Standing Up and Reaching Out

If they know you will listen, the older students at TGC love to talk about Khmer history. 

About a month ago, I looped back to school after dinner at around 7pm to grab my computer which I had accidentally forgotten in the teacher’s office. Before I knew it, I found myself amidst an unexpected history class with Sam Ath and Nat, two students who live at TGC.

Remember these guys from my last blog post?

The three of us began to chat about a map of Cambodia that was recently hung up on the wall. Quickly, our casual chat turned into a 45-minute discussion in which Sam Ath and Nat taught me all about what life was like for people living during the 1970s and Cambodia’s relationships with Vietnam and Thailand.

At the end of their lesson I found Nat gazing back to the map. “Learning history is important so we know what not to do,” he said, deep in thought.

“YES NAT! YOU ARE SO SMART!!!!!!!”

I think I might have scared him with my enthusiasm but c’mon what 16-year old understands that concept and can express it in another language!!!??

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There are two Mondays of the year that are super important to me.

One is Marathon Monday, of course. I mean, who doesn’t love watching Shalane Flannigan tearing it up down Boylston street!?

The other falls on the third Monday of January, a day dedicated to celebrating Martin Luther King Jr. and his non-violent activism in the Civil Rights Movement.

So a couple of Sundays ago, I started thinking about how I could incorporate a little bit of American Civil Rights history into my lesson plan for my Grade 10 students.

That Monday morning, I thought I would start off by feeling things out to see what I was working with. At the beginning of class I asked my six Grade 10 students if they knew who Martin Luther King was. Before I even finished my sentence one of the more outspoken boys in the class interrupted me. “The actor?” he asked confidently. Quickly, the student sitting next to him gave him a hard slap on the arm. “No, he’s not an actor!” she screamed, “he was a king in America, obviously.” 

Oh boy.

How do you explain slavery in America, the Civil Rights Movement and current day racial politics to six intermediate-English speaking teenagers???

I really don’t blame them for not knowing much about the Civil Rights Movement. I mean, I don’t even want to think about the percentage of Americans that know anything about Khmer history! But to be honest I was slightly surprised.

My original lesson plan involved diving into the ideology behind non-violent activism, MLK’s personal achievements and where the U.S. stands now in terms of racial politics. But at the beginning of class on Monday I started to question if this history was even relevant to my students. Who am I to force them to learn about something that’s important to my country’s history?

 I always want to be very conscious of the influence I have on my students. I think it’s really important that I don’t try to push any of my personal beliefs on them. Just because something is important to me, doesn’t mean that it’s going to be important and relevant for everyone… I’m not going to force my kids to watch the Boston Marathon with me in April!

But like Nat said, “history is important so we know what not to do.” I believe that there are some incredibly powerful lessons to learn from MLK and the Civil Rights Movement; lessons that are important and valuable regardless of where you come from or what you believe in. What I realized mid-class is that the Civil Rights Movement is relevant to my students because it displays the ways in which history is important so we know what to do.

I pivoted. I decided to focus the class on broader concepts; concepts that display the ways in which the Civil Rights Movement can make us better individuals moving forward.

Here are two ideas that we focused on understanding:  

1. The importance of standing up for what you believe in

Okay so it sounds super cliché, I know, but stay with me here. The entire concept of standing up for your beliefs rests on people’s ability to feel as if their ideas are important to society and that they can actually accomplish something. Simply put, people need to feel like their voice matters!

This idea is important to my students because their country is currently in a transition period. Cambodia has a recent past that is very dark and right now it is among one of the least developed countries in the world. Something notable is that around two-thirds of Cambodia’s entire population is under the age of 30. To me, that means that more than most countries in the world, Cambodia’s future is completely in the hands of young people.
           These young people need to know that they can make a difference, they need to know that small acts matter and they need to know how to advocate for themselves and the people around them. I want my students to know that if they believe in something, it is worth pursuing. Martin Luther King Jr. and Civil Rights activists embody this concept just as well as anyone in history.

2. The role that diversity plays in our lives

In October, Natalie Portman delivered a speech at a “Power of Women” event in New York about the importance of women supporting women. She said something that really stuck with me and that seems to transcend the scope of her topic: “If any group you’re in has only people that look like you, change that group.” Of course, she was talking about women branching out and hearing each other’s stories, but I think that this concept can and should be applied to something bigger.

It is SO important to reach out and have hard conversations with people who are different from you. I truly believe that you can only get so far if you solely surround yourself with people who look just like you or have had similar experiences. My senior year at Union I met a faculty member who really pushed me to make connections with people outside of my immediate “group”. Doing so completely transformed the way that I understand diversity and inclusion and led me to some really important friendships and a whole lot of personal growth.

            What I hope for my own students is that they can develop the skills to feel comfortable being in groups with people who are different from them. At TGC, students go to school with 32 kids that come from very similar backgrounds. They spend every single day of the week with people who are very similar to themselves. Spending all of your time with people who are just like you is definitely comfortable but it’s not always optimal for personal development.

            As my students get older and as they travel for University or maybe delve deeper into the diverse city of Siem Reap, I want them to have the tools to be in new spaces with new people. Most importantly, I want them to be able to have the courage to reach out to new people and be accepting and tolerant of their ideas but the confidence to stick to their morals and come to their own conclusions. 

My original lesson plan included watching an MLK documentary or The Help, a film about African American maids living through the Civil Rights Movement. But after my quick MLK survey in the morning, I realized that those might be a little too heavy for my students. Instead, we watched The Blind Side, which was surprisingly relevant in terms of these two main ideas. There’s no huge social movement in The Blind Side, but there are characters that challenge social norms to stand up for what they think is right. There are allies that support marginalized characters and marginalized characters that find their own voices and are able to advocate for themselves.

After we finished the movie we had a really interesting discussion about the ways in which the characters displayed those two main concepts.

Next, I asked them to think about the following questions: 

• If you could change anything about the world what would you change?
• If you could change anything about Cambodia what would you change? What can YOU do to change this?
• What is a lesson you have learned from someone else?
• What do you think about getting to know people who are different from you?
• When is one time that you have done something to help someone else or support your community?What can you do in the future to support your community?

Obviously these are some incredibly heavy concepts to grasp and a movie and a conversation isn’t going to transform a group of teenagers into dedicated social activists. But for now, at the very least, they have some information that may become useful for them some day.

In my opinion, education can’t get you to where you need to be unless you have the skills to be able to actually use your knowledge. Or as MLK said, “intelligence plus character, that is the goal of true education.”