Back to School

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I have spent some time visiting the three different schools where I may find myself volunteering to teach English. There are massive differences between each of the schools, here's a few observations...



School 1: (Dara, a monk who speaks next to no English)
- school is set in a very poor remote village
- many families sleep in the pigotta as they cannot afford a house and the nuns feed them rice
- houses around are shacks held up with bamboo sticks for large families
- water is obtained from a well, but surrounding water areas are polluted
- children do not wear shoes
- only 2 pupils were in attendance the day I visited as the rest were in mourning about the death of the King!
- the 3 school classrooms are cabins made from corrugated iron, with basic wooden desks inside
- the school has a small library for the young children
- the teachers speak very little English
- women are not permitted to touch a monk
- when people of the village die their body is cremated and buried in a stoopa. All villagers attend a religious ceremony and pull the coffin through to be cremated with a rope.

School 2: (VCDA with Mr. Tong)
- very well established with concrete walls and 6 classrooms which have been painted on the outside
- Mallivan is the schools art teacher and has his own classroom with supplies
- class sizes are big with 20+ pupils
- classes run from 3-7pm
- the school is well supported with volunteers
- it currently has 3 German students there for 1 year
- structured timetable, however less focused lessons! Teachers appear to teach whatever they want with no real aim! From what I can see text books are not used often.
- lessons I observed had no real meaning, focus or structure!
- Friday is fun day where the children are expected to learn in a fun and suitable manner through games, sometimes they watch DVDs however I do not see the relevance of this as they cannot possibly follow!
- The school has a library and computer room with 11 computers for pupils to use
- children greet teachers with hands in prayer position "good afternoon teacher, how are you today"
- There are 6 teachers who speak good English at this school
- a few teachers and some of the older pupils live at the school! Mr Malivann sleeps in the library on a wooden bench and the rest sleep all together in a room off the side of the school
- toilets are a hole in the ground
- the shower is a wooden box with water which they throw over themselves

School 3: (Mr Yung, the monk)
- run by volunteer monks
- wooden shacks where the monks live in rooms at the top and the school is formed by benches in between the wooden poles underneath
- lighting is not good
- when it rains the school floods and pupils must sit in lessons with their feet up
- school runs from 2-8pm
- textbooks are $2 per pupil and most teaching is done via a textbook where the content is irrelevant to Khmer lifestyle
- a new school has opened in the morning which I volunteer at, currently it has only ONE pupil which I teach alongside a female Khmer teacher aged 19 years old!

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