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Although I was excited to get going on my international teaching career, I felt that I lacked confidence, and hesitated to give up my comfortable San Francisco apartment to commit to a full year contract as most international positions required. The “Conversations With Foreigners” (CWF) volunteer program in Phnom Penh, Cambodia that offered a 3 month commitment, seemed a perfect way to get my teaching feet wet.
The CWF School represents a unique model of learning and cultural exchange because it provides affordable conversational English courses for urban adult students and, at the same time, it raises money for Cambodian Rural Development Team – (CRDT) an organization working to improve the livelihoods of rural communities.
The moderate tuition paid by city students goes to CRDT programs that teach rural Cambodians agricultural skills, such as building bio-digesters that provide methane gas for cooking and lighting. So I felt I was helping Cambodia in two ways: improving international communication skills of urban intellectuals and lifting the standard of living of the rural poor.
A relaxed 10-day orientation period was followed by 11 weeks of teaching, including a one-week break for the Christmas holiday. The orientation gave us a feel for the developmental CRDT work that our teaching would be supporting. The highlight of the orientation was spending a night in a rural Mekong village which is using processed manure methane for cooking our meals and lighting.
Spotting the endangered Mekong Dolphin in its natural environment of the Mekong River was a transcendental spiritual experience for me. After that orientation, teaching volunteers participated in two days of teaching orientation.
There is a thirst for learning in my Cambodian students who ranged from 15 to 59 years of age. All longed for practice in speaking and listening to supplement their Basic English. From Monday to Friday they attend a lively daily one-hour conversation class in which there is little focus on reading, writing, or grammar.
It is convenient for adult students to study English before and after going to work or high school/university, so classes are arranged early in the morning and then in the evenings. During that midday break between my morning classes and my first evening class, I was able to explore Phnom Penh, swim at a gym, take Khmer dance lessons, free Khmer lessons arranged by the school, and volunteer at the Royal University coaching a diligent young professional on skills required for the TOEFL test.
He greatly improved his scores and was awarded a scholarship to graduate school in Philippines, and I’m sure he will be a friend for life. Perhaps my students taught me more then I taught them. I learned from their personal stories how they or their families had suffered under the Khmer Rouge regime. Understanding the suffering they had endured helped me tolerate some of the inconveniences of third world living.
I chose to live communally with 8 other volunteers in a teacher’s house around the corner from the school. Several volunteers chose to live independently. Two teachers shared a lockable bedroom with toilet and shower. We could use house bicycles to get around Phnom Penh, although I often walked to the bustling local market, the internet cafes, and to nearby air-conditioned restaurants.
Simple rice or noodle vegetarian meals were prepared by our cheerful Cambodian cooks. There are supermarkets that cater to the international community and you can supplement your diet with treats. The sweet taste of dragon fruit, lychees, and rambutans -still lingers in my mind when I think of Cambodia.
Although the CWF program did not require a CTESOL certificate or even a college degree, the training course I took prior to my teaching helped me plan creative lessons and prepared me for those ad lib situations when I was not able to. The Conversations With Foreigners program was an effective introduction to teaching English internationally: a chance to gain confidence, the satisfaction of making a difference by volunteering with enthusiastic adult learners, the excitement of an exotic Asian city, and the warmth of new personal relationships with other teachers, the Cambodian staff, and adventuresome expatriates. I now see myself as an experienced cross-cultural teacher and am ready to commit to a long term teaching career.
Website for the Conversations with Foreigners School: www.volunteerincambodia.org
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From 11 People
