Srey Leak, English teacher at Chey
“I have been teaching here for 5 years. Before that I was teaching at another organization working nearby, teaching primary school students. I heard about this job from my friend Sil who was also teaching here at Chey, he told me that they needed staff so I applied. I came here because I wanted to get new experience and to teach older grades.
Here I teach middle & high school students. They already understand enough, and can do different activities with them. I feel good teaching them and I like to make it interesting for them. I am very, very happy when I am teaching. I was always interested in that, and I started aged 10 to teach the small children in my village. I taught them Khmer and some English that I knew. And I thought ‘wow I really like this’, so even then I knew that in my future I would be a teacher.
I really like it here. Compared to my previous job, we have a lot of training, we have exchanges and specialist volunteer teachers, so I can get a lot of experience from all of that. It makes us develop as teachers and for ourselves. It helps us grow, as well as the students grow.
I like to make my lessons very interesting and active. I give them a lot of different activities. Some of these I learn from other teachers during teacher exchanges and especially peer coaching. Especially our trainer Sothy, he is so good and experienced, and he’s so very happy when teaching. I watch him and then I want to teach in the same way. I can see his teaching style and pick it up, recognise it, create something and then make a new one for me.
I also look a lot on YouTube in my spare time to research and find interesting things and sometimes I add or change them a bit. I see that it makes the students happy, engage with the activity and make them not to day dream in class.
Also I encourage my students to speak English and practice as much they can by themselves. This is how I learned also. I only go to ordinary school, my family quite poor so I could not go to special English school, but I practiced by myself, I speak to the mirror, I read a lot and now I listen to TV and movies too. I tell them do the same to improve.
I love this job. PLF is very good for me. The team, the trainings, everything and everyone is very good. I want to stay always with PLF and I hope my position can grow too in the future.
To me, education is very important. If we don’t have education we cannot do anything. Difficult to develop ourselves, hard to live. I know that when we don’t have education we are poor. That’s why when I’m teaching I want to share what I have to the students. I want to get all of them to grow.”
You can meet more of our amazing team and read their stories on the People of PLF page!
Want to assist PLF’s continuous growth, and help propel our organization ever forward? Your donation today will contribute to crucial sustainability for the future. Check out the link: Creating Our Dream Team!
Other ways to join our mission:
For as little as $10 a month, you could contribute to the ongoing education of our students. $120 goes a long way in Cambodia: that’s 5 village children on the road to education, with access to school and clean drinking water for half a year. Or a million other things, all of which coalesce into the tools needed for life to change for the better!
Follow our Instagram or Facebook accounts. Like, comment on or share our posts – Do it. It’s free. And it’s a huge help for us!
Have some questions?
Email us for a chat at [email protected]
Recent Comments