What challenges did we face in Cambodia?

TEFL in a developing country is always bound to be full of challenges – but rising to them is really rewarding, as intern George found out!

Teaching in Cambodia has had its ups and downs but we believe you need to experience the tough times in this industry to truly appreciate the good times.

Teaching abroad is seriously challenging at times. At the end of the day, you can’t expect a smooth ride if you’re signing up to teach in a developing country, such as Cambodia. We arrived at the school not knowing what to expect. They were extremely friendly and welcoming (which is expected, we are in Cambodia) and they had never had any interns before so I guess we knew it was going to difficult at times. But that’s what we wanted, right? There’s no point doing this if you don’t want to challenge yourself and push yourself out of your comfort zone.

At first we didn’t know what lessons to plan as the school head teacher didn’t speak great English, so we had to use the school activities book and freestyle from there. We’d been given a good week or so to observe which really helped. Some lessons we had to work from one page in the book which had three or four words to work from so required us to get creative to engage the students. After a few lessons we became more adaptable to this and thought of useful lesson plans. We learnt fast that what works for one of our classes didn’t guarantee that it would work for others. It takes a good few lessons of trial and error to get a clear understanding of your student’s needs and how best to encourage and engage them.

Most of our classes ages would range from 4-12 in one class, this totally blew our minds. So we really had to try and make our lessons engaging for all our students knowing the age range was so varied. Don’t worry though, you will get used to this and it’s a great feeling knowing all your students have learnt something after each lesson.

Overall an incredible experience we will never forget and we are so grateful for. You will no doubt have some challenges like I have, but you will certainly overcome them. After all, it makes you a stronger, better teacher which is what you want to achieve, right?