IB Asia Pacific Newsletter

Quarter Three, 2007 

Projects

Teacher Training Projects

As in previous months, the Schools to Schools has conducted a number of teacher training projects in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia. Our latest Aceh workshops occurred at the end of July followed by another 2.5 day session on Assessment at the end of August. The background of our experienced trainers is always diverse and was no different this time around. Kathy Derrick and Lyndall von Onselen from the International School of Singapore along with Indonesian teachers, Dwi Murtayu and Virna Angela, from the Al Jabr Islamic School and the Sekolah Bina Tunas Bangsa, respectively, successfully led a workshop on Classroom Management Strategies with almost complete attendance.

Since the last quarterly newsletter, the Sri Lanka Early Childhood Care and Development Project has tremendously improved in its operational systems to ensure smooth implementations of the workshops and quality support of our trainer volunteers. This could not have been achieved without the contribution and constructive feedback from stakeholders and other supporters of this work. We greatly appreciate all efforts and continued good will that is the life of our program. 

We hope that this strong support will continue to motivate our prospective trainers in leading upcoming workshops.

Partnership Projects

With additional hands and heads to support our work, the Schools to Schools has greater capacity to manage the other half of its mission, that is to facilitate partnerships between worlds to help improve access to a quality education. The Vienna International School in Austria has been involved in our work since our inception and continues to contribute both financially and through student contacts. Their generosity has helped the completion (within only six months!) of a preschool near Matara, the city in which our partner NGO, Sarvodaya’s HQ resides. The success of this project inspired their wish to construct another two preschools in the Southern Province of Sri Lanka, whilst continuing the further facilitation of preschool number 1, through furniture, teacher support, and child recreational areas.

There were several school visits to Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Cambodia, with the purpose of strengthening existing partnerships and to inspire new educational activities for all students involved.  We hope that comprehensive details can soon be uploaded and shared on the Schools to Schools Network site that will be launched pretty soon! Thank you to all for your continued support and patience.

Please never hesitate to contact us should you have any inquiries or feedback, as we are always happy to assist!

Glynn Richards, Projects Manager
Han Nguyen, Projects Assistant

Suryanie Ismail, Projects Services Officer

Roy Wee, Web and Media Officer
Email: projects@ibo.org

Hambantota, Sri Lanka

Over the summer break I had the amazing experience of co-leading a five-day workshop for the Early Childhood Care and Development Programme in Hambantota, Sri Lanka. This project is managed by Glynn Richards. The participants came from many districts around the south of Sri Lanka and they have all suffered personally as a result of the tsunami.

The commitment and determination to overcome adversity and develop new ideas to best serve the needs of the children in their care was inspiring. The teachers have little access to modern materials, quite large class sizes but have a rich natural environment to utilize for resources.

The interpreters played an invaluable role for the week by providing a historical and cultural perspective for us to best understand the needs of the teachers, in addition to translating all sessions in Sinhala.

Overall it was an awesome week spent with wonderful people.

David Kainey

United World College of South East Asia

Singapore

Queenwood in Cambodia

On an evening in June an excitedly expectant group of eighteen students accompanied by three teachers arrived in a sultry Phnom Penh. Our school is Queenwood School for Girls, a non-denominational K-12 school set on Balmoral beach in the leafy, lower north shore of Sydney. None of the students had set foot in Cambodia before. Neither had the two teachers from our junior school who had arrived the day before to conduct a week of demonstration teaching.

As soon as I heard about the CTTP (Cambodia Teacher Training Project), I wanted to know more. I coordinate the CAS program at Queenwood School and have been keen to develop our school’s commitment to service in an international context. This project has everything I was looking for. It is dedicated to improving the teaching and learning opportunities for Cambodian trainee teachers, teaching staff and students. For the demonstration teacher, teaching in this environment provides valuable learning experiences. For students the possibilities of developing a real understanding of service whilst actively engaged in giving to children from another culture is invaluable. These are just some of the learning opportunities that this well managed and sustainable project offers, ensuring a mutually beneficial and for some, a life changing experience.

In 2006, our school community we focused on raising funds for the “Wish List”. This is a list of materials and items that was put together by the principals of the four primary schools which are part of the CTTP. We have committed USD10,000 to be spent on renovating classrooms and I am delighted that the first one of these has just been completed. We will see this and more for ourselves in December when a new group of teachers and students return to the schools in Tak Mau, near Phnom Penh.

The concept for our students to be involved came from a belief that they could offer something more valuable than unskilled labour. I felt that renovating classrooms was better left to the local Cambodian people. What our 15 – 17 year old girls could offer, apart from abundant enthusiasm and exuberance was fluency in English. It being Cambodia’s new second language and our native one, made it natural for us to teach and thereby in a small way support the development of English within the Cambodian education system.

With the help of an ESL trained teacher at Queenwood, a lesson plan emerged that focused on colours and clothing. The combination of English with Art became a powerful mix assisting everyone to communicate effectively and for the Cambodian children in particular to express themselves. Not only did our students have meaningful involvement with other children from a very different culture through this classroom interaction but the beginnings of cultural exchange began to occur through the impromptu games that became a feature of our teaching sessions. The girls taught the lesson four times, once in each of the schools. By the second time they delivered it their confidence was soaring by the third time they were improvising and by the fourth time we (adult) teachers were well and truly redundant.

I consider myself lucky to be returning in December. I am already looking forward to being able to consolidate and develop the program and on arrival observe another bunch of savvy teenagers wide eyed in wonder at the country that is Cambodia.

Nick Mavrogordato

CAS Coordinator

Queenwood School for Girls

Australia