Rennovations

Because of the week long Pchum Ben holiday and schools are off, we’ve been busy preparing the Foreign Language School for the new term.  I will not lie, the building looks awful; the paint is coming off, there is barely no lighting, and the bottom classrooms are flooded with water up to your ankles. But we are lucky enough to have a building so we are doing our best to maintain it. We added signs and posters in the classroom so the students have additional resources to learn. Hopefully that will take the students' eyes off of the ugly painting and dungeon-like lightings.



Before





Discussion on the posters

 

 

Tape and paste action

Ven Rong came over to supervise us

After: Looks much more like a classroom now

Phonetic posters

 

The bulletin board was erected so the students are able to see the schedule and announcement at a glance.

 

Putting up the new big bulletin board

 

Finished

 

And last but not least, the library has been reorganized. The previous library were just bookshelves lined with random books donated but actually have no use for the students. I mean who wants to read a donated book on AP Calculus?  One of the volunteers pedantically went through all the books and reorganized them so that the reading appropriate books will be in the middle shelves and rearranged by reading age and difficulty. The so-called “unreadable” books were places on the top and bottom shelves and fittingly covered by orange robe curtains.

 

Before

 

Sorting the books

 

After

The work that we’ve done may be rudimentary but for us it has been a big step in the right direction. For the longest time, there has not been concrete leadership for the school. It’s been just recently that some of the teaching/education sector experts amongst our staff have stood up to do some “rennovations”.

The reality is that most of the facilities in Cambodia are lacking even the most basic funds and educational standards needs are not met at all. Many may wonder why the monk and Cambodian teacher staff have done nothing to the school in the past. However putting it in their shoes, their schools must’ve looked exactly the same or even in worse conditions. Many of their parents never got an education or even if they did, they were murdered during the Pol Pot regime.  They have never been to a developed country with high-end educational institutions so their image and concept of a classroom is vastly different from ours.  It puts us into perspective of how lucky we volunteers were to have been able to receive such prestigious education and lavish learning
environment compared to theirs.
 

 

 

Every day in Cambodia has been a learning experience but it is in these moments that I am deeply humbled and appreciative of the many privileged opportunities I have been given in this world.