Early in 2008, Annie Christie flew to Denver to present a $10,000 check from The PEACE Fund to Teachers Across Borders. "I was very impressed with the energy and passion of the people I met," said Annie. "What seemed to move them the most was actually seeing at first hand how much it meant to Cambodian teachers to have these learning opportunities."

Deciding on which of the many thousands of good causes we will contribute to is not an easy thing. So when we were short-listing some excellent organizations early this year there was one that stood out for us- Teachers Across Borders. Why? In the first place, it is an excellent fit with our three primary goals in relation to making a difference to children’s lives: educating, aiding and caring. Secondly, it is carrying on its work in one of the most devastated countries in the world – Cambodia. Thirdly, it is an organization that has demonstrated that it can deliver on its goals and has integrity. Fourthly, it tries to help people to help themselves so that there is a long lasting effect that carries on when TAB is not present. Lastly, it runs in a very lean way with almost all of its efforts coming from volunteers.

Cambodia has been struggling for many years to overcome the horror under Pol Pot which resulted in schools disappearing from everyday life and teachers being murdered. With teachers today being paid so poorly, the challenge to return Cambodia to its pre-Pol Pot levels of literacy are truly daunting.

As mentioned above, The PEACE Fund prefers to lend support to organizations who spend as little as possible on administration. Annie’s discussions with the committee members in Denver revealed that a new chapter of TAB has been formed in Australia and volunteer teachers are coming from as far afield as Sweden, England and Wales to work with their US teaching counterparts.

The PEACE Fund’s donation will fund another workshop for up to 200 young Cambodians who have little in the way of formal teacher training. They will leave the workshops with their own book of teaching plans and other classroom aids. Translators are required for the workshops which makes the teaching by the TAB educators doubly difficult.

Another initiative by TAB is to sponsor a Cambodian student to study in the US for a degree in Library Science. On her return to Cambodia she will be the only fully trained and qualified librarian in Cambodia.

We will be providing regular reports to you on how the donation has been used in Cambodia.

In early 2009 the PEACE Fund donated a further USD $10,000 to enable TAB Australia to run a series of much needed workshops in Cambodia  aimed at improving literacy levels amongst schoolchildren.

Sue Slater was one of a group of dedicated teachers who volunteered her time to lead a number of workshops and has written a series of letters.

Click on the links on the index on the left to read seven 'Letters from Battambang' from Sue Slater which highlights the work of the educators as they continue to address the challenges being faced in Cambodeia.

Tomorrow we leave for Cambodia.  This will be the third year that TAB’s Australian team, has presented a series of workshops for teachers and school administrators in the provincial city of Battambang.

This will be my second Cambodian program. My partner and I will present a nine day leadership program for thirty school administrators or directors as they are known locally. 

The work is very challenging as we rely on an interpreter and that makes for some interesting interaction. Last year we became aware that significant cultural differences mean that the Cambodian directors/administrators have a very different leadership paradigm to ours. Their deeply embedded Buddhists beliefs frame their expectations and the way they would like their educational system to operate.

Expectations for teachers were outlined in a document The Seven Virtues of a School Teacher by H.E. Dr Kol Pheng the then, Senior Minster and Minister of Education, Youth and Sports. The virtues included:

1. making yourself loved by students
2. maintaining a high moral standard, educating
3. improving yourself by being equipped with additional knowledge and wisdom
4. using only good and useful words
5. being patient and compassionate towards the words of others
6. speaking words of profound meanings and
7. not leading students to plunge themselves into deadly sins.

This is a stark contrast to the Dimensions of Teaching and Professional Standards in my home state, Victoria, Australia with its emphasis on the content of teaching and learning and professional growth. One of our key workshop activities is to get the directors to look at the dimensions and consider the similarities and differences and the application to the Cambodian context.

The directors confront monumental issues in running their schools including very  low salaries. There are considerable challenges for the Cambodian education system. For example: it takes a child ten years to complete primary education, there is a teacher shortage as teachers’ pay ranges from $28 to $40 US per month and directors’ pay is $75 US a month (for a large high school with 5, 000 + students).  This does not provide an adequate income and forces educators to take on additional work leaving them no time to develop their teaching craft. The discrepancy between rural and urban schools is enormous and the system has very limited data collection and capacity to track school development, student enrolment and school attendance.

MANY TEACHERS HAVE NO FORMAL QUALIFICATIONS. Directors in the provinces find it very difficult to attract teaching staff and the directors feel there is a culture of blaming with very little support for their work.

Despite all these issues we found the Cambodian directors were enthusiastic in sharing practice and very open to new ideas.  They wanted to know about the Australian and American education system, enjoyed the chance to collaborate with their peers and responded very well to working together in small groups to examine issues and to try to work out recommendations for systems improvement.

We look forward to the weeks ahead in this very valuable work.

Let me tell you a little about the schools around Battambang, Cambodia but first some background information. The literacy rates in Cambodia are very low compared to other South East Asian countries. A recent survey estimated that 36% of the population is illiterate with higher levels of female illiteracy and the literacy rate in rural and remote areas is lower than in the towns.

The Kingdom of Cambodia Education Strategy Plan has a goal of education for all and universal basic education by 2015 with targets that all children complete primary school by 2010 and that gender inequality and disparity between urban and rural education is eliminated by 2010 in year nine basic education.

The Kingdom of Cambodia Education Ministry has set very challenging goals and the work of TAB is to support teachers and school administrators in achieving these goals. We are truly delighted to be part of this journey.

Many of the classrooms that we visit are very basic –
-              timber tables and benches
-              a chalkboard and teacher’s table
-              rooms have unglazed windows
-              little or no electrical supply
-              in some places dirt floors, and
-              class sizes in excess of sixty students with very few resources.

Children sit in rows and listen to the teacher. Students appear well behaved and respectful. Because of the absence of resources learning is by rote. There is no stimulus material and in most classrooms teaching is aimed at the auditory learner. This makes working with the Cambodian teachers very challenging because they are so short of classroom resources.

Much of the current teaching practice in Western schools fosters the notion of the student as an independent learner who poses key questions and uses a range of resources, including the teacher to develop a final product.  Furthermore we encourage students to go through a writing process as they plan and work towards a finished piece. There is no brainstorming and drafting in Cambodia as there isn’t the paper to support such a process. For students and teachers the first attempt is usually the final piece.

Around Battambang, the city schools we visit appear better resourced than the rural schools. Class sizes are still enormous by our standards and learning is by rote. However students, like students the world over, are happy and enthusiastic and really want to learn.

Dear Friends,

The 2009 TAB program commenced with 295 Cambodian teachers and directors as participants in 13 workshops with 18 Australian, 3 American and one English workshop leader.

His Excellency, Nath Bunroeum opened the program and talked about the last thirty years in Cambodian education since Victory Day January 7, 1979. He reminded us that after the fall of the Pol Pot regime there was a broken, effectively non existent education system with few teachers and very few students. At this time anyone who was literate was recruited to teach.

Today there are 3.6 million students and 165,000 teachers in Cambodian schools. He stressed how optimistic teachers should feel given the enormous growth in education. The current challenge is to improve the quality of teaching.

He set four clear goals for teachers and school directors:
1.            to improve student learning
2.            to develop child friendly schools that are clean, green and strict
3.            to improve the physical structure of schools and teaching materials, and
4.            to improve school attendance for everybody.

Our Leadership Program Workshop includes 27 directors/ school principals from schools with enrolments as large as 5210 students. Our role then is to work with them to unpack what they can do in leading their schools in achieving these goals. Our focus is to prepare them for what is possible in the next five years so that they start to think about a vision for the future - what schools and learning in Cambodia could look like. To this end they will be able to support teachers in developing a more student oriented approach as they move from rote teaching and learning to a focus that is sensitive to the Cambodian context and leads to improved student achievement.

Today was a real celebration as we introduced the concept of Learning Walks to fourteen primary school directors in the Leadership Development program. The directors completed the Learning Walk in their own time outside the scheduled workshop.  This Learning Walk incorporated a visit to 2 Thnou Primary School in Battambang with an enrolment of 3103 students.

Directors were asked to note some effective elements in the school organisation and teaching and learning as they walked through the school. They then provided this feedback to the school director and each participant in the group agreed to try one strategy in their own school that they had observed  on their Learning Walks.

2 Thnou is the biggest primary school in the province of Battambang with seventy-eight classes and ninety-six staff. It is seen as a model school. The Director shared many excellent management techniques with the group and he took great pleasure in showing us around this well run school. The directors noted the positive relationships between the director, teachers and students, the classroom organisation and the pleasing state of the classrooms and grounds.

The grade one reading program particularly impressed the participants. Students are given extra support if they need it to ensure a strong foundation in reading. Many directors said that they were going to try to introduce the idea of more support for students in grade one reading.

For many directors this was their first opportunity to visit a school and focus on observing teaching and looking at effective management. Collegial Learning Walks reinforce the notion that the best learning occurs when we share ideas and see effective models of the way work in schools can be done. This was a first in Battambang and hopefully is the beginning of opening up schools and classes.

Our second Director’s Learning Walk was a real Cambodian experience. It highlighted the complexity of the school Director’s role.

The high school we visited was a large high school in the Battambang. The newly appointed Director had completed our leadership program last year and had been promoted from Sub Director to the Director in the last six months.
The first thing we noticed when we sat down in the Director’s office was a printed statement, which referred to, the complex issue of corruption and the challenge of ethical leadership. The Director indicated that the previous Director had placed this statement in a prominent position in the office. One can only assume it was meant to motivate and encourage ethical leadership.

Shortly after our arrival at the school, one of the directors arrived, a little late and informed us that one of his students had been killed on his way to school in a motor accident. We were horrified as we are aware of the high incidence of motorbike deaths in this country. We offered condolences and suggested that he might want to return to school but he indicated, very resolutely, that the matter had been dealt with.

Our Learning Walk was a real eye opener. Class sizes were enormous. In year ten the average class size ranged from 72 to 78. Students were seated three to a desk. The year twelve Chemistry class had fifty-five students and no equipment or capacity to support experimentation or testing. The one room library for 4,345 students looked more like a small office than a library. The computer room was double locked with padlocks and the computers were used for word processing but were not linked to the Internet. Despite all these limitations students appeared happy, keen to learn and were very respectful.

The participants in the Learning Walk provided a lot of positive feedback but it was the Director who articulated his next steps in improving the facilities in the school. He listed a range of required actions, for example, he stated that he had the Khmer musical instruments but there was no band, he had a sewing room but no teacher, he had some computers but not enough computer teachers and he was committed to improving the school grounds to make them clean and green.

We have nothing but admiration for the school Directors as they work to overcome enormous obstacles. We believe that their involvement in the TAB Leadership workshop and the affirmation that they are receiving plus the range of new ideas, which are discussed, makes them feel a little more supported in order that they can continue this challenging task of building the Cambodian education system.

The third TAB program in Battambang, Cambodia is over and was a great success with over 315 Cambodian teachers and directors participating in thirteen workshops. The outcomes, in the workshops which included Early Years Literacy, English as a Second Language, Early Childhood Development, Inquiry Learning, Numeracy, Performance Assessment and Leadership and Administration, have been well documented and will form part of a detailed evaluation for TAB.

The “hidden curriculum” in these workshops, which some participants noted in their evaluation, serves as important modeling for Cambodian educators.  Things such as the following were noted:

The TAB workshops provide Cambodian educators with a chance to consider what “could be” in education and to do some future’s thinking. They provide a wonderful opportunity for educators to reflect on how far their system has come in thirty years and to take some ideas which maybe applicable from our system and incorporate these ideas into current practice. At all times workshop leaders reinforced, affirmed and celebrated the work of Cambodian educators. The workshops are great fun with lots of laughter and positive interaction.

The closing ceremony was a real celebration with Mr Mao Mei, the Director of the Provincial Office of Education thrilled to announce that TAB would return to Battambang again in 2010 to continue this powerful dialogue. TAB looks forward to continuing this work and building teacher capacity with small but very important steps!!

Dear Friends,

No amount of reflecting can really portray the positive experience of being part of TAB, Teachers Across Borders program. The first program in 2008 was wonderful but to return to Battambang in January 2009 and to reconnect with people who were in that program was very special. Building on the first year’s workshop and working with so many enthusiastic and multi-talented workshop presenters was great fun and very exhilarating.

At the risk of  sounding clichéd and corny, it is amazing, and a real privilege, to work with Cambodian educators who struggle daily  to make ends meet in their own families, who confront a multitude of issues and live in a society which has only recently experienced peace. There was internal fighting in some provinces in the mid nineties and some border issues still persist. Despite all these concerns, educators are hopeful about “what can be’ in Cambodian schools.

In this struggling country education is poorly resourced and at this stage it appears that  a range of external organizations are pivotal in supporting the education system as they provide some limited resourcing and professional development programs which are consistent with The Kingdom of Cambodia’s Education Strategy Plan.

The work of TAB  is crucial in supporting Cambodian educators as they develop their education system to reflect the strengths of Cambodian culture and incorporate those elements of Western education which they deem appropriate for Cambodia and  which will to take them into the twenty first century.

TAB’s long term commitment to Cambodia is exciting as the organization strengthens friendships and works with Cambodian educators. We look forward to extending this work and supporting these wonderful educators as they continue to address the challenges.

Your support is central to continuing this work.

Sue Slater