what i’ve learned in peace corps cambodia [pt. 12]

how to teach, how to learn.

Any person beginning a teaching position with no prior teaching experience can be assured that they will be learning just as much as they will be teaching. My teaching position in Cambodia has been no different. In some ways, being a teacher at a Cambodian High School has made me feel like an ultra-teacher — standing in front of an 80 student classroom, speaking two languages. And in some ways, often on the very same days, it made me feel like a non-teacher, tirelessly commanding the attention of 80 inattentive, disruptive students and finding every other sentence lost in translation.

As strange as it may seem, I never really thought of myself as a teacher here. I am a teacher, of course, on paper. My contract states that I am an ‘English Teacher and Teacher Trainer’. But it still surprises me just a bit when students see me buying vegetables at the market and yell ‘Hello, Teacher!!’ Maybe it’s just because I felt so far outside of my element for the first year, a 22 year old college graduate being dropped amongst the Cambodian rice fields, given the command ‘now start teaching!’

Fortunately, being a teacher in Cambodia is a highly respected profession, so I sweatily (albeit sometimes not so happily) took on the challenge. And I began to learn to teach and, simultaneously, my students learned from my teaching. (It didn’t take long, however, to realize that the high school students aren’t nearly as cute and innocent as the little kids that run next to me on my bike as I ride to school, screaming ‘HELLLOOOO!!!’ and reaching for high-fives.)

So, although the majority of my students saw me as the white guy in front of class that they couldn’t understand, the select students that really applied themselves and utilized me as the learning resource that I was sent here to be will certainly look back on these two years and be grateful for these unique opportunities.

And thankfully, I feel like I was able to teach my co-teachers just as much as my students during these two years, answering all their questions, teaching them new words, teaching methods, and the importance of actually showing up to school.

So I came here to teach. And I did that. But sometimes I feel like Cambodia has taught me more than I ever could have expected. About life. About friends. About myself. About the importance of family. Some of us volunteers have jokingly said that Peace Corps is a ”shortcut to maturity.” It may not be so far from the truth, though. The pounding, tropical sun may have taken a bit of my youthfulness away, and Cambodia’s ubiquitous red and blue plastic chairs may have given my posture a turn for the worse, but these two years have surely done more good than harm.

Thanks, Cambodia.