Building Bridges

Unlike the previous day’s spontaneous, on-the-spot, thumb sucking, today’s meeting was a little more planned for. One of the priorities of the DOE here is to create a model school in the district which meets as many of the Child-Friendly Schools criteria as possible. I think my colleagues understand more about investing time, energy and money into a few schools initially in order for the district to have at least one model of what a Child-Friendly School should look and be like. Rather that than spreading the time, energy and money to more schools but with less impact. Quality, not quantity! One at a time, it is hoped that other schools will follow the examples set by the model schools and the first school identified in Phnom Srok, for now, is Chey Oudom Primary School. Luckily for me it couldn’t be much closer to my house or to the office which is great as I often bump into the director and teachers around the village and amazingly I recognise at least one child in every single class! It is such a wonderful feeling to know some of the children at this school. Some I know from just hanging around the shop on the ground floor of the house and others from the English class. I recognise some as being the really poor children who hang around the wedding parties in the hope of collecting a few cans for their parents to make some money from. When there is a mutual recognition (well, as the only barang in the village, it would be difficult to mistake me for someone else) there is something quite fantastic about seeing their little faces light up and smile at me.

I’m really keen to get stuck into this school and help with displays, classroom layout, management, teaching and so on. I’m keen to help pick up all the rubbish making the grounds look like a dump and I’m even keen to teach some demonstration lessons (with a bit of translation help, obviously!). But, one-step at a time! On Soroth’s last day working with me in Phnom Srok we visited the school for a morning meeting. I am consciously, but not comfortably, turning a blind eye to the fact that when a meeting happens like this, the children are usually sent home from school with no teaching or learning taking place at all. (I know, I know, this is all wrong and completely goes against the examples I am trying to set, but for now I can’t see an alternative.) The meeting was to act as a preparation and planning meeting for how the DOE and VSO would support the staff, students and community to improve their school in line with the Child Friendly Criteria. Many of the staff had the ETL training back in April and also visited the Child-Friendly Schools in Monkul Borei district in May, all of which has already had a visible impact on the quality of the learning environment, teaching techniques and the value given to display and using teaching aids. Great stuff! So, leafing through my VSO book of Participatory Approaches, Soroth and I chose and implemented the Bridge Model as the most appropriate to the aims of the meeting and, using a Guided Visualisation helped participants imagine what they wanted their school to be like in the future. It felt a bit ambitious to say the least but, thanks to Soroth, we managed to pull it off. Two community members as well as four Grade 6 students joined the staff of the school in writing statements about what Chey Oudom was like now. Soroth then asked everyone to close their eyes and imagine the school in the future. He did the Guided Visualisation brilliantly and I was so pleased with how the participants took to it! We then created a bridge of ideas and activities which would get us from how the school was now to how we wanted to be. The pillars of the bridge were then identified, the three key factors affecting the success of the activities: Budget management, Community involvement and Teaching.

From that, the staff made a list of how they wanted VSO and the DOE to support them in making the first steps over the ‘bridge’. The list was more or less what I expected and did indeed include VSO (read ‘me’) providing demonstration lessons (bring it on!). It was great to get such involvement from all the different stakeholders in this school and it also felt great that they were telling the DOE and me (rather than the other way round) what they needed support with. It was a successful (although the proof will be in the pudding!) and interesting meeting but sadly Soroth’s last day. Next week, the plan is to spend every day at Chey Oudom, give some immediate feedback, do some practical activities, ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’ and generally get to know everyone better. I’m not quite sure yet whether I’ll be doing that alone or with a brand new VA who hasn’t materialised yet... Watch this space!