Working Now

Two weeks on the job. I meant to post this last week but my SD card keeps deleting randoms bit of stuff and i didn’t want to write it all out again. However here’s me trying again, i suppose it gives me a chance to rewrite the bits i didn’t particularly like.



Well anyway I have a job now! It’s in a private primary school. Named rather aptly Cambridge International School. However its a franchise from Singapore so i don’t quite know how the Cambridge bit came about. My job title is EAL teacher. EAL stands for English as an additional language teacher. I think.... Well anyway i teach from Kindergarten right up until what would be years five and six in England. So a huge mix of students.



I’m not going to lie that i found out at my volunteer school, the kids i taught were my favourite age group of about twelve to fifteen year olds. More mature but not mature enough to not find me making funny noises and being stupid whilst teaching them funny. Whilst also listening to the teacher. However these age groups provide a... shall we say interesting challenge? Its good for allsorts of experience such as classroom management, writing tests, absolute beginners and perhaps in a year i will say i never want to leave. For now though i have had a couple of moments of fondly looking at that other older age group. Not to say i haven’t enjoyed it here. My colleagues are fantastic. My bosses are great and its quite tight knit. Most of my colleagues i regularly am in contact with on a daily basis are predominately Filipino. With whom i have worked with before and i know how great they are so when i found that out i was very interested to get started.



Now i have to be careful with what i say about the students for obvious reasons. Though i will say this most are great, some are good, some are okay and some are challenges. When i say challenges they aren’t ‘oh god what am i doing here?’ they are challenges of ‘okay, how can i get them involved today?’ Which, again, is great for experience. With that in mind i believe all these kids are fairly sheltered as its a very good school so most kids haven’t had an exactly normal upbringing. Although ask yourself if you had lots of money would you not treat your child to the absolute best? I know i would. So i’m sure the reason some children might say ‘my house is bigger than this school.’ Is because truthfully, it is and they are just telling me. They don’t necessarily know that its not normal to have that.



I personally believe that in a year my khmer will be a lot better than it is now. So much so i could possibly work in a public school. So i could access the less privileged child. I think this because on my first day of being here, the children did their morning exercise and a beggar and his child walked past the schools gate looking for rubbish to pick up and sell/live off. Then i had what i’d call a bit of epiphany, i realised that those less privileged children are the ones i want to help. The ones that need english to get started and begin to live. As more and more this is becoming a world where you need English to start making money. Whereas these kids here are just like english young ‘uns they speak great english, spelling and writing leaves a little to be desired (which is fine as i wouldn’t have a job otherwise) but speaking you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between an english kid of the same age and these.



However seeing that poor beggar kid it struck me that at some point i need to work in a place where i can begin to help these poor children. Maybe in a year i’ll say you know what? I can speak khmer lets go start work in a public school. Maybe in a year I could also say I love these kids here and i don’t wanna work in no stinkin’ high school especially with my awful khmer. That’s for the future to decide, i have no idea yet. You never know what might happen. For the foreseeable future though i know for now that i’ll be here for at least year. I also know as i was wisely told in an eighteenth birthday card:



Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might.

Ecclesiastes 9:10



That is for certain. For the future i may not think teaching this age group is my favourite but i know i will throw all i can into it. As that’s what this school deserves. Nothing half-assed. For the future is far away and we can only live in the now, so we might as well, work now and make a decision later on what we to do as we never know what might happen.



The other week i was speaking about taking time to talk to the people you see everyday and how i was talking to my friends at the local mart. Well this week i found out that one of my friends is living in a house with four bedrooms and one bathroom with ten other people. He has gotten a full scholarship to a university and is working his socks off to make sure he makes his parents proud. He sleeps on the floor of his house. Plus he is here all by himself. Its bordering on illegal what his living conditions are like but hes the happiest bubbliest person i’ve met and i always enjoy my time with him. For example the other day he tried to say the phrase ‘Working hard or hardly working.’ However he got it wrong so what came out was ‘Working hard or hard working.’ I was in stitches. Good effort though. To be honest thats the first time i’ve heard him get something wrong. Then theres me speaking awful khmer and helps anyway he can for me to learn.



Beautiful place, beautiful people.



Link for the day : I couldn’t find something that would fit this text. So have a listen to some rather rousing classical music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nz0b4STz1lo