I remember how it was like to study based on the government curriculum and when I continue my education in another school‒ Liger Leadership Academy‒ I found a very huge difference of the curriculum. This has made me realized the reason that my interesting rate of study in government school is lower than in Liger. I only studied of whatever was in the textbooks, and did hands-on activities once in a blue moon. I found out that students would prefer to involve with more activities while they are learning because hypothetically, it is an effective way to bring the students’ attention in schools in order to maximize their comprehension to the lessons. One quote from Nelson Mandela was, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” This quote has strongly made me believe that there must be some modification or supplement to the government curriculum in order to increase students’ preference in school.
On the school year of 2017-2018, I got an opportunity to be a part of the exploration called Primary School Curriculum Development. This is an exploration where the school named Bambujaya, hired some students from Liger Leadership Academy to be the educational consultants; with the job of creativily formulate the add-ons‒ the supplimental activities to engage the students‒ for the school. There were three rounds of this exploration: the first round was writing the add-ons for grade one, the second round was writing the add-ons for grade two , and the third round was writing for grade three. I was selected for the third round, which was working on the add-ons for grade three.
In class, I and the other six students were divided into three different teams to create adds-on for three different Khmer textbooks: Khmer Literature, Mathematics, and Social Study+Science. My major book that I was working on was mathematics, but I was also a small part for the other two books. It was very challenging since about 98% of our time in class was to just sit and figure out an original add-ons and write those down. Sometimes I have to keep myself motivated even though it was pretty boring by convincing myself of how important my work is for Bambujaya and also for the Cambodian students.
At the end of this exploration, everyone has their own products, which were those add-ons that have been written for the school. Some of the written add-ons has been created in multiple forms throughout filiming, and animating. Because those add-ons will be learned by the teachers, we required to have the meeting once every week with the curriculum developer of the school, Virak, in order to revise each person’s add-ons before putting those into the teachers’ guidebooks.
As a part of this opportunity, I felt like this exploration has enhanced my creativity and dot connecting skill through the process of creating those add-ons. For the Liger student, with the experience of what it was like to be the government school students, it allowed us to figure out what were missing in the government schools that can be implemented in order for Bambujaya to provided a better quality education.
Being a part of this exploration, I believe that I did create a positive impact toward the government school curriculum. Even though the school has not finished the construction yet, but I still believe that all of these works that some of the Liger’s students have done, is a potential change after the school is constructed.
Finally, as a change agent, changes that we created does not matter on the size; sometimes it is a struggle for us to start the action, but we ourselves need to be more optimistic to continue generating those changes toward the community. As Napoleon Hill stated, “If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way.”
