CAMBODIAN PROVERBS Collected by MEY Sopheakdei, 2012 If you are shy with your teacher, you will never be wise. If you are shy with your wife, you will never have children. Don’t believe the sky; don’t believe the stars. Don’t believe your daughter when she says she has no lover. Don’t believe your mother when she says she has no debts. The rich should take care of the poor, like a skirt that wraps the body.

Don’t let an angry man wash dishes; don’t let a hungry man guard rice. If you are mean, be mean so that people respect you. If you are stupid, be stupid so that they pity you. If a tiger lies down, don’t say, “The tiger is showing respect.” If you have some tasty food, don’t keep it for tomorrow. If you suspect your wife of being beautiful, don’t let her walk behind you. Keeping you is not profitable for us; discarding you is no loss. The children of the poor become soldiers. The children of the rich become policemen. The children of the high cadre study in foreign countries.




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New Year Party 2015

Next year, we plan to offer books and pens to 200 students in our villages. Please help and support us

Seeking Volunteers for Teaching English at rural Siem Reap

I love you so much.

This time next week I will go to SR.

                  Future Teaching Career Goals

Everyone has their own ambitions and perspective toward life. For me, my ambition is that I want to be a professor in the near future. Actually, I have my own plan. After I graduate from PUC, I am going to open a language schools in my province and I will pursue my MA in TESOL when my schools run smoothly. I am going to be a language teacher forever because I have my own school.  Being a language teacher, I will have chance to help young generation in term of educating them to have knowledge and morality in lives.

To be a successful educator, I always try to set and achieve my future professional goals. Having been teaching English as a foreign and as a second language for over 6 years since 2005, I have achieved many long term and short term goals. From next month, I will be a full time English language in private school in rural area, Siem Reap Province in which I am going to run my own language school by myself. This new challenging teaching position and language school director require me to set my new professional goals and try to accomplish those goals according to my timeline. To be a successful and passionate English teacher, Future Teaching Career Goals are:

1.     Although I am an English language educator with many years’ teaching experience, I feel it is very necessary for me to refine my knowledge of English language. As a professional language teacher, I must ensure to teach students the knowledge with 100% accuracy, and share the beauty and richness of global culture with my students. I must also learn the new technology which will enable me to teach and prepare the instructional materials which reflect 21^st century ideals for future ready students. Live and learn will always be my motto.

2.     I will take every opportunity to participate in ongoing professional development to get a thorough understanding of the National Standards of Foreign Language Teaching and Language Teaching Methodology. With the new approaches of language teaching I will design my curriculum, so that my students will have opportunities to collect, organize, interpret, evaluate and present information critically and creatively in a variety formats.

3.     With the accumulated past teaching experience, I will continue to study the new theories of methodology and pedagogy of language acquisition. Those theories will help me to discover new strategies to teach the target language in a communicative authentic context. Therefore, my students will apply what they learn in my class immediately in their daily life, and reinforce their newly learned language through the authentic communication.

4.     I will work as a liaison between the school and community to advocator English language by involving the parents in their children’ education and inviting the community to provide resources for my students to learn the culture and practice the target language.

5.     I will also work hard to bridge my school with the schools in Cambodia by establishing twin sister school system. I will invite English proficiency educators from varieties of places to teach my students English language and encourage my students to practice the language by using effective teaching materials and aid and use the language in the real world.

6.     I will pursue my Master Degree in TESOL to enlarge my knowledge in language teaching and finally, I will pursue my Ph.D.  

Reflection on Education without Character

Reflection

on

Education without Character

(Gandhi’s View)

Knowledge is very important for human beings who strive very hard to get and all human beings always seek to get knowledge and other skills in order to pursue their sustainable living. Moreover, proper education for human beings should be the single most important element in their lives. However, all people always look at people with their behavior and attitude in the society even though knowledge is important. Knowledge here is referred to skills. As dangerous as a little knowledge is, even more dangerous is much knowledge without a strong, principled character. Purely intellectual development without commensurate internal character development makes as much sense as putting a high-powered sports car in the hands of a teenager who is high on drugs. There are three disadvantages from education without character.

First of all, a person who has only knowledge without character is very dangerous to the society and the world. For example, high educated scientists produce nuclear weapons to destroy the world where they also live in. They use their knowledge to harm their families, friends, and the place where they are born. This is the kind of education without character.

Secondly, we must remember that becoming a doctor, an engineer, a businessman, a politician, an artist, a singer, a dancer, or musician or any other professional to make a living, is not the goal of life in itself, but it is the moral career that they have maintain. Actually, education without character in the career of doctor, engineer, businessman, politician or artist who will use his career to kill human being or destroy the society but these people are educated and have knowledge.

Thirdly, the person who gets education without character can destroy and harm to families and himself because he will act immorally in the society and family. Actually, people always say having knowledge is not enough to live in the society, but morality and discipline is the collectively part of the education.

In contrast, education doesn't mean merely preparing a student to earn lots of money at the cost of real happiness. Acquiring worldly riches doesn't make a man great. All religions worship their prophets, who were never rich in wealth, but were rich in morality, character. True education never despises anyone at any time. It makes us more humble and makes us realize how insignificant we are, not from a materialistic point of view, but how infinitely significant we are from the spiritual point of view. Man does not live on bread alone. Man needs love, compassion, care, appreciation and dignity as well as respect. These can be ours only if we live and educate ourselves according to real education. If the person does not know how to love, help, and pity other all human being will live in hell.

Furthermore, true education begins at birth and should end only at death. Schooling and learning at a young age only is a very limited view of education. The complete development of a person is a lifelong process. If a person feels that she or he has no further need to improve or learn, he/she is as good as dead. Learning is an infinite process. Therefore, the school cannot provide only skillful education, but the school also needs to provide personal and character development in order to meet the requirement of the society. The society does not need only educated people, but it also needs both educated and moral people with discipline society.

In short, education without character is the mean to destroy both ourselves and others. Human beings need both education and discipline or morality in order to live in the happy lives with harmony. Molding the life of a person for the ultimate good includes worldly good as well as spiritual good. Therefore, character building is very important for educating people in which it can maintain that person more values in the society. The five arguments of character education such as the intellectual authorities, the nation founders, law, public opinion, and inevitability are very important to consider character building in school. The school should provide what the social need and society does not need only skillful people but it also need moral and discipline people to live in order to make the society order.

REFLECTION ON ACTION RESEARCH

REFLECTION

ON

ACTION RESEARCH

Within the development of the world, researchers try to conduct several researches to find out the issues which will happen and are happening in the society. Every aspect of society is conducted the research such economy, politics, democracy, development, environment, poverty, education and professional development. Moreover, there are many different kinds of research are conducted through different kinds of strategies, but when we think of classroom research we always think of Action Research rather than other research strategies because Action Research provides four advantages to language education.

First of all, Action Research will provide the opportunity for the language teachers to reflect themselves on their ability in teaching and impetus them to learn more. Action Research in language teaching seems to be a reflection in which language teachers do to reflect themselves on the ways they teach the students. As Carr & Kennis (1986, 220) said Action Research is self-reflective enquiry and Anne Burne (2010, p.3) also said Action Research involves taking a self-reflective, critical, and systematic approach to exploring language teacher own teaching contexts. Therefore, the teachers will be able to develop their profession in language teaching through their daily practice and when they have seen what they teach are different from what they have learnt they will learn more techniques or proficiency in language.

Secondly, Action Research also provides effective learning and teaching. Actually, language learning and teaching are very important for both students and teachers. If the teachers can find the effective method or approach to teach the students the students will be able to learn faster, so Action Research will help teachers to find out the ways that teachers teach and the ways that their students learn. The teachers have to discover on what they have taught and on what their students have learnt because the teachers will know what kinds of method are effective or what kinds of method are not effective. The teachers do not just teach the students without knowing that the students learn or not. Moreover, if the teachers want to be the professional ones they have to conduct Action Research because Action Research will help them to improve their teaching and their students’ learning and teaching and learning will provide effective methods and approaches according to the mean or contexts of learning and teaching.

Thirdly, Action Research provides opportunity to use various teaching techniques with effective classroom management. Anne Burne (2010, p. 6) said Action Research encourages teachers to reach their own solution and conclusion and this is far more attractive and has more impact than being presented with ideals. Classroom management is the kind of method use to describe the process of ensuring that classroom lessons run smoothly despite disruptive behavior by students. Classroom management can provide the good environment for teaching and learning process and if we want the effective teaching and learning, we need to have classroom management because classroom management ensures the effective learning and teaching. So, Action Research will provide the opportunity to the teachers to explore what their classroom management is and then they can decide the tasks according the students’ needs. Action Research can help teachers to know about their teaching method and students’ learning within the teaching and learning environment. The interaction between teaching and learning in classroom is called classroom management if the classroom management is good the student cannot learn and teachers cannot teach properly.

Finally, Action Research will provide a great deal of chance for language educators who will learn the new methods and approaches. The teachers cannot use the same methods or techniques as long as they have taught, so they have to find out the new methods and approaches to improve the ways they are teaching. The teachers will be able to change their ways of teaching through undertaking Action Research. The ways of students act are changed daily and the ways of students’ learning are also changed so the teachers need to learn the new ways of teaching in order to match the learning and teaching situation.

In short, Action Research is very important for educators because it is the on-going process observation or investigation. We can say that Action Research is a learning and teaching self-reflection because it collects all learning and teaching information which the teacher can reflect from what they have done. When the teachers can collect the information they will make a positive change toward their teaching method and various teaching approaches will be used according to the situation contexts of lessons. Therefore, Action Research is the method that the teachers use to collect their teaching information through observation and investigation and this information can be an impetus to build up teachers’ profession. All language teachers should conduct their own Action Research on their practice teaching.