Practicum Week
Practicum week has come and gone. And the verdict is… I love teaching in a Cambodian classroom. It was an incredibly busy week. If we weren’t teaching or at class, we were lesson planning and prepping materials. I don’t know about everyone else, but at least for me, there was no down time.
The purpose of Practicum week is to give us some experience 1) teaching cambodian children English, 2) working with a cambodian co-teacher and 3) working out of the English for Cambodia book that every English student in Cambodia uses. Mission accomplished, I feel like I have a pretty good handle on all of that.
Monday started off kind of scary. We were told we would have 26 students. My teaching team (consisting of myself, Erik and Christine) walked into a class with 5 students in it. We had lesson planned for 26. But we managed to steal a few more students before we really got started, so soon we had 11 kids. Then, by the end of Saturday, we had 21 kids. Awesome! Monday our theme was How We Got Here. Erik taught about job applications, Christine did Interviews, and then I did Traveling by plane. I had each student pretend they were booking a flight in English.
Tuesday we didn’t really have a theme. I loosely based my lesson on a chapter from the English for Cambodia (EFC) book. There tends to be many problems with the EFC book. There are grammar and spelling errors, phrases that English speakers never use, and plenty of stuff that is either totally irrelevant or just too darn hard. Anyway, the Chapter was called A Letter From England. Instead I made it A Letter From Home. I had my brother Dan write me a real letter from home using certain vocab words (thanks Dan). I simplified it, then brought it to class. We read it, answered questions I made, then each student got a chance to write a sentence in reply to his letter.
Wednesday was health day. We taught health vocabulary, and then some health volunteers got to try their hand at teaching. They taught about eating healthy and proper hand-washing.
Thursday was our first day working with the Cambodian co-teacher. Ours was super sweet. Only problem was… she didn’t speak any English. Actually, let me rephrase that. She could speak a tiny bit of English. She could not understand a word we said. So it was very difficult to include her. So here and there we would try to give her easy jobs like writing Khmer translations on the board, or reading a dialogue out loud for the class. Anyway, on Thursday our theme was sports. I did a reading lesson on Khmer boxing (because I’m such an expert, right?)
Friday our theme was Illness. My chapter was called “What Did the Doctor Say”. I taught some vocabulary and I taught the “He/She said that….” form. I made cards where each kid got a piece of a sentence and they had to find partners that they could make a complete sentence with. The students’ favorite one was “The King – said – that – my pants are on fire. The student I asked to read it couldn’t even get through it he was laughing so hard. That made me feel good. Oh by the way, I saw the King! It was somewhat of a big production. He was driving by on his way to Phnom Penh so all the teachers and all the students stood on the side of the road waving flags and cardboard pictures of his face lol. Sure enough, the procession saw us and he slowed down to wave to us. Rumor has it that we were on Cambodian television waving flags and looking excited.
Saturday was a blast. We taught ghosts and Halloween! Christine told a ghost story. We even shut the door and the blinds to try to give her the right atmosphere. We taught the students how to trick-or-treat. We gave out candy. We did some real learning too. We taught vocab, reading passages, listening passages, and the “When________ I used to _______ sentence form. I taught vocabulary from the childrens song Looking For Dracula hahaha. They loved it! First we listened to it and I gave them pictures to follow along in the story. Then we listened again and I gave them the lyrics. I was so happy it went over so well! I have to get my hands on more songs like that. I never thought of those types of songs as good tools for teaching English before, but they really are! Then after the last lesson we gave out certificates. Because I happened to have my computer on me that day I played pomp and circumstance as we did so lol. Then we took pictures and said our goodbyes. I will miss our students. They were funny and really very sweet.
One thing I love about Cambodian students is that they must stand up to answer a question! Oh the power I have! You must stand when you are called on!
Classroom management is rarely an issue. It’s amazing.
Somehow my students found out that I could sing. So they very shyly asked me to. I promised them if they came to school again tomorrow, I would sing. Yes, I followed through on this.
On Thursday it dawned on me that my brother will be in 10th grade next year and we were teaching 10th and 11th graders. So I invited him to come Friday and Saturday. He was so happy I invited him! It was super sweet. I think he had a good time. I hope. He seems to be much more comfortable trying to speak English with me now. Maybe it gave him some confidence.
Students call teachers “Teacher” instead if Mr. or Mrs. so and so.
The students split themselves up by gender. All the girls sat on one side of the room and the boys sat on the other lol.
Our last activity on Saturday was a game of charades with Halloween vocabulary. We let the boys team and the girls team make up names.
Diana: Okay, what is your team name?
One really smart kid: Super Cute Boys
Diana: HAHAHA oh okay then. *writes on board* Girls. What is your name?
Shy Girls: …..
Diana: Come on, it needs to be better than Super Cute Boys. Hmmm. Do you know dangerous?
Least Shy Girl: *translates dangerous into Khmer*
Shy Girls: polite cheering and clapping
Diana: YEAH! DANGEROUS! *writes on board* *Turns around to see a boy raising his hand*
Other Smart Boy: *stands up* Teacher, we want to change our name.
Diana: HAHA Oh no! You wanted to be super cute boys! You will keep it! Mwahaha!
The Dangerous Girls were indeed victorious when they spectacularly broke the tie on the word “submarine”.
Good times.
Pitchaaaas!
1. Titi, 12, and Leeny, 9.
2. The sunset. I can’t believe I don’t have a better picture of the sunset. It is so gorgeous over the rice fields. This is just out my front door. You can see the big heavy gate that is locked every night. Don’t worry, I’ve only been locked out of it once.
3. Me and my host mom. I think she is so beautiful! And my sister is peeking out from behind.
4. Ehhh… host dad. No comment.
5. Jimmy-15. Cooler than cool.
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