November 27, 2018
Today was an early day. I’m up in Siem Reap doing teacher observations in the three schools we are in. The closest school is an hour and 15-30 min our side of Siem Reap city. The best part of getting there is driving past the temples in the early morning light. Gotta love a good temple drive by.
We leave the hotel at 6 am to get to the school in time for their first class. Today there were two other Khmer friends working with me, they are from the partnering organization that helps support these schools. We support only with the Teacher Training program. To get all the teachers in we divide the teachers and sat in on at least 30 min of class for each.
There are two ‘days’ in each school day. Students don’t go for the full day, they go either in the AM or in the PM. The other half of the day you work or help out at home etc.
For today we had 15 teachers to observe between the two halves of the day with a long lunch in the middle. There were several new teachers to this school year and this is our first visit of the year. They run on a calendar similar to the American system October to August, the big break is during the really rainy season.
There were at least 3 new teachers who just finished high school a few months ago, they looked so young, God bless’em. It must be terrifying to become a teacher so young. We are quite excited to get into some good Teacher Trainings with those guys!
There were several good surprises from the teachers. One DRASTICALLY improved from last year. He taught a class with a quick group project to get their attention, asked the students open ended questions that didn’t have answers in the book and really got the students involved. The was another teacher who was teaching vocabulary to some 2nd graders and kept them so busy and involved that no one got bored, distracted or talked. They used lots of different learning styles, they counted syllables, spelt out loud, wrote the word on a personal chalkboard, and pointed to the word in their book. They wrote sentences, talked about them and finished the long class period off with a spelling test.
It was a great day in the schools.
It was cold and rainy. Some of the classrooms were a bit dark and there was lots of sandy mud to dodge when walking across the school yard but by golly it was a great day.
Tomorrow will be another school just a bit further out. I’m looking forward to visiting this school too.
We finished our day, drove back through some beautiful hills/tiny mountains and rolled into Siem Reap city just as every one and their grandmother was going home, the roads were packed. It was an 11 hour day but worth it to help these teachers. Just thinking of the brave new teachers straight from high school is enough to keep me going on a million long days. The work we are doing is important, needed, beautiful, hard and valuable. I love my job.
We leave the hotel at 6 am to get to the school in time for their first class. Today there were two other Khmer friends working with me, they are from the partnering organization that helps support these schools. We support only with the Teacher Training program. To get all the teachers in we divide the teachers and sat in on at least 30 min of class for each.
There are two ‘days’ in each school day. Students don’t go for the full day, they go either in the AM or in the PM. The other half of the day you work or help out at home etc.
For today we had 15 teachers to observe between the two halves of the day with a long lunch in the middle. There were several new teachers to this school year and this is our first visit of the year. They run on a calendar similar to the American system October to August, the big break is during the really rainy season.
There were at least 3 new teachers who just finished high school a few months ago, they looked so young, God bless’em. It must be terrifying to become a teacher so young. We are quite excited to get into some good Teacher Trainings with those guys!
There were several good surprises from the teachers. One DRASTICALLY improved from last year. He taught a class with a quick group project to get their attention, asked the students open ended questions that didn’t have answers in the book and really got the students involved. The was another teacher who was teaching vocabulary to some 2nd graders and kept them so busy and involved that no one got bored, distracted or talked. They used lots of different learning styles, they counted syllables, spelt out loud, wrote the word on a personal chalkboard, and pointed to the word in their book. They wrote sentences, talked about them and finished the long class period off with a spelling test.
It was a great day in the schools.
It was cold and rainy. Some of the classrooms were a bit dark and there was lots of sandy mud to dodge when walking across the school yard but by golly it was a great day.
Tomorrow will be another school just a bit further out. I’m looking forward to visiting this school too.
We finished our day, drove back through some beautiful hills/tiny mountains and rolled into Siem Reap city just as every one and their grandmother was going home, the roads were packed. It was an 11 hour day but worth it to help these teachers. Just thinking of the brave new teachers straight from high school is enough to keep me going on a million long days. The work we are doing is important, needed, beautiful, hard and valuable. I love my job.
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