Monologue

I wrote this blog post about two months ago, after a particularly challenging week. I never posted it. Last week was another such week and after rereading this, I found it still resonates with me. Apologies for the angst.
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Living and working in Cambodia has done away with simple, one-dimensional experiences and feelings. Every piece of every event is sunk deep into many layers of emotion and subsequent reordering. As someone who like things to make sense, to be neat and ordered, to follow rules, (even, I will admit, to be under my control), this has caused stress, anxiety, exhaustion and finally, this epiphany.

Let me explain.

For the past few months, Wednesdays at Liger have been planned and carried out by the interns, to allow the teaching staff to come together and plan both the day-to-day and the long-term. We are still in the throes of setting up a functioning, "world-class school of the 21st century," so the planning, reflecting, redoing and documenting are endless. Yesterday was another Wednesday as such. With only the rest of this week and then four days between us and an eleven-day vacation, we had much to discuss involving our kids' departure (transitioning them home and back), as well as a slew of health checks on the horizon shortly after break (eyes checked, hearing checked, immunizations administered, teeth pulled, etc.). As the meeting unfolded and I took up my usual post as note-taker, I realized that it was almost impossible to detail and quantify everything that we were talking about -- firstly, because many of the items on our agenda simply could not be solved or planned in one day and secondly, because as each new idea was put on the docket, my brain became more and more overwhelmed. By lunchtime, my laptop was closed and I had retreated into myself.

Let me explain further.

The agenda itself included more than 25 pertinent items, such as finalizing our schedule for next week and the week back, developing an overarching system of grouping students based on tailored instruction, the physical and technological resources we currently have and those we need, and reflecting on "summer camp," which occurred almost two months ago. For most teachers out there, this list probably doesn't differ all that much from the list on the Post-It note stuck to your desk. However, with only six of us, all of whom are planning and implementing lessons of our own, running after-school activities, supporting the interns, TAs and house parents, assessing, reassessing and documenting everything for future Ligers, etc., it is not so straightforward.

I want to be clear, so I will give an example. About six weeks ago, I spent a Friday away from the students, researching online learning programs. Liger is interested in purchasing an accredited program to ensure that our kids are matching up in their academic subject areas with other kids their age. After a fruitless day of research, it became clear to me that there is not one online learning program out there that will meet our students' needs. Parts of some programs were better than others, but the majority were quite expensive and did not really move online completely until middle school. Robert was not surprised by my findings, and we both admitted to a previous hunch that we were going to have to devise Liger's own online learning curriculum. The reality is, what we are trying to do here has not been done before. There is no currently existing curriculum (online or otherwise) that caters to gifted students who come from the provinces of Cambodia, and balances their English-language limitations with their incredible capacity to understand higher-level concepts. If you know of one, please, send it to me.

So, we went back to the drawing board. Online learning was put on hold and I began reaching out to teacher friends at home to collect different websites and online tools that we could use to fuse together our own curriculum. Then, two weeks ago, Robert tells me that he has been in contact with representatives from an online learning program that he thinks might work. My initial feeling: great. In a way, it was a relief that something was going to be taken care of and removed from our plate. I also knew that we would be able to modify and supplement as needed. Yesterday, Robert told me that he had been under the assumption that this online learning company, like many other companies we have worked with as Liger gets off the ground, was going to offer us a foundation discount. He was incorrect and had received a pricing at $30,000. I laughed out loud when I heard this, because that number is ludicrous and clearly not something that we are able to pay. So, we were really back to square one, which sent me back to relief, this time because we did not have to work around a framework that was perhaps unsuitable for our kids. This relief was kicked swiftly in the ass by dismay and then growing anxiety at the realization that we now (again) needed to develop an online curriculum.

I have started to think of it as living in the gray. I am usually so clear on where I stand on different things. A friend comes to me with a problem and I know the correct solution. An issue is presented in the media and I can speak easily and passionately about my opinion. I strongly advocated to parents, administrators, other teachers and specialists on what I believed to be the best options for my special education students. Since coming to Cambodia and Liger, I have leapt into a pool of uncertainty, where I think I know, but am never sure about anything.

Should we be prioritizing teaching the students English or developing their higher-level thinking skills in their native language?
Should we have the students take a more active role in the Liger campus and ask them to lay the bricks and participate in cooking meals since we are promoting ourselves as an experiential-based lab school that is teaching skills applicable to Cambodia? Or, because they are "gifted," will exposing them to these be a waste of time, as they will not lead a life that requires the ability to lay brick?
Should we start tutoring students who are showing a need for more support based on the assessment data we have gathered or should we reroute the schedule and groupings to allow for more tailored instruction throughout the existing school day?
Should we accept more students in order to maximize our impact on the largest number of eligible students or should we focus exclusively on the 50 that we have?
Are the students too over-scheduled, starting their day at 7:15 and often going until 9pm or does this schedule help them adjust to what will be a demanding academic schedule for their next ten years?

There are no right and wrong answers, and there is no quick fix.

I suppose things that are important and authentic rarely do...