An "Ode" to Teaching

Start of Year 2 (November 2024)

Well, I have finished my time teaching at my school. First off, hello and hi. I dropped off from posting for a little because so much has been happening. I had to go back to the US for 3 weeks in June to visit family and see my grandfather before he passed away. Then I came back and taught for a couple of weeks before having to evacuate for a week to another province. 

Due to an ongoing border conflict in Cambodia, I had to briefly evacuate to a province south of where I live to move away from the border. I was there for about a week. After a week, I had to head down to Phnom Penh to welcome the new cohort that  arrived to start their training, but other volunteers had to stay for a little longer before going back to their homes. 

So, lots has been happening. On top of teaching, all of these other things have been going on (plus the grants committee!) and so it has been difficult to sit down and write. Also for two weeks I was  taking an online Khmer class with some other volunteers so I could practice my Khmer more before I taking another Khmer language test in September. 

Ok, so I think I have updated you about the main parts about what has been going on in my life these past couple of months. I now want to turn to what this post really is about, which is a reflection on teaching for two years, what I have learned, and how I have grown. I think I have been in somewhat denial of writing this blog post because it truly feels bittersweet. As many people know, I have decided to extend my Peace Corps service to a third year and starting at the end of this year I will be a Peace Corps Volunteer Leader. My job specifically entails supporting PC staff in the office, supporting other volunteers, and also supporting another NGO. This is why ending teaching is bittersweet. My chapter on teaching is coming to a close, but my time in Cambodia is not, but when I come back to visit my town, it won’t be as a teacher anymore, but instead as a guest. I am excited for the next chapter that is rapidly approaching, but also sad to see this one closing. Change is scary but I am excited to see what the future holds!

Coming in to the Peace Corps, I knew I was not a career teacher. After 2 years, I will say teaching is not my #1 career choice, however, teaching taught me so many life lessons and also taught me about my passions especially equal opportunity and access to education. (Please reference a blog post I made last year about the Cambodian school system). 

Lesson (1) You can still have a good day even if it appears to be a bad day. 

Teaching had many ups and downs. Every class I taught had 45+ students in it, all with a very wide range of English abilities. Some kids would already be fluent in English, some already knew the lesson, and some experienced learning English for the first time when I showed up at the school to teach. Some days my classes were angels and we did the lesson with no issues and played games. Some days no student would listen, resulting in a game being taken away (and a potential pop quiz). But every day at school I received at least 25 high fives and about 100 “HI TEACHERs” from all the students. That’s the thing that made teaching so beautiful. I could have left a class that was not on their best behavior that day, to then come out to the walkway area and get high-fives from 20 first graders. After good classes I would always tell my students how grateful I was for that day because it was now a good memory. I acquired so many stickers, pens, rulers, drawings, and any other gift you can imagine an 8 year old buying. So how could I ever have a fully bad day if all of my students still came to visit me and give me a sticker? 

*also note that most of these gifts turned into prizes for when we played games, because I do not need 100+ stickers. And I did keep all of the drawings my students gave me. 

Lesson (2) Teaching is a 24/7 job, even if it doesn’t appear to be.

First off, teaching does not start and end when the students come in the door to sit and then leave at the end of the day. Every lesson has to have a lesson plan, material, activities, games, etc. and all of that has to be well thought out before the lesson starts. To provide extra materials for all of the teachers so that they had a guide to teaching English once I left the school, I typed every single lesson plan and compiled them into books. 1 lesson per week, each lesson is 2 hours, 3 grades (grades 4, 5, and 6). Everything included pictures and explanations on how to do the activities (in English and Khmer-thank you Google Translate, I can read a little Khmer but cannot write it and these explanations were very important for most teachers who speak no English at all). My school also recently got Smart TVs for some classrooms and so I thought to make Powerpoint slideshows to follow my respective lesson plans to make teaching even easier for some teachers who struggle to teach/write English on the board. All of these materials took hours and hours of work but I did it in order to make the students succeed in the future. But here’s the thing: I only taught 1 lesson from each grade each week (so 3 new lessons each week). Imagine the amount of work regular teachers have to do in order to make their class succeed! If a class meets everyday, that’s 5 lessons right there! What I am trying to exemplify is that I did a lot of work for teaching, but there are many many many teachers who have to spend so much time lesson planning, and this cannot be done while students are in the classroom. The work is non-stop.

As well, teaching is a 24/7 job because you are role models for students and you never know where you will see them. In my town, I see my students everywhere! They always say hello teacher, and it is always a guarantee I see someone when I leave my house. But also once I went out to the provincial town for Khmer New Year with my friends and we were dancing and having fun and who did I run into? A student and her whole family who wanted to meet me since I was their daughter’s teacher! On a holiday, in a different town, I still saw a student. 

Lesson (3) You can prove to your students that you are a cool teacher by beating them at a sport you are good at

Yes, I used sports as a way to gain status among students at my school. I noticed that some of my more difficult to listen students were frequent players of volleyball. Being a volleyball player from high school, I came up and asked the students to join. (You have to remember that I was also wearing my teaching skirt and super stuffy teaching shirt, but I was determined). At first when I asked to play with my students they laughed kind of like “yeah sure ok teacher we can play a little bit”. But then I started playing with them a little bit and boom, suddenly all of my students wanted me on their team (also remember I am significantly taller than all the 4th, 5th, and 6th graders). This turned into an infrequent thing for me, but I ended up playing and coaching some kids. Sometimes I would even walk by the soccer field, basketball court, or volleyball area and be asked by the kids if I wanted to play, and usually I would join in, because why not? The only consequence I faced was once I took too wide of a step and ripped my skirt on the slit area, so it was no big deal, I  just had to go home and sew it back up. I also did recognize that once I started to play sports, specifically with some more difficult students, they started paying more attention to the lessons in the classroom. I guess me playing sports with them won a new piece of their heart. 

Lesson (4) You don’t always have to be the “bad guy” to have a student respect you and talk to you

Like I said, not all of my students are excited to learn English. Which I totally understand, sometimes school is not what my students are looking forward to. One time I gave an exam to my students and when one student came to turn in his exam to me, he threw it at me and walked away. I called him back multiple times but he did not turn around and even when his friends called for him to come back to the class, he did not come. Finally at the end of the class, he came back to talk to me. I asked him why he threw his paper and he said it was because “he couldn’t do it”. I could tell he was not a strong student in my class, but I did tell him that when I asked “What is this?” in English, he usually responds correctly. I graded his paper in front of him (he got a 7/10) and I told him “Look at all that you accomplished, but you think you cannot do it”. I only had a quick 5 minute conversation with him about how I want him to try a little in class because I see he has potential to do better. After our conversation, I noticed that he always said “Hi” to me with a smile on his face while I was walking around school. He also stopped talking so much in class and started writing his notes more. I know this is just one story, however it is something I will never forget from my teaching experience. Just a simple conversation went a long way.

Lesson (5) Laughing through the rain is sometimes all you can do 

This is not necessarily with teaching, but something that happened a lot on my way home from teaching. During the rainy season, the rain can come at any time-literally any time (but usually it happens in the afternoon). Sometimes the rain happens at school and then finishes before I have to leave to go home. Sometimes the rain happens while I have to walk across my school’s campus. One time it rained so much at school that the school flooded (water up to mid-calf) and I needed to walk to a classroom across the campus. So in the rain I got on my bike and put on a poncho and held an umbrella as I tried to get across the school in the pouring down rain. And I still showed up to the classroom soaked and the teacher said I didn’t have to teach that day because it was raining too hard and the kids couldn’t hear me. At first when I had to go to that classroom I was moaning and groaning to have to go but then once I was on the bike on the way there, all I could do was laugh. I laughed even harder when one of the teachers at my school sent me a video that she took of me trying to bike across the campus (safe to say it was a very embarrassing video). 

On a separate occasion, I was biking home from the town (not from school, just from a cafe). In front of me I saw a wall of rain falling from the sky. It was incredible because the rain didn’t start from above me but I could just see right up ahead that the rain was coming. I was wearing jeans and a normal shirt, no poncho or raincoat. And so I just started to laugh and biked right into the rain and didn’t even think twice while I was getting pelted with rain drops. When I got home, soaking wet, head to toe, I did change, but then felt so lucky to have biked through that. There have been many other times where I have gotten caught in the rain, with the only option being to bike through it. And so there are two things I had learned from that.

1. Biking through the rain is temporary. Who cares if your clothes get wet? You can always change when you get somewhere else (or dry off)

2.  Life is kind of like this. In a very cheesy and poetic way, sometimes you cannot change your situation (for example biking when it starts to your down rain) but you can either hate it (mumble and grumble) or laugh a little and find a solution (in my case, I laugh about it and then get home)

Sometimes when biking home in the rain I say to myself “Really?? I had a bad day today and now THIS happens” (whether that be it was a long day or that day my students didn’t listen to me as much) but I have learned to smile more through it, maybe the rain is a bit of a relief? 

(Also safety first, don’t bike in the rain silly or go out in a thunderstorm)

Lesson (6) You never really understand someone’s shoes until you walk in them. 

What these past two years has taught me the most is how hard my teachers/professors at Pace and BC worked to ensure students were well-versed in the subject they taught. Lesson planning takes so long when it is your first year. Making activities to do takes even longer. On top of all of that, all of my teachers were always available for office hours at all parts of the day. Some days while I was teaching and had a break period, some students would come to my window to play or chat and sometimes I was so exhausted from teaching I didn’t know if I had it in me to chat at the time (but usually I could muster up some energy). Many of my Pace teachers would be at school before 7 and leave well after 5 to not only make sure extra help for students was met but also so they could be a general resource for students. I am eternally grateful for teachers being there for me and now I also see that they were probably also equally exhausted but still were there. 

My last day of school memory is something that I would like to think it kind of iconic: 

Taking inspiration from every piece of Dove chocolate received, Little Debbie Snack cake thrown at me, and piece of candy received from a teacher…. I bought my students candy and chips for the last day of school. It is a little harder to go all out with buying students snacks when you teach about 500+ kids (on Monday alone I taught about 150 students) but I made do with the limited volunteer budget I had. With having Smart TVs (which are brand new) in some of my classrooms, I decided to do a movie day for the kids… and so we watched Kpop Demon Hunters (which I highly recommend this movie to anyone who needs a good family movie) By the end of Monday, I had seen Kpop Demon Hunters 3 times. I did not know it until the end of the day, but that was my last day teaching. (The rest of the week was school party and a ceremony- all of which I missed because I got really sick Monday night). 

Last Day of School (KPop Demon Hunters on the TV when some teachers gave me a going away gift)

I am eternally grateful for my school, my co-teachers, and especially my students. I could not imagine my past two years here without each and every one of them. I am so happy that I have so many great memories from my school and I cannot wait to come back and visit.

Some artwork from my students