Getting Started

I’ve been ‘Cher Lin’ (Teacher Kaitlin) to my students for a while now. Somehow they seemed to all know my name before I even arrived. It wasn’t until this past week that I actually started teaching. Things move slowly around here.

That’s not about to change anytime soon, either. Take, for example, the fact that my school doesn’t have electricity. First thing in the morning, it means no PA system, so the entire student body has to gather for flag raising and announcements, eating into 20 minutes or so of first period each day. It also means no projectors, tapes, or videos can be used in class. Copies are a possibility only if the teacher can plan in advance and pay for them out of pocket, so they are usually reserved for very important things. Instead, whole lessons – in our case vocabulary, grammar, and exercises – have to be written on the chalkboard, which takes a lot of class time, both for the teachers to write and for the students to copy. Partly, this is another shortcoming of the national English curriculum which, in addition to being WAY too advanced, also does not include any grammar explanations or vocabulary lists in the student books. I’ll have to reserve more explanation of the English curriculum issues for another time, but just believe that it’s pretty bad.

Also chipping away at class time is the Cambodian school schedule. Hours are grueling for students and teachers alike, with seven hours of state school six days a week and the majority of students studying 2-5 hours of extra classes each day. If teachers want to make a living wage, they have to either teach private classes or take on another job. Several of the teachers at my school have stalls at the market when they’re not in class. At least one is a tailor. One is a motorbike-taxi driver. The teachers who have private schools tell me they teach 10-12 hours a day. The private classes start at 6am before school, run during the lunch break, and sometimes take place after school until 7:30 at night. I think it’s partly due to this schedule that breaks between hour-long classes are set at 15 minutes, with the teachers usually waiting another 5-10 minutes after the bell before heading to class. Given the breaks, there are really seven 40ish-minute classes in a day, maybe about the same as the U.S. That’s before holidays (Cambodia has a LOT), rain (because who comes to school when it’s raining?), and teachers not coming to class (there are no subs here). I would say so far it looks like classes actually happen about 75% of the time at my school, and I actually have a pretty strict school director who doesn’t give extended holiday breaks and takes teacher attendance. We’ll also have to see how the year progresses, as December will probably see many students absent to help with the rice harvest and supposedly things will start to wind down after the month-long break in April. Cambodia’s education system definitely fits the bill of a developing country. There are lots of problems to tackle.

So yes, things are going to take a while longer than they might elsewhere. Who knows whether I’ll actually be able to accomplish anything. But the students seem genuinely excited to have me in their classes, and even that’s something. I’m starting an English speaking club this week, and I interviewed over 100 students who were interested in joining. It might just turn into one big catastrophe. Probably at first it will be. Still, we’re just getting started.