A day in the life of a Tonle Bati teacher

After the original chaos of all the children turning up, we’ve found it very easy to fall into a comfortable routine here.  Our days are full, varied and always entertaining!

We wake up pretty early – gradually pulled out of sleep by the increasingly insistent cockerel and, occasionally, by a chicken who has successfully found a way to sneak into our room.  The three on breakfast duty are up by 5.45 to put the hot water on, lay out fruit and start grilling bread.  It’s not long before the rest of us begin to spill out into our outside living area – a room which changes continuously throughout the day – one moment it is a bedroom, then a sitting room, then a kitchen, then a classroom.  Usually we are clutching a pile of papers and bright pens, ready to continue drawing our teaching aids for the day. It’s not long before the really keen kids start arriving – many are here before 7am to the distinctly unprofessional sight of their teachers still in their pyjamas spitting toothpaste out of a room soon to be their classroom while the rest of the school continues to be built around them.  The start of school has really cut into the times in which the builders can do noisy work, so any time there is not teaching the builders leap into action around us.   Last minute planning continues to a backing track of frantic drilling right up until the beginning of class at 8.00.

In the morning we run three different classes of 17 students – those aged 5-8, 9-11, 12-14.  All classes follow a fairly similar structure in order to allow the students to practise amongst themselves, the younger ones just don’t go into as much depth.  Muoy has encouraged us to teach around central question words – something that actually makes a lot of sense. Once you can ask a question you have opened communication and answers are often available from your surroundings.  It is really working – as I write we have been teaching for just over a week and the difference in the children is amazing.  The other major change this week is the difference in how the groups interact as a unit.  One of the really good things about Seametrey is that it offers such a high quality education which attracts students from all walks of life.  At the beginning of teaching there was a very evident difference in the learning speeds of those more used to structured education and teacher-student interaction, and those who are not. The space of a week and a half has made the most amazing difference – the children are all interacting well together and have grown in confidence every day meaning there is a more equal contribution from the students in class. 

By 11.00am we are all ready to collapse.  Morning classes end and we are looking forward to lunch.  Muoy arrives bringing the most delicious food and our lovely cook, Srey. We eat at a lot of restaurants whilst in Phnom Penh but we all agree that the best food we have had since we’ve been here has been in Tonle Bati.  Our lunch time lasts until 2pm. Although this seems like a long time, we’re all busy planning for the next lessons, washing our limited wardrobes and catching up on much needed sleep. It’s also a good time for reading and diary writing – things that don’t involve much moving – because we’ve all (just about) learnt to avoid the midday sun.

Between 2pm to 5:30pm another three classes run. At 2pm a class of fifteen 13-20 year olds start and at 3pm a similar class of 14-25 year olds arrives – both last two hours. These classes concentrate on pronunciation errors, sentence structure and furthering their vocabulary. Everyone in these lessons has been learning English for quite some time but never with a native speaker and never with much opportunity for speaking.  This means that we are a very positive addition, helping them transform all the vocabulary they know into useful communication.  At 4pm an hour long lesson starts with seven builders. The aim of the lesson is shared learning and making each other laugh after a long day, so whilst the builders learn useful everyday vocabulary (which they scribble down in their exercise books), they also attempt to teach us the Khmer words. These lessons have really helped create a community atmosphere – the builders have begun to greet us in English day to day and we often exchange the Khmer/English words for things around us!

Once the last student rides off on their moto, we all return to our living area ready to start preparing dinner and tying up any loose ends left over from lunch time. Depending on how smoothly our days go, bedtime can start any time from 7pm – no one lasts much past 8pm though! The main bedtime activity involves zapping the many bugs that have hidden in our mosquito nets throughout the day to ensure a bite free sleep.  Once we’re all confident we’re safe from creepy crawlies we snuggle down with our teddies (seriously, there’s a significant collection) for a long deserved sleep, ready for another 6am start tomorrow.