Giving It A Go...New Way of Teaching!

Cambodia has started another round of school closures from 16 March due to the spike in COVID19 cases and many of the students once again are not engaged in learning.   However, one thing we have witnessed is the adaptiveness and resilience of some local teachers in overcoming the challenges that school closures brought to their education eco-system.       ​

Are the teachers more prepared this round and what difficulties are they facing during school closures?  Our volunteer teacher Sarith had the opportunity to speak with two outstanding educators in our district who are role modelling the adoption of online teaching.  

Deputy School Director Sangvat recalled, “According to my experience last year, we taught the students through messenger chat and we did not get very satisfactory results. This is because both teachers and students were not ready for that yet.” 
 
​

In anticipation that schools may have to close again, Sangvat has learnt to use Zoom to organise lessons with the students.  He shared,” The school’s director, teachers and I all agreed that this application should be used for our teaching. As a result, the outcome was better though we still face some challenges. We will continue to improve the way children are taught.”  ​

​He said,” Both students and I like using Zoom as it allows knowledge of each subject to be communicated effectively from the teacher to the students. It also allows us to learn more about how to use this application. After lessons we can take the video of our teaching activities too.”

​While switching to Zoom has alleviated the situation somewhat, the teachers still faced several challenges.  Firstly, the teachers are not armed with the knowledge to use the new technologies.  Secondly, they needed to spend time and their own money to get the resources for online teaching.  Thirdly, most students are not able to attend the online lessons because they do not smartphones and or there is no network coverage in their homes.  As a result, it is difficult to contact the student’s parents or guardians to get students to attend the online classes.  In fact, the attendance for grade 7 at Sangvat’s school is about 60% and that of grade 8 and 9 is about 65%. 

​What will help the teachers to have better online teaching sessions? Sangyat shared his wish list,” In order for online learning to generate good learning outcomes for our students, I hope that it is possible for our schools to provide laptops for the other teachers and me. I would also like to have more training on using other programmes that are related to teaching online.” ​

​On the other hand, teacher Socheat has experimented teaching small group via FB Messenger or Telegram and she sighed, “For this school closure compared to the one in 2020, I feel unhappy because it has an extremely negative impact on our students. When schools close, students need to learn online. However, it is difficult because in Cambodia, students do not have smartphones nor easy access to internet.  That is why I’m worried and unhappy.”
​
She explained, “I’m now helping my students by teaching online in small groups because I believe it is very important to help students in my school. I have a strong purpose to help students to get post-education and effective learning in the 21st century and I want to develop human resource in my community because it is a very rural area from Siem Reap and the education here is still limited.” 

​Socheat continued to share, “Most importantly I’ve got the mental strength and the fact that students find value in my teaching encourages me very strongly to continue to teach. Students from different grades join me so I have the good mind and duty to complete this task in the education sector. I really like teaching. These give me the motivation to press on.”  
 
While Teacher Socheat felt more prepared this year as she has learnt more about using online applications in teaching, she thinks that her knowledge is limited and feels an urgent need to learn more about it to help students in her area. 
 
On top of the limited knowledge, students faced quite a lot problems due to the lack of infrastructure. She sighed,” I got a lot of feedback from my students but let me just show you some. Some say they do not have smartphones to attend the online class because of their living conditions. Others say they have difficulty joining because they do not have personal smartphone and must ask their friends to share with them. Some also don’t have the money for SIM card top up to continue their studies online and when we have video calls to have lessons they can’t attend because their card has run out of money. For most, the internet service is very weak and hence they have difficulty learning. Many want school to reopen soon because they think learning online is not easy and they cannot learn well.”  
 
What is one thing about education in rural Cambodia that she wish to change? Teacher Socheat shared with much aspiration and hope, ”I will educate the people in the rural area about the advantages of education and with that I also want to set a strict law regarding education. This is because I believe the law for compulsory education can get people to spread education widely in our area. It can be strict for them at first but after some time, it will become habitual. Then everything can improve, the rural areas becoming more developed with the presence of more educated and knowledgeable people.” 

Our gratitude towards all the educators who are stepping up for the benefits of the children learning.  Quality of Learning is the core of PeopleStories School for Life program and we are committed to tackle this major issues hand-in-hand with our teachers in the villages. ​