In this sixth year, Bambujaya is a newly introduced project to all the students in Liger from one lady, named Elan. Bambujaya will be also a new private school in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. It will open to any kids in the city with a cool, developed, and Khmer curriculum. So, where can they get the curriculum for those kids? And how can they try to find new ideas for the curriculum?
Ellan is a wise, Cambodian lady who owned many businesses in Phnom Penh. She is the director of the Bambujaya project and the person who initiated this amazing idea. Ellan has a strong relation with Liger Leadership Academy within many different projects, for example, Hidden Voices. By seeing the potential and the reliable abilities from the Liger students, she decided to carry the Bambujaya project with them. It will a remarkable opportunity for the Liger students to help Cambodian kids through education.
Students had to write a small application by answering the listed questions, and it will be available for only six students. As this went, the students could feel the sense of competition among each other. They tried to promote many talents/skills and abilities to the Lead Learning Facilitator, Caroline, best as possible. As the listed of six students came out, I was the chosen one. It was an amazing feeling because I can see my potential through this cool project. I know after this project, I will be able to take a big step to enhance Cambodia’s education. The other chose fives were Malika, Sopheak, David, and Ketya. In addition, we will get pay for this project because our job is curriculum developer. All the money we receive will go to our bank account and support our future education.
We started working on grade one; we gathered all the textbooks and teacher guidebooks. There are three different subjects: Khmer, math, and social science. I was first working on the math subject and continuously working on the other two subjects. Our methodology of modifying the learning lessons in each book was very simple. Here were the main points we focused on: photo enhancement, content modification, teaching strategy enhancement, and technology enhancement. Furthermore, we also introduced new ideas such as cross-curricular connections, additional exercises/activities, and additional extensions and scaffolding.
After working with this methodology over many weeks, our team observed that it was not good to keep working with this method. We expressly noticed that it was extremely inefficient even though this method was actually working with us of focusing on the details in each subject. But it was time-consuming and really hard to finish all the three books. Thus, we had to change. We started to brainstorm all the important lessons in each subject. I was assigned to work on science subject with a lesson, time. Our new methodology is called, “Add-Ons.” Instead of changing the whole curriculum, Bambujaya can still use the government books, but when it comes to specific lessons, for example, time, the teacher can use our Add-Ons to extend the students’ knowledge of understanding.
To initiate an Add-On for each lesson, we were needed to focus on six majors components. There were….. These were the facets that all of us as a curriculum construction needed to consider since education needs to involve those six points. I was assigned to design an Add-On for a lesson in Science which is time (day and night). Basically, Caroline and other members were parts of planning out this specific lesson. We were brainstorming it on a paper. After, it was my responsibility to bring all of the ideas from the brainstorm to organize it as a formal lesson. All of the members including me were using an online presentation, Prezi to present the Add-On; simultaneously, we also need a digital copy of the document.
When all of the Add-Ons were checked with Caroline and finalized with everybody in the team, it was the time to present to our curriculum communication who had the knowledge in constructing a curriculum. Our curriculum communication, his name is Virak. So we printed out our Add-Ons in Prezi and sent to him. Once Virak finished with the checking, he would come to us to confirm any information if he had any confusions and feedbacks. Working only for two hours each day for five days in every week was not enough for us. Therefore, we had planned out a weekend meeting with Virak to go over the works.
Eventually, the seven weeks had passed, and we need to move on. For the last week, we met up with Virak to look at the overview lessons for the next grade (second grade) after finishing the first grade. We had a small meeting with him to start planning out the lessons that are needed for the second grade. After that, it is all about the second team of Bambujaya to continue and keep up the incredible work for us. By becoming a curriculum designer for Bambujaya is an honor for me; I am now truly designating myself as the “change agent” of Cambodia. Developing the education system is one of my dream that I extremely want to pursue hereafter. Working with Bambujaya is a great start for me and I will promise myself to work until the top.