|
|
Information
24-Aug-2005
Last Edited
Sunday, September 26, 2004
by
Jerry Large / Times staff columnist
John Morefield says the problems he complained about when he was a principal in Seattle years ago seem small after a year of training principals of Cambodian schools.
A principal here might worry about having enough computers. The Cambodian schools Morefield visited had no computers or copiers.
Cambodian principals are paid little and teachers are paid less — when they are paid — and yet they are responsible for re-creating a base of educated people in a country still recovering from the Vietnam War and the terror of the Khmer Rouge that followed.
Of course, having spent time in Cambodia doesn't mean Morefield will never whine again, but living there gave him a broader view of the world than he would have had if he'd never lifted his head.
His hope is that his work also changed the lives of the principals, teachers and students he encountered.
Morefield spent many years as a principal in the Seattle Public Schools before taking a position at the University of Washington, training educators in school leadership. His wife, Kathy, counsels and supports people who are on spiritual journeys.
Last September they left their work, their family and their Ravenna home to live in Phnom Penh in a small space, in a compound with volunteers from several other countries, all who wanted to help in Cambodia's recovery.
Kathy taught English to girls and young women while John worked with principals.
The two had visited Europe in recent years but had never been to a poor country until 1999 when they visited their youngest son, Brian, who was living in Southeast Asia. They were struck by conditions there and inspired to make things better when they heard a Maryknoll brother talk in Seattle about his work in Southeast Asia. (The Maryknolls are a U.S.-based Catholic missionary group with service projects throughout the world.)
Beginning in 2001 they spent a month or so every year working in Cambodia with the Maryknolls. They worked in an orphanage, with AIDS patients, with victims of land mines and polio. But Morefield's attention was drawn to schools.
His expertise could help fill a shortcoming in Cambodian education: the lack of principals who are trained educational leaders.
So he put together a proposal. The couple would live on their own dime if the Cambodian education ministry would give him permission and access to principals and schools. It did, and last September John began working with 40 principals.
He and his translator often struggled to put his English thoughts into Khmer. Words and concepts he took for granted didn't always cross the gap intact. "A good leader has to have strong core values," he says, so one of his first workshops dealt with values. But in Khmer there was no word for that meaning of value, he says. "The Khmer word for values means the price of something, how much it costs."
It took more than one workshop before the idea became clear, and Morefield says he was surprised by "how impatient I got, and how quickly I went to being critical."
A lot of Cambodian principals didn't seek out the jobs they had. They were political appointees whose mandate was not educational leadership. Many of them hadn't even graduated from high school. They were expected to manage the schools, keep the building running.
It was frustrating for Morefield, who wanted them to think like university-trained American educators.
"For the first time in a very long time I was really out on my own personal edge of not knowing if I could do this work. I've been relatively confident in my life — well, in my professional life. This was a year of every day having to suck it up and say I don't know if I can do this. That was a challenge for me."
But the principals got it. Many of them were excited by the idea that their job could be more than paperwork, that they could have a role in shaping education.
Morefield recounts seeing a principal sit and read with a child, something that would never have happened before.
He hopes he planted seeds that will grow on their own. He's especially hopeful that the ministry of education will embrace this new role for principals and that the World Bank, which funds other programs in Cambodia, will pay for a broader education program.
Morefield wants to go back in the near future. He says he would begin with 10 of the best principals he worked with and teach them how to teach others because Cambodia can't be dependent on a foreigner to do that work.
The Morefields may be unusual, but they aren't unique. All around the world, individual Americans are sharing their skills and building bonds, leaving a good mark on the world.
John Morefield's
trip journal can be found at
www.newhorizons.org/trans/
international/front_international.htm
Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company