Learning in the World at Large

The education of becoming a teacher

I make the trip to A New Day Cambodia four afternoons a week now to volunteer.  On two days I come at 4:30, after the kids are done with school, to hang out, play games, and be a native English speaker ready for them to practice with.  I’m getting some simple music lessons started during this time, hoping soon to sing, do call-and-response rhythm using pots and sticks, to introduce classical music recordings, or other activities in that vein.  The other two days a week I alternate in the intermediate and advanced English classrooms teaching!  It’s my charge to cover pronunciation, reading, and doing “activities” like games and songs.

I love the drama of the drive down the red dirt road with mammoth rocky potholes.  They have resembled water basins this week because of all the rain.  I always have my backpack on, which sticks out to the width of another person attached to me, and the weight of it makes flying up and down on a motorbike an adrenaline-inducing balancing act as I try to relax my limbs and only clutch the little bar beneath the seat.  On Tuesday my driver and I ended up behind an unwieldy colossal truck that looked like it was from the 1930s, barely navigating its way down the road with a full load of terrified ducks spewing feathers out the barred sides and back.  The danger today was motorbike tête-a-têtes, as the red dirt had turned to maroon mud and there were very narrow stretches for motorbikes approaching on opposite sides to drive on without getting stuck.  Every time I go past I stare at the pet monkey that’s chained to a tree by an iron cuff around one of its wrists, wondering how delighted or plotting the animal’s cackling screeches are.

Yesterday I decided to try doing a music lesson for the first time, as I had hit upon the idea of blowing into glass bottles with different levels of water to make lower and higher notes—cheap and entertaining!  First I had to figure out where to procure glass bottles, since everyone hordes them because they are worth money if sold to a recycling plant.  As I was picking up my Vietnamese visa from the Okay Guest House during my lunch break, I randomly put on a bright smile and asked the owner if I could buy some used bottles from him for their normal recycling price, explaining that I wanted to use them to teach music to kids.  He said I could have a box of twelve empty Beer Lao bottles for free.  So I ended up walking the mile back to the Friends-International office with my obese backpack and a large cardboard box conspicuously emblazoned with the Beer Lao logo.  I cannot count the number of people who asked me for a beer and refused to believe that the bottles were empty, as I sweated so profusely during my walk that the sweat lost its salty taste and texture.

I feared that my labors would be lost as my motorbike slammed up and over the perilous road and the bottles clanked tauntingly.  I proudly carried the intact box into the new center where the kids congregate after school by the volleyball net, swing set, and dirt yard to run off their energy…and remembered that I had just walked into an orphanage compound and was clutching a box of fully-labeled, unrinsed beer bottles to give to the kids!  I ran to the bathroom and used the bidet to soak the adhesive off and rinse out the glass foamy insides.  It took a startling forty-five minutes and several awkward half-explanations to curious youthful onlookers, but finally the instruments were ready.

I demonstrated by blowing on three bottles filled with their respective water levels and the kids responded instantly with hanging jaws and beckoning hands to the noise.  The bottles were passed around as everyone had their try.  Unfortunately, the embouchure proved too difficult to master for most, and only a few especially industrious and determined musicians found success.  I encouraged the kids to keep practicing, and they all looked doubtfully at the brown glass but shrugged, grinned, and assured me they would.

An older boy in the intermediate English class I teach in found an alternate use for the instruments—a popular Cambodian kids’ game where the kids put two water buckets at one end of a “racetrack” (in this case a long, flat stretch of concrete) and two bottles on overturned baskets at the other.  Two opponents compete to see which one can fill their mouth with water from the bucket, run down the track, and spit the water into the bottle to fill it up before the other.  The kids went wild for the game, forming cheering squads for both teams, jumping around and egging each other on.  One young competitor, a girl who was about eight, exhibited an astonishing drive to win.  She ran, cheeks puffer-fished out full of water, with her head bent forward and eyes boring into the bucket or the bottle, her goals.  When she finally triumphed, her expression and fist jabbed high in the air made me almost believe she had just won her very own star or something of that celestial like.

The best part for me was watching the older boy assume a natural leadership role in organizing and executing the game.  He kept a close eye on the cheering squads to make sure they stayed appropriate and positive—he had no problem cutting his eyes at the stray nutty enthusiast.   The proceedings were also kept fair by him, and he was clearly taking enjoyment from the game because it was going well and he felt proud of what he had created by being a leader.  When it was time to eat dinner (one of my favorite sayings that the kids at ANDC have is they say “time to eat rice!” instead of “time to eat dinner!”) he made everyone help clean up the game and area.

I somehow ended up back at the older girls’ house when they were eating rice.  The house “mommies” kept holding out a plastic bowl to me and motioning to the big pot of rice and pans of cucumbers and salty fish.  I felt too guilty to accept food when I have money to buy my own.  But then one of my students tugged on the hem of my t-shirt and said, “Have extra rice tonight.  Eat rice with us please!”  So I sat down next to her and bowed my head to my bowl, letting her show me how to spear a slice of cucumber and put it in my mouth and then scoop salty fish into my rice and chew it all together.  It was the best meal I’ve had in seven weeks. 

Today was a teaching day, also one of the hottest that I’ve faced—the kind where sweat breaks out on your brow as you are simply sitting and shooting the breeze (or attempting to.)  I got the advanced kids doing skits in groups of three in front of the class by having them read the cartoon dialogue from their workbooks.  This meant a tenfold increase in gusto for proper pronunciation and reading the material, and that I could finally gauge the levels of the reluctant students in class.  I introduced clapping the syllables of a word while saying it to help with pronunciation to the intermediate kids and the extra noise was met with approval by all.   Then I taught them “The Eensy-Weensy Spider” section by painstaking section.  Before they even heard the melody, the all had to repeat “eensy-weensy,” “water spout,” “washed,” etc. to me individually, as well as go over and over the words correctly and memorize what they meant.  When I finally sang the song for them and they sang along with me many times, they were thrilled to pieces at how different the words sounded with a melody!  They all copied down the words to rehearse and left humming all manner of creative remixes.

 I like teaching more every time I gather my wits and jump in.  I love the rush of blood I get when I stand up in front of a class and realize I’m about to give a performance more consequential than any I ever gave on a keyboard.  I can’t get enough of the quizzical expressions changing to understanding ones, of raised hands and the victory of getting a shy or obdurate student to participate in class.  It’s a wonder and an incredible sensation to be respected as a giver of knowledge--and it’s humbling.

The projects get a kick-start

My work with Friends-International has picked up to a pace I didn’t think was possible even a week ago.  Within the past three days I have become a manager for two very different projects.  The video project that I originally came here to work on is the first of these endeavors.  On Monday morning I chanced to catch the Friends-International director’s eye as I was passing his office.  He waved me inside and essentially said, “You are in control of the videos from here out.  Now we talk about where we are taking this and what we are doing.”  I had almost forgotten what a powerful man Sebastien Marot is.  It was so rewarding to have an exchange with a person so intelligent, well-rounded, passionate, clear-minded, and absolutely driven—he once said to me, “You know, I could have had twenty lives,” which is true statement for him, and also extraordinary if you think about it.  We pinged ideas and schemes and criticisms and praise off each other for an hour and a half and finally came up with a beginning phase. 

The beginning phase consisted of me going straight over to Mith Samlanh to find myself a Khmer-speaking partner so we could start recording videos the next day during the kids’ break times of them breakdancing, the most popular theme that arose from the trial recording period.  I have found a staff partner, Sovanna, who has gone above and beyond in helping direct the project.  We started by uncovering the break schedule and then began informing the teachers, locating the digital cameras and battery chargers, briefing the Culture Team, and outlining how we would present the first stage of the project to the kids.

We decided to frame the idea as a “best breakdance video” competition.  The kids have a two-minute maximum to show their best dance moves to the camera, and their name, sex, and age is recorded on a notepad so they can receive credit.  All of the first-stage videos will be loaded onto an old computer in the library at the Mith Samlanh center so the kids can watch them during their subsequent break time and rate them—the videos that receive four or five stars will be posted on the Internet.

Sovanna and I stood nervously this morning beneath the grandfather tree in the center waiting for the younger kids to run out of the Education Center at 9:20 so we could quickly explain what was going on, get them pumped up, and start recording.  Of course, our plan did not play out as we had envisioned—the kids were over the moon about the idea but not too keen on the rules we were enforcing.  There ended up being a lot of misunderstanding about the cameras taking videos, not pictures, that the idea was to win a competition and not merely record a video for that fun purpose alone, and that kids need to perform individually or in organized small groups.  The biggest problem I noticed was that no girls had any interest in breakdancing, and therefore were not participating in the videos.  Sovanna and I made plenty of mistakes, too, as we became increasingly flustered and overwhelmed by the sea of grabbing hands and merry grubby faces.  I started to focus too much on getting the kids more capable and comfortable with recording, which took everyone’s concentration away from the all-important competition theme (it is the core for continued enthusiasm for the project.)  Sovanna allowed far too many kids into most of the clips, which again detracted from the competition emphasis and prevented us from properly recording their names to give them credit.

However, there was an abundance of beautiful enthusiasm, delightful laughter, comedic moments, and yes, successful clips to make up for the shortcomings of our first day.  One little boy in particular made everyone convulse in giggles as he attempted to do head spin after handstand after arm balance in his puckish Elmo t-shirt and somehow fell over or into a nearby object or person every time with the utmost drama.  A group of three eleven-year-old boys got up on the Club Friends stage that is flanked by bright murals painted by the Mith Samlanh kids and performed an incredibly tough breakdance routine in perfect unison, which was recorded by an eight-year-old girl who was positively grave in her concentration on the digital screen.  Two little girls finally got into the mood and got me to record them slow-dancing with each other.  The best part for me was realizing that every kid wanted badly to participate, to learn about the cameras and perform for them, even if Sovanna and I had to draw them out of their shells at first.  And, they all respected every part of the process, even if they did so chaotically. 

Sovanna and I exchanged mutually comforting looks after we had waved off the last wide-eyed plea for “one more try” and drew synchronized deep breaths.  We resolved to drill in the competition theme tomorrow morning now that the kids are excited about the videos and to be stronger armed about the number of kids in a clip.  It was my responsibility to type up our progress, load, watch, and sort the videos, further sketch out the project plan from what I learned today, ask around both the Mith Samlanh and Friends-International offices for an unused old computer, and since I only gained a monitor, apply for funds to buy a used computer by Friday.  I shared some more reassuring deep breaths with myself after that.

The second project I have proposed and am directing is an awareness campaign aimed at American youth, to be based initially online and distributed through social networking.  This project is rooted in the idea that the next privileged generation being informed, thinking, and practicing sensitivity to the other 90% will influence change in the world.  I have been pitching my idea right and left, and I have been thrilled to find enthusiasm, especially for the inclusion and reaching out to youth with thinking as the goal.  My current tasks are compiling short written narratives on all facets of people, places, and situations that Friends-International deals with, from drug addicts to remarkable staffers, gathering media such as pictures and videos from the Friends-International archives and resolving associated rights issues, and creating a website to centralize the material and mission.

I started my in-depth research of the child-migrant issue on Monday, beginning by interviewing the Friends-International tech supporter for the Mith Samlanh migrant program.  She showed up at my desk an hour after the interview with an armful of reports, fact books, presentations, and the like that she had gathered for me, and invited me to accompany her to the migrant center on Friday morning to conduct more interviews!

It is strenuous but utterly wonderful, to be living and working in such reality and situations of meaning.  As I sighed on Monday night, “Ahh, ambition, my old friend!”

Video link

Here is the weblink for a video recently made about the A New Day Cambodia orphanage--these kids are truly as sweet, earnest, healthy, and hopeful as they appear here, a reality that I am happy to confirm from this fundraising video! :)  I hope that the images will help with picturing the problems faced here and breathe some life into the words I wrote about A New Day Cambodia.

http://storm4u.com/andc