Provincial Spelling Bee

Over the past month, the five English Teaching/Teacher Training (ETTT) volunteers in my province (Banteay Meanchey) held mini spelling bee competitions at their individual high schools for 10th and 11th grade English students. Each volunteer was to select the top two students in each grade's competition to bring to Hun Sen Klah Koen High School for the 2nd Annual Provincial Spelling Bee. The students were 10 competitors for Grade 11 and 9 for Grade 10 (as one student had a wedding to attend). The students were provided with water and snacks during the competition and an all-paid lunch at a local restaurant in the provincial town, Serei Sisophon (or Svay/Sway for short). The lunch included some sort of violent looking fish in a sweet and sour sauce (I'm going to say piranha, just for cool points), beef and ginger, and chicken and green...stuff (veggies). For dessert, we were served a bowl of cold beans in a water/condensed milk soup with a couple of chunks of ice...yum.
Over all, I'd say the students were fairly excited to be there and very nervous to compete. The winners won, and that was said was done. Some of the students didn't take losing very well and decided not to go to lunch in between the 10th and 11th grade competitions as well as some leaving after having lost in the 11th grade competition before waiting around to see who would win. To be honest, I feel this to be a simple lack of competition between students in their youth in this country. Some teachers (country nationals) are creative and find ways to involve the students in class, however, most tend to stick with the English for Cambodians (EFC) book that is distributed by the Ministry of Education Youth and Sports (MoEYS). Many teachers, as I hear from the ETTT volunteers, tend to favor some students and not give due credit to others when they do succeed in class. As a result, it seems that many students aren't actually used to the experience of losing in an official competition and perhaps do not know how to take it. I'm not saying they're sore losers but simply that many of them are getting more experience in losing (and winning) which I think can be very healthy. I think some of the students didn't realize that the lunch was actually being paid for/was there for them because it was celebrating they're diligence in studying English. In one conversation I overhead between one of the volunteers and their student, it seemed one student didn't feel deserving of receiving lunch and just decided to stay home.
I've been really proud of the ETTT volunteers in my province who are doing an excellent job at positive reinforcement. I think they're giving these students opportunities and experiences that haven't had before. Many of them (the students) are taking it different than one another, but they are all learning something. Whether it be learning that they need to study more often, how to handle winning (being a good sport when winning), how to handle losing, or simply learning from and about the other students around the province that they probably had never met before, they all learned something. There was some talk afterwards of extending this provincial spelling bee into regional competitions and hopefully, a national competition. We shall see as the months go on!
Anyhow, I know that I certainly learned something (aside from the fact that I can time students without actually looking directly at my phone [stop-watch]). Some people don't really mind as much about winning or losing as they do simply being recognized by the rest of their community/peers/teachers. I hope we can come up with some other competitions for students that recognizes their wants and abilities. Maybe we can show some of the female students that seeking out a future other than a domestic one is possible. That is a much more complicated situation than it sounds. It is not easy and will probably take years to change. Some would rather that life, though, and that's perfectly okay, too. Alright, I'm off on a tangent. Perhaps this will inspire another post somewhere down the road.

Hope all is well.

Talk to you soon,
Garrett