Category: My Liger Learning

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.

           This was the last round of exploration for my school year 2016-2017 and guessed what! It was another exploration which continuously processed throughout the year for four rounds. I was on the last exploration, and I was really excited to put on my entrepreneurial thinking mind. Beside me in this exploration, there were other students; I could say that they are all my inspirations because this project was mixed with different and skilled students in distinguished areas. The first start of this big and last project of waste management was reviewing and reading all the past papers written by previous students including business plan, feasibility studies, and surveys. Reading through all those papers were really helpful for all us to process the project continuously and higher expectation.

           Waste Management 4 was about how to reach people in the community with our business plan and promoting to people in community compost business or idea. I thought that these were big tasks for all of us. Therefore, my teammates and I started to prepare questions about compost for the villagers in the community. Therefore, we could evaluate the knowledge of understanding of compost from the villagers. This was set as our first interview, and it wasn’t successful. I felt that it wasn’t progressive, so everybody had to change some of the questions.

            The second interview started; everybody prepared, confident including me. For the start, it went pretty well because of receiving more detailed information even though there was some interviewees didn’t interest toward our project. At the end of the interview, we got two customers who were willing to participate in our project. My feeling was in the sky because finally, we had someone who showed appreciation for our project. We received a man and a woman. For the man, we were happy to have him, but his worry was that we wouldn’t be able to find markets for him if he decided to make compost. On the other hand, the woman said she was really delighted and supportive of our plan, but she’s lack of equipment and budget.

         Coming back from the interview, we decided to leave the man and joined the woman of developing her idea with compost. Some of our teammates started to come up with the idea of building the compost house for her. All of us knew that she’s low on budget. Therefore, the compost house we designed, must build in low price. Moreover, we also designed for middle class and higher class families. I was so proud of everybody because they started to put on their big with good comprehension of our society.

            Besides learning in class, we took a trip to Sihanouk Ville. We went to a place called “Panic.” It is a place where they grow a lot of natural products including vegetables, fruits, and other local products in Cambodia. Excitingly, I would love to live there so much because the service with guests was outstanding, the food was amazing, and the accommodation was mind-blowing. The whole entire place was natural filling with fresh air. I learned a lot from Panic’s workers; I learned how to make new types of composts, a natural pesticide, and natural fertilizer. I saw many healthy plants which I wanted to eat. Last, we came back from the trip and continued our project until the end the round.   

Our presentation: https://prezi.com/4iuelyawifef/waste-management/

          Game design was where it came to meet my skills. I love to design; it is a skill that I think I’m good at. This was a three round exploration meaning that it went through three times of rounds of the school year schedule. I was on the last round with the other four friends who had similar skills as mine. I did really enjoy working in small team where it’s easy to communicate and collaborate. The style of the game was already planned since the first round team; it was decided to focus in one main theme, “climate change.”

           I can sense that the argument of the existence of climate change is really controversial. For myself, I do think it’s existing in this contemporary world. Therefore, it was a wise decision to educate people through our game of climate change, especially this country, Cambodia because there aren’t a lot of people including students, adults, and kids know about the updates of the world such as this problem. I expressly felt that this was an opportunity for me to be a change agent to change my country and others in the term of education people with creativity. It was an honor to be part of the member which I could distribute all of my thinking and dedicate my passion through this exploration. Furthermore, seeing my country changes little bit by little bit; it is an evolution.

          To illuminate people’s mind with the idea of the game, it is game that had similarity to another board game called “Pandemic.” Personally, I could say that it’s confusing. It’s confusing to play, to understand, to have fun, and to share the instruction to others, but it’s still a good, developing game. We thought of how to implement this game to many government school throughout Cambodia as much as possible. One solution was encompassing a new feature to the game of establishing Q and A cards (Question and Answer cards). The Q and A cards will include all the questions from the government textbooks in each grade. Hence, students can play with the knowledge of their grade.

          Currently, we didn’t have any budget to print out the board game, but we started to write a formal paper and submit it as a grant. I positively felt that there will be someone or enterprise willing to donate their budgets for this amazing and mind blowing project. There were a lot of inputs of great effort and determination from students and facilitators who willing to work really hard and smart in order to make this happen.

             Khmer Rouge was the third round exploration of our fifth year. This was an exploration an exploration continuing in all rounds of the last year school schedule. Seriously, when I first entered the classroom, I was already feeling terrified of what I was going to learn. I knew that it was going to be hard and emotional to learn about all the tragic periods. The class was started with a small grouped projects, we were assigned with different tragic period of genocide. There were Armenian genocide, Bosnian genocide, Holocaust, and Rwandan genocide. The genocide that was stood out for my me the most was Rwandan genocide because of the reason that this genocide last only 100 days.

            Besides learning about other genocides, we also learned about our genocide. Cambodia had also met a tragic period that was last a little bit over than three years. Indescribable is always the word I like to describe this depressed situation. Many citizen were killed by those cruel leaders who never had mercy on people. Anger is also encompassing this genocide; Cambodians lost their beloved people including family, relatives, and friends. Moreover, they lost their possession of the properties such as: house, land, money, etc. This is a serious anger that leaking out of all the victims.

          Historically, Cambodia was one the great country in Asia; I can’t imagine how remarkable Cambodia was. Our country had lead by many kings and queens, and the period that stood out the most was Angkor Empire. It was the time of period where Cambodia enlarged its own territory throughout Southeast Asia. Laos, Thailand, part of Vietnam were also our territory. The king, Jayavarman the seven, was leading his country and citizens to the glorious life which I couldn’t imagine. Personally, I would love to invent a time machine which I can travel to that time of period. I would love to see view of the social structure, art system, and government structure. Art was a strong foundation of building up this period because there were many temples that full with carvings.

          In this exploration also, we went to two locations that are related to the theme of Khmer Rouge genocide which were the killing field and S21. There was ton of killing fields spread out through Cambodian land. It was where they killed and tortured the people. In each killing field, there were also a lot of digged pits for throwing the killed people. It was my first time visited there to study my nation’s history. I felt really uncomfortable, pitty, hard for those victims and killed people there. I couldn’t express my emotion, but it was extremely hard to take all the information from there. There were skulls, clothes, bones, weapons, digged holes, and many more. After the visit, I felt terrified, dizzy, and emotional.

On the last week of this exploration, we were preparing the products. There were audio tour, poems, songs, posters, and skit. Seriously, when we did our skit our the audience, many emotions clearly displayed in their face; tears were coming down continuously. We knew that we couldn’t travel back to fix all those problem, but it’s our duty to educate the citizens in this country to learn and understand the negative impacts had affected us in this present day. My advice to every nation to study hard about your own history and take those information as your lesson which we can avoid or follow in order to develop the country.

Here are the documentary that we published: