In My Wildest Dreams

Su'sadai!

That's my phonetic spelling of Hello in Khmer. Probably totally off, but guess it doesn't matter since they don't use the Roman alphabet here. Anyway, catching up where I left off... Polaroids in the village... hm..bucket shower.... yes, then a good night's rest under the mosquito net, though the mosquitoes aren't bad at all right now. It's the dry season. A larger problem is the huge amount of dust that is kicked up from the dirt roads. The Many Cambodians ride around with masks on or shirts covering their faces to protect themselves from the dust.

So, yesterday morning we woke up very early to go to the school. I had set up a meeting to work with the science teachers on lesson planning and to review the materials that they currently available to them at the school. We arrived at the school--a public government school that houses pre-K to grade 12. 1800 children attend. They receive add'l funding from the Christian org here in order to do pre-K and to pay the teachers a regular salary. HOwever, the catch is that all the teachers must attend a monthly Bible class back at the orphanage. (It was run by the teachers from Singapore on Monday and went on allllllllllllll day.) Now, I don't have a problem with freedom of religion or with religiously affiliated groups spending money to help less developed countries. I believe, in fact, that helping those in need should be a cornerstone of spiritual practice. BUT, this group, these people are those fundamental evangelicals you were reading about over Christmas, Poppee. So you know, this is not really about freedom of choice. I heard one of the Bible teachers trying to find out how many of the teachers were "non-believers"and how many Buddhist wats were in the area. He was also trying to arrange for a door-to-door evangelical campaign. HE was also telling me and Jennifer how one of the pastors was "given"Spanish when he was workign in Guatemala. He didn't learn it. It was just given to him by GOd after a period of time while he was there. It was given to him so he could preach in Spanish. Jennifer and I turned to each other and she said, "Yea, the silent period,"which is, of course, a part of the normal trajectory of language learning in which you can understand more than you can speak, and then suddenly you experience a drastic improvement in oral speech over time... But, yeah, whatever.

So, these are the reasons Jennifer and I have had to separate from this group. We made it very clear that we are here to help the teachers and students with science, but we will work with the MInister to determine the needs of the schools as opposed to the evangelicals. It turns out, after all, that the needs assessment was miscommunicated by the evangelizers. During my visit to the school, I discovered that the teachers actually do have a fairly decent set of text books for science, K-12, that does in fact integrate community resources. There were lessons on water contamination and malnutrition, as well as animal husbandry. So, after meeting with the teachers, I learned that the problem is not really the lack of a curriculum, but the lack of pedagogical content knowledge--or HOW to teach science. The teachers also expressed frustration with the lack of science materials, making it difficult to teach some of the lessons. They also needed help with lesson planning, so I went over a basic lesson plan design with them and agreed to write up some formats and activities they can use to be translated by one of the women who works at the orphanage (She has been our gracious translator the whole time and speaks excellent English. She received a BA in English from PP Univ.).

So now, the task is to help secure materials for the teachers. I will develop a list of supplies for the elementary science curriculum. The teachers gave me a copy of the science books for each grade level, 1 to 6, and although they are in Khmer, there are many pictures to help me get a general idea of what is needed. On a positive note about the Bible people, they seem to have tons of money (a kind of scary double-edged sword) and will be more than happy to purchase whatever supplies I tell them are needed. So that's that.

Yesterday we caught a bus to Siem Reap. Was a long hot bumpy ride, but we made it. We are staying in a mid-range hotel because we are feelin'the need for a little comfort. There are a handful of hotels in town with a pool, and we are staying at one of them! The place is beautiful. There are little bungalows, it's off the beaten track, and lots of jungle vegetation throughout the grounds. We're staying in a room for $35 a night, incl breakfast. Pretty good deal. Hotels here range from $10 to $1500 a night. Apparently there are some very high end tourists who come from all over, particularly Asian countries, though, to see Angkor Wat. Today we are going to rest up, tomorrow the temples.

Safe and sound,
Sara

posted by Sara @ 5:02 PM