Sucking My Thumb

After the less than successful VA interviews in Sisaphon on Monday I returned to Phnom Srok by truck in the evening.

Tuesday morning I attended a follow up meeting for the Study Tour conducted last month. It went really well and I'm hoping that this group of teachers and school directors are really dedicated to implementing some changes in their schools. After the meeting, Soroth and I thought we had the afternoon to prepare for another meeting the following day so we relaxed a little. Little did we know Mr Sophan had other plans, which quite frankly I'm getting used to and have decided to accept the fact that I probably work best under a little bit of pressure anyway.

So, at 10.30am I discovered that there would be a DOE (District Office of Education) staff meeting that same afternoon and Mr Sophan wanted me to tell the staff about working rules of the office, work hours, being transparent (i.e. not corrupt!), committed to work, etc, etc. He had a list of items that I think he basically wanted to tell the staff off about! My first thought was "well, there goes my carefully planned preparation time for tomorrow's meeting...!"). My second thought was "THIS REALLY ISN'T MY BAG!" There was no way I was going to lecture his staff abut their work ethics. No way! But I have learnt that "no way" is not something that is terribly well understood here!

So, I sucked something out of my thumb with absolutely no idea whether it would work or bring about Mr Sophan's desired results but which I hoped would get me out of this particular tight spot: I suggested a role play!

The staff got into two groups, one with the task of acting a scene from the 'best' DOE ever (they were expected to use their imaginations for this!), the other acting a scene from the 'worst' DOE ever. It took a little explaining and funnily enough all the participants wanted to act as the 'worst' DOE. What followed was one of the funniest afternoons I've ever spent in Cambodia so far!

The 'worst' DOE were very convincing (a little too convincing perhaps?!): they acted drunk, half dressed, late for work, uninterested and uncommitted to their jobs. The director of Phnom Srok DOE acted brilliantly; fag hanging out of his mouth, slumped in a chair and showing little respect for his colleagues. The 'best' DOE had a much harder job as they really couldn't decide what the 'best' DOE would be like. In the end, they acted a 'meeting' scene whereby the director greeted everyone, all the staff arrived on time and then the meeting proceeded with the director doing all the talking and the rest furiously scribbling notes and not speaking a word. 'Best' DOE? Hmmm, typical DOE perhaps. Anyway, as is often the case, I probably learnt as much if not more from the exercise as they did as it really helped inform me of their understanding and awareness of what looks 'good' and what looks 'bad'.
When the acted meeting started getting a bit boring (like most meetings here, it went on a bit!) I decided to scroll through my phone to see which of the actors phone numbers I had as we have an ongoing battle of getting people to turn their phones off during meetings and I was feeling a bit cheeky. Usually the Khmers take the phone call, even if they are mid-way through chairing a meeting. Either that or they stick their head under the table to answer their phones. The participant playing the director and leading the meeting at the 'best DOE' had evidently not thought to switch off his phone so was a little embarrassed and certainly surprised when I called him from the audience! It caused a lot of laughter as I tried to speak to him down the phone in Khmer and he tried hard to stay in character. Following the hilarious role-plays, I tried to highlight the link between acting and reality and made the point that it was much easier to be a poor performing DOE than a really good one as the actors had found out themselves. The staff then created a list of work ethics which a 'good' DOE should have and low and behold it matched Mr Sophan's original list of 'tell offs'. Phew! I was really relieved to have managed to get Mr Sophan's desired results without actually having to speak a word about how staff should follow rules, come to work on time and so on. Just like teaching kids, its preferable for your students to reach the answer themselves through facilitation rather than be told. After all, they are much more likely to remember what they have learnt if they had fun getting to the answer or result themselves. This idea is often a little lost on the teachers I've tried to talk to about how their students learn but perhaps after a few more role plays we'll be getting closer.

Don't get me wrong, the DOE I work in is far from being the 'worst' DOE ever and after the role-plays and list making the staff rated their DOE on a 1-10 scale along with the imaginary DOEs. They gave themselves a 7 which I would probably agree with. Time will tell whether the role plays will've made any bit of difference, or satisfy the proverbial bee in Mr Sophan's bonnet but at least we had fun!