make the best learning experience she can for her students in the situation they’ve been placed.  

(posted May 28 and 29, 2012)

English Class #2

Me: (teaching about "There will/won't be...") If my friend Jessie comes to visit, what could you tell her about Prosaut?

Student: There will be my girlfriend.

Class: *hysterical laughter*

Me: I think you meant "There WON'T be my girlfriend" because I don't believe you have one.

Student: Oh, Teacher... I am shy. *sits down*

(posted February 2, 2012)

Why I Love Cambodia #86

Being able to wear entirely mismatched clothes to school and still have an entire class of 10th graders exclaiming your beauty. 

(posted February 2, 2012)

English Class #1

Me: Why do astronauts need special clothes, food, and medicine?

Students: *whispering together*

Brave Soul: Because there are no sellers on the moon yet.

Students: *laughter*

Coteacher: Why don't you tell them the correct answer?

Me: No. I'm pretty sure that's a more than acceptable answer.

(posted January 8, 2012)

My Grade 9 class performing Jingle Bells.

Watch

(posted December 22, 2011)

Market Class

We teach English to kids in the market for an hour each day. Yesterday, we got a little distracted…

Watch

(posted September 7, 2011)