Lately

So we’re in the midst of the second school year. Things seem to be going well. We’re both teaching grade 10 this year. Will has an environmental club going and soon the basketball season will start. I’ve got a health club “future Cambodian healthcare workers” going as well as a writing club.

Starting up the clubs is usually an interesting task. For my health club I held a meeting of interest, and depending on how many students showed I was going to have them write an essay telling me why they want to work in the health field.

Well, 120+ kids showed up. I was looking for 30. (keep in mind, a lot of times many of the students think they’re going know all and everything if they show up to the foreigners class, mostly via osmosis….it takes them a few times to figure out that, that isn’t the case). But anyway, I went ahead and had them write the essay.

I was able to narrow it down to the best ones. However, I did have to throw out about 40 of the essays, some of which were very well written – but the reason they had to go was because there were exact copies. I’m talkin’ verbatim. They didn’t even try being creative by re-ordering sentences or anything. When the announcement that teacher Stephanie wasn’t accepting people who copied papers or people who allowed people to copy their papers, some of the students were quite upset at this, and some kind of chuckled.

But man some sort of precedent needs to be set. There are little to no consequences for copying or cheating in regards to school work (from what I’ve witnessed at least in my experiences). I’m not sure if it’s cultural, as in they believe that they are ‘helping’ their friends and they truly see nothing wrong with it… or if it’s just been so long since anything has been enforced like this for them. Sigh. I do hope someday that the value of education in this country is realized. With that I do hope that someday they’ll realize that allowing people to copy each other’s work isn’t going to amount in a whole lot of educational learning, and with that it’s going to take a long time for their society to move forward.

Anyway, baby steps. I chose the best students and our club is going along fine. We’ve got a tour lined up of the local health center, and then I hope to arrange a field trip to a modern hospital in Siem Reap, just so they can see what one is like, and expose them to some possible career paths.

My writing club meeting of interest did not have nearly the same amount of interest as the health club. I wonder if it’s because they think I’m strict. Probably. But oh well. With that… baby steps; making small changes with people who are willing to make changes; right? But that club too is going well and I look forward to reading what types of things they write about.

Other than that not too much is new. Our time here is starting to go quickly. Hard to believe we’ve got 8
months left. It sounds like we’ll be going to Bangkok for Christmas with some of our friends. And then Will’s folks are coming in February and after that it’ll be a downhill slope to life back in the US of A. Hard to believe. --- But it’s not quite over yet!