As our organization propels itself ever-forwards, the skills and abilities of our teams are growing and developing too. With the award of several grants specific to staff development, we have been able to put more and more resources into our teams, and the resulting push is in turn causing our entire organization to “lift”. This is of course vital to the realization of our sustainability strategy, and to our overarching goal of constantly serving our students to the best of our abilities.
By enthusiastically committing to training and development opportunities, our staff are focusing on both the advancement of their individual careers and strengthening the impact of our organization well into the future.
As the team rises, our directors Christin, Sherry & Graham have been able to take on more coaching roles, while building new coaches among the Khmer staff and increasing capacity at our projects. From our HQ team of 7, who between them are responsible for Operations, Tertiary and Admin and keeping all our programs running, to the 20+ teachers and librarians we have in the field, each one is a vital piece of the PLF puzzle and plays a crucial role. Whether maintaining admin systems, collecting the essential student and financial data that allows us to deliver effective, efficient programming, or sharing new teaching techniques and developing curricula – all roles work together to ultimately lead to a meaningful and impactful education experience for our students.
Many of our amazing team are either former students themselves or came in during the early days of our organization and have evolved and grown along with us, making significant contributions to our development along the way. We believe in giving opportunities where we see enthusiasm and a thirst for growth, and we often train members into their entry teaching positions. We also strive to give all team members access to skills and development training.
With the staff shuffle in late 2023 and advancement of Sothy and Theada (who both previously held positions as Field Directors) into the new Teacher & Librarian Coordinator positions, we have been able to add even more pillars to our staff development strategies.
Soft Skills Training
We have just begun these sessions this year, and they are aimed at bringing teaching and non-teaching staff together at one location for fun team-building activities.
For example at Srayang Learning Center, our drivers and cookers, as well as the teams from the Preah Vihear primaries, all attended and it was their first time to experience this kind of training.
Sothy led sessions on Personality Types & Communication; Samnang talked about Workflow between teams; while Vannak shared tips on Stress Management.
“I am very happy after I learnt about this training, because l have met a lot PLF staff we can share some ideas and know more about each others. lt can help us a lot like to know more clearly about attitude all the staff and make us easy to communicate and to know about the leadership. The most interesting for me is the way to have us avoid from stress, example meditation or do exercise.”
Peer Coaching
Sothy & Theada have taken to the road to spend time with their teams across our locations, offering one-on-one coaching and small-group support as needed. Peer coaching ‘tours’ include one location team visiting another location, for example the English team from Chey recently visited Srayang for lesson observations, practice teaching, and activity sharing in a classroom setting. Enabling instant feedback and guidance, we are finding that these sessions are especially effective in quick learning and the application of new concepts and skills.
Teacher & Librarian Exchange
This annual event held in June is the most comprehensive in our training calendar, bringing together all teaching teams from across our locations for a 2-day skills sharing and discussion session. This year’s exchange went exceptionally well and was our biggest yet, as we were able to also include IT and E-Learning teachers as well as Grade 6 remedial teachers for the first time. Whole-group topics included teamwork, positive discipline, modern teaching skills and self-development, while breakout room sessions focussed on individual teaching areas. First time presenters Pich, Than and Phanna did fantastically well, and we got wonderful feedback from new and regular participants alike.
Not only all of the above, but this year was the first year that Sothy & Theada took the lead in organizing all aspects of the exchange!
Click through to watch this fun & energetic exchange and hear directly from the participants!
External Trainings
We also send key team members for external trainings when the opportunity arises. As well as yearly conferences such as CamTESOL, staff have also joined workshops on Leadership, Training the Trainer, and Communication & Conflict at Possibilities World in Siem Reap.
Sothy: “From this training, I learned how to do “Feedback Exchange” for negative or positive behavior of people which I will apply for my work. Also I can realize which level of the leadership that I stand nowadays and this has encouraged me to move forward to my next level. It’s my motivation and pushes me to move forward.”
Learning Tours to other schools and NGOs
Showing a hunger to continuously learn and hone their skills, our teachers at Chey recently requested to see external teachers in action. Sothy connected with Caring for Cambodia and led teachers Sreyleak, Chenda, and Saveth to observe English classes at one of their schools. With a similar model to PLF, the team were able to see both a government school class as well as an NGO class. They benefited by picking up new activity ideas and were really impressed with one of the government teacher’s lesson planning.
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We have seen how quickly our team can learn and apply new concepts and skills to their work, and we are so proud of their desire to be constantly learning and moving themselves forward. With that movement, they are taking many present and future students along with them.
All of these advancements are strengthening our organization and the very foundation on which our students learn and thrive.
Building our team and teachers so that we can collectively serve students to the best of our abilities is a continuous and vital process. Your donation can help ensure that we have the strongest teachers who create even stronger students!
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