One Small Step For Fe y Alegría Teachers

“Brother, can we reschedule the workshop to another day when teacher Katherine* comes back from holiday?”
– “I’m sorry, teachers, but you know she won’t be back for at least a month. We don’t need to worry.”
“But how can we teach other teachers? They are much older and more experienced than we are. We don’t feel confident.”
– “How can you say that? All of you are teachers at Xavier Jesuit School! I’m confident that our teachers have good things to share with other teachers.”

This was me talking to our teachers in a meeting to prepare our very first online teacher-training workshop for public primary school teachers. At the beginning of this year, our Fe y Alegría (FyA) Project planned to provide several teacher-training workshops for rural schools supported by two other arms of the Jesuits in Cambodia: Jesuit Service Cambodia (JSC) and Karuna Battambang Organization (KBO). Most of these schools are located in remote areas, and their educational infrastructure has deteriorated. Moreover, the number of teachers is considerably small compared to that of students. In these circumstances, teachers cannot provide adequate instruction; and they don’t have opportunities to learn new teaching methods. That was why FyA had planned three different workshops for this year: storytelling, visual arts, and class management.

However, due to the pandemic, these all had to be postponed. It was not just the workshops that lagged behind our original timeline. This was just one more project on my list which was already full of other projects.

It was not until recently that we thought of the possibility of giving the workshops online. In the FyA committee meeting held in May, Ms. Sreymom, the leader of the KBO Obrum Team (Obrum means “education” in Khmer), officially asked for an online workshop for the teachers. Why didn’t we come up with the idea of holding online workshops earlier? Thanks to our XJS Primary School teachers, who generously contributed their energy and time to the workshop, FyA was able to hold the storytelling workshop successfully just a few weeks after the FyA meeting.

The workshop schedule was carefully designed. It began with warm greetings from our teachers and a brief introduction to the entire session. Then, starting with our teachers, all participants were invited to share their own experiences of teaching students how to read and comprehend stories. After the sharing, a short input lecture about the importance of reading and storytelling in elementary education was given. Coming back after the lunch break, all participants were divided into groups of ten; and two of our teachers were assigned to each group according to the grade level they teach. XJS teachers demonstrated how to read books for students in the classroom; then it was the participants’ turn to practice and get feedback from others in their group. We had expected about 30 participants, but so many public school teachers wanted to join that we had to give the workshop twice, to a total number of 77 participants.

Of course, since this was our first experience of giving a workshop online, there were many laughable episodes—not just funny, but embarrassing as well. Many participants had problems with the unstable internet connection, and some of them were constantly in and out of the internet meeting room the whole day long. Among the participants, there was an elderly principal who showed up on the screen without wearing a shirt; so we had to ask him to put on something before we could begin. Overall, however, it was a good experience for everyone and worth giving a try. We found out that many teachers in Cambodia, despite the poor situation of local education, have a zeal to learn new ideas for their students. It was very encouraging for us, too, because FyA does not only aim to help students to be transformed into responsible and mature citizens but also help teachers, parents, and the entire community with the idea of ‘popular education.’

We XJS school teachers hope to play a leading role in education not only in nearby communities but throughout the country; the workshop was a good opportunity for us to discover our strengths and possibilities. In the evaluation meeting held a week later, teachers proposed many suggestions for the next workshop they would give. Their attitude was very different from the hesitant emotions they had shown earlier when preparing the workshop.

Without the voices and laughter of students, the whole school campus is immersed in tranquility; but our mission to promote quality education continues.

*Ms. Katherine is a collaborator from Hong Kong who is currently serving as a principal of XJS Primary School.