First Week Teaching in Cambodia

My first week of teaching kids ages 3-7 is finally over.  I'm not going to lie, it has been very challenging for me as I have never taught small children, especially this young.  Yet despite all the hard work and early mornings I had a blast.  When I put in my cover letter that I wanted to teach ages 6-10 I was making sure I would be uncomfortable and in doing so get some very needed experience with small children for when I go to China.  In China I was told I would be teaching ages 4-18 which is a rather large age range, but I think I will enjoy the differences in all the classes.

Hardest part when teaching Pre-K?  The hardest part wasn't making a lesson plan for every day, it was actually getting up early, which means no breakfast and sometimes no caffeine, which is bad when trying to teach energetic kids at 8am.  

Another hard part about teaching in a foreign country is whenever you arrive at the school the staff believes you are ready to start class right away and, sadly, so do the children.  So if you arrive early you don't have anytime to arrange your materials, wipe the board, turn on all the fans and aircon (if you don't you will melt 5 minutes in), or rearrange the tables for the best learning experience.  Technically, my class is supposed to begin at 8am and end at 9am (8:55am cuz of their break bell), but I get there early so it begins at 7:45am and ends at 9am.  So my 60 minute lesson morphs into an 75 minute lesson, not very easy to do on the fly.

The great parts of teaching children in a foreign country?  If it's a nicely funded school you get one or two assistants to help you get writing/coloring materials and keep the kids from killing each other when one draws on the others paper.  Also the teaching assistants take the kids to bathroom (thank god!).  In a foreign country you, as a teacher, are respected from the beginning.  In the United States you usually have to earn respect from your students if they are even willing to give it (not in all places though).  If you are a westerner you are even more of a prize to the school than anything else.  Why is that?  Even if a Cambodian teacher has studied English for all his/her life a westerner has had firsthand experience with the culture and the language, so parents are willing to pay more for their kids to go to a school if there is a western teacher teaching their kids than a Cambodian teacher teaching English.  It's just how these cultures operate (and it really works).

As a western teacher I have already been propositioned for a job at the school I am volunteering at, which I sadly had to decline (willing to give me $1,200 a month which is a great starting salary!).  I love my kids at the school (some names: Peng Pong - a boy who literally does everything he wants because he comes from a family with money (funniest name!), Chea Chu Tey - she is one of my few 3 year olds who loves to tug my pants and shirt and help me erase the board, Ban Kethya - a very smart shy 5 year old boy who can copy anything I write for him, but is very quiet when repeating words, and So Siha - my oldest boy (7yrs old) who also has afternoon classes, but his parents heard his brother (Khun Siha) had a western teacher (Me) teaching him English so they signed him up for my classes as well), so it will definitely be hard to say goodbye after the two weeks, but I know my calling is in China and I really need to follow that dream.

On Friday I gave my kids back their tracing sheets and coloring pages, but I also had a little surprise planned.  Since it was Friday and the end of a very long week of learning both for them and me (I can now sing the ABC's backwards and sing the Phonics song), I got their colored masks (they had colored them the day before) and turned them into masks they could wear and show their parents (it is always good to have the kids bring stuff home to their parents to show them some of the things their kids are doing at school). 

This process was a hard one for me because that meant the night before the class I had to cut out 22 masks and use an exacto knife to cut out all the eyes, I also had to buy straws so they could hold the mask to their face and buy coloring pencils to fill in all the blank space the kids left behind on the masks (some of you may be thinking "Why would you fix their masks? Isn't that ruining their creativity?" In the U.S., yes it would be or we would like to believe so, but honestly here in the  Asian countries if the parents see their kids mask and it isn't as good as the other kids the parents become shamed and then blame the school and then blame you, you actually lose business because of this and could possibly get fired.  The kids also don't remember what they did draw and didn't draw so it doesn't matter). Anyway, it was a very long process to endure, but it was also fun seeing their faces light up the next day and seeing the manager of the school smile at all the kids with masks on.

This week has been long and I finally got to sleep in, which for me is 9:30am (I haven't been able to sleep in since arriving in Cambodia).  I have learned that I am really good at teaching children around this age, as we are observed and graded every couple of days by our instructors and peers (although not a lot of my peers observe me because they would have to leave by 7:20am LOL).  I can't wait till next week!

In seven days I leave for Xianyang, China!