I won't say "I don't want to brag, but...," because I do want to brag. I feel like we won the teaching lottery; we work at a school that is making dramatic change in the lives of students, their families, and ultimately the future of their country. We don't work "for" our administration, but with them. Exchanging ideas, fitting together, pushing each other, and getting shit done.
I won't say "that being said, there are many ups and downs." There are, certainly, to every job. But at the end of every day, the good so far outweighs the bad that there's simply no contest.
Here are just a few of the amazing things that happened during Liger's third year:
Number one: Explorations took off.
-Exploration is the name given to the lynchpin of the Liger curriculum. Invented by and advocated for by our fearless education director Mr. Jeff, Explorations are seven to nine week on-going projects with anywhere from six to seventeen students. The learning facilitators present the content and outline the major goals and then turn it over to the kids. Each is based around answering essential questions, creating links with the community and trying to solve a real world problem.
-This was the second year that Liger went all in on Explorations. Besides Math, Literacy and Khmer (their native language), Explorations rule the daily schedule. Last year we were still getting our feet under us in terms of balancing experiential learning (a week in the forest, three days in Singapore) with content (journalism, natural resource management, renewable energy). This year the Explorations exploded into boundary-pushing, expectation-exceeding, hands-on learning experiences. While I no longer run the Exploration portion of the curriculum, I want to share just three examples.
-Economics: After creating a relationship with the current Minister of Education, a gifted, forward-thinking leader, we learned that he (literally) wrote the book on the Cambodian economy. Wanting our students to have access to its facts, figures and predictions for the future, we quickly realized it was far beyond their current reading level. Road block? Nope. Opportunity! Jeff led a group of eight students in researching the Cambodian economy, breaking down the big ideas and interviewing participants in each major sector. All 50 students spent five days taking various trips to see the sectors up close, taking photographs and fact checking, pulling together to assist the authors. The final product: an economics book written for kids, by kids. And when I mean book, I do not mean your average fifth-grader's stapled, hand-drawn book report. I mean a precisely researched, incredibly organized, professionally laid out 150-pages in two languages, with charts, graphs, photos, citations, and soon, a foreword by the Minister himself. At our end of the year share, the Minister was overwhelmed by the quality of the finished product and gave his word that this book will make its way into every secondary classroom in the country. End scene.
-Water Safety: Six children drown every day in Cambodia. Our students adapted a water safety curriculum that has met with success in Africa, changing the scenarios, some of the strategies, and the cultural references/visuals to align with present-day Cambodia. After augmenting the content, they created their own swimming lesson plans and tried it out, teaching local kids how to swim in the Liger swimming pool.
-Programming: We were lucky enough to enlist the help of two WashU Computer Programming majors, Cory and Ali, to teach seventeen kids (mostly girls) the ins and outs of coding. In their own words, they were amazed by the kids' English, the ease with which they picked up the more complicated concepts, and their high-level problem-solving skills. By the end of the eight weeks, students had created their own video games, were coding online quizzes to help their friends study for my English final, and understood basic coding language.
To give you an idea of the other topics, take a look at the student-made invitation for our final share.
Number two: Technovation
-More than half the Liger girls opted to take on an additional opportunity this year, in the form of a weekend app development contest. Technovation seeks to inspire and educate girls and women in technology. Our students worked in small teams with the support of mentors to design an app. They started with a real world problem, invented an app that might help solve the problem, conducted market research, compiled their findings into a business proposal (including the reality of smart phone use in Cambodia), and learned how to code the actual app.
-One of our teams, Team Ligeek, earned third place out of 60+ teams from Australia, NZ, Europe and Asia. Their app, called ImEx (imports/exports) connects provincial farmers with big city buyers. It's essentially an online marketplace, which does not currently exist in Cambodia. Bear in mind this segment of the competition included girls up to age 18. See the video below for the big announcement!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Number three: Recruitment
-At this point, over 12,000 students have been initially assessed for an incoming cohort of 50-60, and we have decided to take all of next school year to narrow them down. Instead of rushing, it makes the most sense to do things as thoroughly as possible. If this recruitment goes well, we hope it will be the last time we need to send our teams out for weeks at a time; instead, we might be able to hold more of an open call, and have recruits come to us. The first time around, we were searching for high-achieving students, but because the school hadn't been actualized (mission, curriculum, expectations, etc.), it was hard to know exactly what we were looking for. Now, with an updated assessment system based on our actual students existing within an actual curriculum, our second time around is much more precise. Our fantastic recruitment team is constantly tweaking and changing their methods based on experience in the field. Next year will be the last year with only 50 students on campus.
Number four: English
-Year one, we taught through translation. Year two, we did away with translation (to the chagrin of many), but still students struggled. Year three, English flourished at Liger. At this point, any of our students could be transplanted to the middle of Boston and would be able to handle the level of oral English demanded of any other child their age. There may be a few exceptions, but I would say more than 90% of our students have moved from conversational fluency to academic fluency. Of course there are many words they still don't know, but along with their growing interest in becoming excellent English speakers, their technology skills make it easy for them to figure out any unknown word. Idioms have become a new and fun focus, and I often field questions about what "off the hook" or "play it by ear" mean.
I could continue, but I think this paints a good picture of a lot of what we were up to this year. Next year already promises to give year three a run for its money: four new full-time overseas staff, a potential cross-continent trip, "student-choice/student-led" Explorations and the promise that no matter what day it is, at least one kid is off campus doing something cool.
To year three.
