Andrew Turco - A year in Cambodia

There’s only one more day of classes this week, so I thought it would be appropriate to update on how the start went. I’m teaching two classes: an advanced class on essay writing and a class that I have to call the Dragons of Cambodia (named after the lowest level class we taught in China and whose teachers I always made fun of from my pearch in the Monkey (highest level) classroom). Actually, it’s a good balance - one is more stimulating in terms of the in class conversation, and one is a little easier for having lots of potential material to work on with them. I’m trying to adjust to teaching at the appropriate level, though, since I realized today that my “dragon class,” aka English 201 D, really only understood about every five words I was saying. I’ve been teaching to the blank faces that everyone warns about when you first start teaching in classrooms in Asia, though I don’t think it’s because they’re not trying or don’t want to participate. It’ll just take a while to get to the right speed. Thankfully, in all of my classes except for the first day’s, I’ve had more than enough material and didn’t get to all of it, a good thing for a teacher concerned about being stuck with 30 minutes remaining in class and nothing left to do.

In general, classes feel a little more formal than they did in China last summer, starting with the dress. All of the students wear dark blue slacks or skirts and white or light blue button downs or blouses versus the t-shirts worn in our classrooms in Jishou. Additionally, since there’s a set university semester curriculum, unlike in China where we were running the program and were running a summer immersion program focusing on the use of oral English, I’m feeling that sense of needing to get through the expected unit of the textbook every class so that my students aren’t missing any information when the quizzes and tests are given to all of the classes of this level.

I think I was half expecting my students from last summer to be there waiting for me when I stepped into class and expected for there to be that instant level of comfort as a result. Instead, there were all new faces with all new names that I know I pronounce incorrectly every time I take attendance. It seemed like it would be impossible to learn them on the first day, but already, I now know a few of theirs if I have the cheat sheet of the attendance list in front of me. My essay class students are also already becoming much more comfortable speaking in class, although only a few in my 201 class are at this point. For that class, we stick much more closely to the textbook and to an established curriculum.

The textbooks, workbooks, videos, and CDs we use are new and incorporate a good variety of different approaches to learning, but they seem hopelessly oriented towards Americans. It seems as if the authors of the materials forgot that most students would not live in the US. I noticed this at first when just glancing through the books. One unit on guessing what people are doing in the pictures would probably not be appropriate or even relevant; architects and their drafting boards and modernist offices just don’t seem to be something the average Cambodian would be able to recognize from a picture and be able to identify. But I realized the amount of disconnect today when we were watching one of the English language story videos. First of all, we were watching a movie that reminded me of a movie series called “La Catrina” that we used to watch in seventh grade Spanish class, which was really weird. But anyway, I was teaching them some expressions used in the episode and trying to explain, “I’ve had enough,” “That’s it for me,” and “This salary is not enough; it’s peanuts.” They weren’t really understanding the expressions from the context of their use in the video. Then I realized that only getting $45 for a job as a lounge singer, as was the case in the video, was not seen as a low salary that would make someone want to quit her job. There was no reason for them to infer that this was a negative situation and that these expressions would therefore be related to frustration and disappointment.

On the other school fronts, I think I see my opportunity for soccer in the near future right outside the building that I’m teaching in on the dirt fields that everyone gathers in at around 5:00. Hopefully, that will work out, and I’m onto my next set of missions here, like playing soccer and learning Khmer, now that I’ve gotten more settled in some of the other areas of being here.

The other teachers seem to be great. Everyone’s been very friendly and helpful, and I can see some potential friends in some of them. We had our first band meetings last week, which are when all of the teachers who teach the same level classes get together to discuss ideas about the coming week’s classes and coordinate what we were going to cover. It was interesting to see the various styles that exist between the different teachers and to see who seems to take a more formal versus a more creative approach. Additionally, I decided I’m going to try to teach map skills in some way as part of my English classes since no one here seems to have been taught how to read a map. Even moto drivers, who can usually get to a place if given an address or name, do not know how to get somewhere if you point to it on a map, even if it is a very common place they would otherwise recognize in person or even if the part of the map was an area of the city that traveled through regularly. Usually, you have to show a picture of the nearest known site or just direct them along the way.

Also, I was reading over my teacher handbook the other night and saw that the salaries for the Cambodian teachers are supplemented by the NGO Maryknoll because they acknowledge that a government salary is not enough to live off of, yet you see plenty of officials driving around in luxury cars and eating at the nicer restaurants in town. With salaries so low, it’s no wonder the police cannot be relied on to actually protect but are usually avoided. It’s been said that the most common times to be pulled over are at around 12:00 and between 5:30 and 6:30 because those are right before money is needed for mealtime.