Archive for June, 2007
Kindergarten and Playcentre
I’m in New Zealand for a bit with family, so I got to visit a playcentre, which is the main kindergarten model that we’re following. It’s funny – the two most popular ‘alternative’ learning styles, Reggio and Montessori both started in slums too. Playcentre is still pretty working class as well.
Two parents working in the East Wanganui Playcentre answered lots of questions patiently and showed me around and passed me some of their teaching materials. Jolene’s going to be really pleased – so nice to have a proven worked-out curriculum that we can adapt rather than invent from scratch. It’s got a lot of Maori cultural stuff which means we can replace that with Khmer cultural stuff and maybe even some Vietnamese, localising it.
Playcentre is child-led learning – basically, it’s loosely structured kindy for kids from 0-6 by having lots of parent volunteers, parent training and quite laid-back. One of my sister’s put her kids through playcentre which is how I know about it, and the best thing for us is the strong emphasis on parent involvement.
So far, what we’ve noticed is that the kids in Grade School are struggling with fine motor control – they’re amazing little gymnasts, great balance and so on, but they struggle with pencils and scissors. Plus pretty limited literacy exposure.
Playcentre in NZ has to worry about different things – food hygiene for them is more about healthy snacks and disposable gloves, they’re big on outdoor play and their parents want to be there, plus a huge amount of community and government support.
But the same kind of toys – puppets, basic metric blocks, playdough and fingerpainting. The same getting parents to work together, and also thanfully, the same ‘how do we get untrained people to being really great child-centered teachers’ problem, and lots of really good ideas.
They do this neat thing with folders, the kind where you can slip pages into the plastic leaves? Each child gets a ‘public’ folder, for their artwork, special events reports (field trips with photos!) and a week’s worth of daily write-ups on one page. This is all positive stuff. Anything negative goes into the private folder. So the child has this lovely happy document, a growing scrapbook of them and their progress.
I’ve promised to email them some photos of our kindergartners when I next see them. Wish I’d taken some of the playcenter so our teachers could see their place!
1 commentThe Get Ready! girls.
I walked into the Get Ready! classroom at the top of the Alexandra Family House and was astounded by how different the girls looked in a month. I last saw them at the slums where they were interviewed by Sophon and Dale.
The girls at the interview with Dale!
Their appearance now is neat; they spoke and smiled a lot more.
This time, I saw them concentrating on their lessons and listening to Sok Lee and Jolene.
That day’s lesson was on budgeting their money for needs and wants. Poor Mr Rith had too many wants and needs for him to afford on his monthly earnings so the girls had to help him decide which item he had to buy.
Jolene had prepared English worksheets in advance, so the girls copied the translation written by Sok Lee (who understands and writes in both English and Khmer) off the board.
As most of our Get Ready! girls have little education, Sok Lee went about the classroom helping the girls who need help with their Khmer writing.
On the walls are words of encouragement from Northlight School in Singapore. Apart from the screaming of children in the street below, all was quiet except for the scribbling of pens.
I walked around the room looking at the walls. Pieces of paper telling each girl what their qualities are pasted to the wall to remind the girls that they mean something to their peers.
As I walked quietly away from the makeshift classroom, I could hear the noise beginning as the group discussions started (the girls were supposed to discuss Mr Rith’s shopping list for the month in their groups). I was quite amused by the fact that people who want education do not have enough, and people who didn’t want to go to school (like some students I know in Singapore) were forced to go to school.
No commentsTrustees’ report!
I’ve just put up our very first trustee’s report, this one covering May 2007. It’s good for us to keep a detailed list of what we were up to, but phew that took a lot of work!
We’re trying to be a lot more systematic about reports and processes. For instance, in May, we had a report of abuse for some kids. The matter was discussed in person, by email and on paper, but there was no single record tracking the actual incident, what happened afterwards and so on. We need something that can be popped inside each kids’ record file, so that we can get a nice big fat file of each child’s history and not miss out on anything.
It’s a bit scary how much work we have to get done. We’re looking for another volunteer in Singapore, preferably someone terribly clever and well-organized yet idealistic enough to do all that work for very little money *g*
No commentsWorking nights
We had a bit of an issue with our kids in the vocational training program because although they were turning up for class and are generally awesome enthusiastic lovely kids, they were falling asleep.
Catnaps, yawns, plain falling over with exhaustion.
They sent them out at night instead.
The girls were exhausted, scared because of course ajah collecting at night is a lot more dangerous in a badly-lit crime-ridden city, and not one of the parents had approached us about this. Nor had the girls. It was just how things are. The girls didn’t want to lose the chance at training, the parents saw it as a double-win for them.
I remember going to visit one family were the girl was so exhausted, she’d just fallen asleep in a hammock with her baby brother cradled up to her. A string hammock slung under one of the slum shacks, garbage all around, and she was too tired to do more than open her eyes at the visitors and go back to sleep.
We’re incredibly reluctant to hand cash over because most of the parents will spend it unproductively, especially with abuse and addiction problems. But we had to figure out a way to get the parents to agree to give up the US$30-US$60 a month these girls might earn risking themselves each night.
What we’ve come up with is the Food Box. Twice a week, the girls receive a bundle of dry foods (no fridges or real storage space) that make up US$10 value each week. They’re the basics – rice, fish sauce, iodized salt, onions, washing powder and so on, and because the family doesn’t have to buy them anymore, they have more disposable income, as if we had given them cash. But this way at least, we know the kids are getting fed a little better.
Sometimes I just want to grab these sweet bright kids and bundle them off to a lovely boarding house with three big meals and art lessons and their own wardrobes and – they deserve so much. It’s hard to take a deep breath and say ‘only this much’, because we’re working for the whole community and we have so few resources to share among them.
Then I look at my own teenage daughter and think of the huge social safety net I have – government services, clean water, education, friends and family able and willing to help. It’s always a tough call.
We called in all the parents, visited the half that didn’t turn up! and got them to agree explicitly to no child labour (domestic chores don’t count). We’re asking the local authorities to keep an eye on them as well, because none of the girls in the slums should be going out at night, there’ve just been too many incidents.
Some photos of Kindergarten at Churten House
The littlies all around the big low table that’s our main piece of furniture at the new Kindergarten. Classes are split into two sessions, morning and afternoon, of about four hours length. The first batch get breakfast and the second batch get lunch, plus snacks.
Riverkids was given quite a lot of children’s toys, and we’ve been holding back the toys for the little kids for a while, so it’s lovely to see them finally hard at ‘work’ with all the little children.
helpers. They help for one session and then go to the Grade School for at least some basic literacy and a chance at catching up for the other half of the day.
We don’t have much happening just yet beyond showers, breakfast, lots of play with toys and a simple structured curriculum. Jolene has put together two months curriculum based on themes, and she’s working with the teachers to get a much more play and child centered style of teaching instead of the usual drills and repetition that the teachers are used to.
Riverkids’ Myspace up!
Hello everyone,
The Myspace spot for Riverkids Project is finally ready! Well, it’s not as good as I would have wanted it, but I promise to add things as I go!
This is our Myspace URL: http://www.myspace.com/riverkidsproject
Add us to your Friends list if you want more updates on what we are doing!
No commentsA Rainy Saturday Afternoon at Steven House
It is now the rainy season in Phnom Penh and kids are running in the streets enjoying the cool weather. What do kids at the Riverkids Project do on such Saturdays?
I arrived at the area near the slums where the Steven House is located. The sky was gloomy and Joanne’s face reflected this.
At the opening of the usually crowded alley which leads to the Steven House, there was no one to be seen. Braving the rain with our seemingly puny umbrellas, we head over to the Steven House.
The Saturday art lesson was just ending as we stepped in.
On the whiteboard was the art work for the day.
Jolene’s pretty butterfly!
Jolene had pasted the children’s work on the wooden wall so the kids can see their own artwork decorating the walls. She used paper glue to paste them on and it amazed me to see that it actually worked!
Due to the downpour outside, Jolene could not leave the schoolroom so she decided to teach the kids some nursery rhymes, complete with jiggles.
Finally, the rain abated a little and Jolene went back on her motorcycle. The kids ran out of school and into the slums, rejoicing in the rain. School’s over for the day.
