Each 1 Teach 1 👨‍🏫 Snapshots From My Former Kindergarten In Cambodia 👦👧

Each 1 Teach 1 is the name of my former Kindergarten in Kep, Cambodia, where I taught a small class of Khmer and foreign students. Although I no longer have this school, the good memories created there will last a lifetime.

     The above picture is of the only house I have ever lived in since I turned 18 and became a legal adult. It also happened to be the home of my school, and that was the only way I could afford such a luxurious living space at $300 a month.

     From this beautiful house I created a small Kindergarten program, teaching local Khmer children as well as a Russian and some half-Khmer kids. The girl you see in the above photo is Ann-Mae, and she is actually half-Khmer if you can believe that. Little Ann-Mae barely spoke English because her Canadian Dad only visited Cambodia two weeks every ear, so I was her only source of English education and conversation.

     The above student is Alisa, and she is 100% Russian, but born in Cambodia to a family with a long history in the Russian circus, where her parents and grandparents worked as animal trainers. This explains the one-legged monkey on the leash, something you wouldn't see at any boring western school.

     I occasionally had some help at this school from volunteers and travelers, but for the most part I ran this whole project by myself. I was the janitor, teacher, receptionist, repairman, and just about any other title you want to throw at me. The three boys in the above photo are playing with a deck of my Shapes & Colors cards. Another side business I had before this school was creating and selling homemade educational products.

     I had a core group of 6 students that paid $60 a month, adding up to $360 per month, and after taking away $300 for rent, that left me with only $60 per month to live on, so I additionally taught Khmer language classes in the evenings for adult foreign residents.

     The days at Each 1 Teach 1 were filled with joy, and I miss my former students dearly, always wondering where they are and how they're doing. I wish I could return to Cambodia and see them, but that is still likely more than a year away.

     Working in the countryside of Cambodia was far from boring, and when Alisa's father Max would stop by at the end of the day to pick up his daughter, he always had an exciting story or something cool to show me. I really worked hard with Alisa because she spoke no English or Khmer, and it broke my heart to see such a bright girl be socially isolated due to a language barrier. I even learned a wee bit of Russian to make our days go more smoothly.

     No matter where I go in the world, kids are always able to easily draw me due to my easy-to-draw features. To most children, I am basically a walking turban and beard, and drawing Mr. Parke was a common activity during breaktime.

     I enjoyed making my own educational materials almost as much as I enjoyed teaching, and having a variety of learning methods to reinforce the curriculum produced some incredible results. The above student on the right, Vireak, did not know his ABCs or a word of English when he started with me, but within 4 months he was reading books from cover to cover. Often times his parents would bring him to school sick, so I would make him some ginger tea and let him sit out some of the lessons.

     Here is an example of my legendary UNO cards, which I called "muəy, Khmer for the number one. I used to sell a deck of these cards for $30.00 USD, and it took me about 8 hours to print, cut, laminate, cut again, and then manually match the sizes and round the corners, all with regular hand scissors and a paper cutter. Tourists particularly liked the decks with basic Khmer vocabulary words.

     Here is Ann-Mae completing a test, a little pensive, not sure if she if she selected the correct answers or not. Black and white educational resources are the norm in Cambodia, so that is why I created all my own materials and printed them myself in-house.

     Alisa was feeling very confident during this test, mostly due to the emotional support provided by her rubber dog. Her Dad's favorite hobby was using a metal detector to dig up active landmines and mortars which he repurposed to fortify his house, not legal by any means, but Kep was the wild west back then.

     Thanks for reading folks. I was simply feeling nostalgic today, and wanted to relive some old heartwarming memories. I hope someday my family and I can rebuild our lives and open another school again some day.

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