Teacher Training
By focusing on educating the youth in Cambodia we are looking to the future, but without high quality teachers we can accomplish nothing. Our teacher training & support program reaches the government teachers who teach the core curriculum as well as our own teachers leading our extracurricular programs.
The program is two-fold: enabling teachers to support themselves with a liveable wage, and providing teacher training to continually improve the quality of instruction at the schools we support. Meaningful wages mean teachers can better support themselves; teacher training means they can better support their students.
Teacher Training
While our programs work holistically and in tandem to promote access to education, teacher training lies at the very heart of making that education high quality. This is especially salient in a country recovering from a genocide that targeted educators. Government teachers in remote areas are often teaching the highest grade they reached themselves, and the need for up-skilling is enormous.
Many of our extracurricular teachers are former PLF students who have themselves completed (or are in the process of completing) university degrees, while others were selected from the community showing an eager spirit for learning and passing on that vigor.
All of our teachers have been brought up in a learning environment that favors repetition over creativity, and only those who have graduated from university are fortunate enough to receive pedagogical training.
We provide teacher training to all teachers by sending them to the local teacher training college, bringing in teacher trainers from across the world, and offering continued education through university scholarships.
Additionally, with the staff shuffle in late 2023 and advancement of Sothy and Theada (who both previously held positions as Field Directors) into new Teacher & Librarian Coordinator positions, we have been able to add even more pillars to our staff development strategies. Sothy & Theada now lead on our annual Teacher Exchange as well as regular Peer Coaching and one-on-one professional development sessions throughout the year.
These opportunities allow our teachers to build on their knowledge with new techniques for review, engaging classroom activities, and broaden their skill sets with knowledge they can take in and make their own.
We have seen how quickly our team can learn and apply these 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.
Teacher Stipends
The government salary for teachers teaching the core curriculum, especially in rural areas is low, although it has improved in recent years. Poor government teacher salaries combined with a lack of support from the government to equip rural schools in poor areas, has lead to the pervasive habit of teachers charging students a fee to attend class. Some of it goes in their pocket. Some of it pays for driving 10 km to get some chalk. Regardless, this way of going about things means that only the students who can pay these fees can attend and finish school, while the poorest students must drop out.
PLF works inside rural public primary schools in two provinces. In these schools, two of which are quite remote, our agreement with the government staff is that we will provide materials, infrastructure, libraries, kindergartens, breakfast, extracurricular classes, teacher training and other supports that makes teaching in a poor community a much better gig. In return they don’t charge the students for classes. The government doesn’t require certain things from the teachers that PLF does; things like keeping accurate attendance, keeping records of scores, keeping any kind of records at all, not allowing cheating, and several other things that in the West we might take for granted. In exchange for learning and then doing these tasks regularly, they are rewarded with a very modest bi-annual bonus, timed at the two moments in the year when people are most needing cash.
PLF has its own staff working alongside government teachers: English Teachers, Librarians, Cooks, IT Teachers, Science, Music and Art Teachers. They are not paid by the government, they are strictly PLF staff, recruited mostly from among our own graduates, now educated and trained and back working in their home communities. Their own children come to our schools. The wheel has turned.
