At last – production

When introducing myself to a group of teachers or directors, I tell them I am a VSO volunteer and explain that VSO is not a money giving organisation. Instead, VSO give skilled professionals like me (ahem!) to share skills, build capacity, blah blah blah. It is at this point I often observe fallen faces, waning smiles and small frowns of confusion adorning the brows of my audience. I think I can read their minds: “Eh? You’re here instead of a load of cash? We’d rather have the dosh thanks!” and I can’t say I blame them. Although I really believe in VSO’s ethos of sustainability, I do at times struggle with understanding the VSO motto; “Sharing Skills, Changing Lives”. I think “Sharing Lives, Changing Skills” (N.B. my skills) is rather more apt. It’s great that VSO send people as people are a really valuable and fantastic resource but with the best will in the world, some of these schools simply need cash!

On a slightly more positive note, I managed to apply for a small amount of money from the VSO coffers to buy materials for some schools in Phnom Srok District. The idea was that teachers would use the materials to create their own teaching and learning resources in order to make learning more active. It was March when I applied for this grant, which seems like decades ago now, and it’s taken this long to make a shopping list, buy the materials in Sisaphon, transport said materials to Phnom Srok, plan a workshop with my Khmer colleagues and finally deliver the first workshop and hand out the materials.

There are enough materials for the core schools from each of the 11 clusters of schools in the district (each cluster is formed geographically and made up of a core school and up to 3 other satellite schools) but not enough money in the piggy bank to fund a workshop in each. So, with Daney from the DOE, we will give a 2 day workshop at with the staff of one school, Chey Oudom, and an additional 1 day workshop inviting key staff from the other 10 core schools and using Chey Oudom as the model.

I have been bleating on about how children learn for quite some time now, using a simple diagram of the VAK model (visual, auditory, kinaesthetic) to help explain. We spent much of the morning on day 1 playing games and doing activities relating to our sense and how learning was more effective if you got to see, hear, speak about and practice it. The afternoon was a bit heavier. The teachers read the Learning Outcomes from the National Curriculum for the grade they taught. I don’t think many had ever clapped eyes on such a document as teaching and learning is governed by textbooks. The textbooks are in line with the curriculum but I wanted to encourage the teachers to think outside the very restrictive box these textbooks have created. They highlighted learning outcomes for which they thought they could make a poster, learning game or teaching aid which might help the children see, hear, speak about or do. Thankfully there were lots of examples and ideas of what could be made as some volunteers before me have conducted similar training. The teachers also got ideas from numerous photographs taken at other schools.

And then came crunch time: Day 2 of the training and the materials were spread out on the table (and really didn’t look much when spread out!). I thought one of 3 things could happen now: (a) the teachers would have no inspiration to make anything and we’d all sit in awkward silence staring at a pile of paper and card; (b) the examples given would be copied exactly as they were with no fresh thinking or initiative to apply the examples to their own ideas; (c) that all the paper would get folded into a billion origami animals and flower garlands and used to decorate rather than educate. Oh me of little faith! I managed to restrain the controlling-“I’m in charge”-teacher part of me and sat back and let it all happen.

Everyone was very busy making the whole day. Teachers of the same grades worked together cutting, sticking, drawing, writing and gossiping the whole day long! Even the director and deputy made themselves useful by making wooden frames for the maps to be transported between classrooms for geography lessons. All the materials were used and at the end the teachers proudly shared what they had made, what learning objective it matched and how they would use it with the students in their classrooms. I swear I saw the pre-school teacher stashing coloured paper away to make origami swans with another time but on the whole a very productive workshop – phew! The question is whether the teachers will use their newly made resources in lessons, but that is a headache for another day!