Work in Progress
on Mary In Cambodia (Cambodia), 01/Jun/2010 13:15, 34 days ago
.Workshop at Koak Lun Primary School. 27/5/10.One could be forgiven for thinking that I do nothing but gad about Asia having fun! However quite a bit of work also gets done. Last week I ran a workshop. The purpose of this was to demonstrate good practice in multi-grade teaching.I have been working with two teachers at Koak lun primary school for the past 4 months, to improve their skills. Ms. Sokayng teaches 54 grade 1 and 2 children. Mr. Vuth teaches 56 grade 4 and 5 students. These teachers are 2 of approximately 38 teachers of multi-grade classes, who have never had training, in Banteay Meanchey. The method previously used, was to teach one class at a time, leaving the other group to its own devices.(crawling up the walls, as children will). Having observed some teaching in the company of the school director, I began to make suggestions. Improvements were noticeable almost immediately. I realised I was dealing with a very committed school. Soon I suggested involving those teachers in training other teachers. They agreed and we began to prepare. Plans for the day involved a lot of hard work by many people. My colleague Gen rowed in and worked on forming a student council, training them and showing them how to make resources. I observed, demonstrated, found guidelines and succeeded in getting written permission to’bend’ the teaching rules a little. My V.A. Joe and I worked over weekends planning lesson charts, finding information on topics and translating them. The Director Mr. Sopeh took on assembly every day, which gave the teachers 10 minutes to prepare blackboards etc. This has become a very popular daily event with students and Director. Though much hard work was called for, from all of us, I enjoyed seeing those two talented teachers develop their skills. We invited 25 multi-grade teachers from a radius of 20 km. 20 teachers came. 2 Directors and 1 Deputy Director from neighbouring‘core‘schools also came, and the Director of the District office of Education attended. I felt terrified, so much could have gone wrong, from a thunder storm ( it is the wet season) to stage fright or worse. I worried needlessly. The two demonstration lessons went well, student council children excelled. Cambodian children generally are very well behaved, discipline is rarely a problem and these students were great. Our classroom resources were shown to be useful and admired. The Director 0f D,O.E. praised the lessons, especi ally the senior classes, and told the attending teachers that‘this is the way to teach’. Mr. Vuth was invited to go and demonstrate in other schools. We had a good, lively discussion and many questions were asked and opinions given. This project has been a good learning experience for me, I have made contact with many more schools, I have found someone who will be an excellent trainer and will be able to take over my work when I go home. I think I have produced a system of training that costs very little and seems to be effective. There is still a lot to be done, but I’m happy to have made a good start.