ratanakiri mapRatanakiri is a province (khaet) of Cambodia located in the remote northeast area over the distance of 585 Km from Phnom Penh City. There are plainty of ethnic minorities live in Ratanakiri such as: Tampuan (24.3%), Jarai (17.1%), Kreung (16.3%), Brou (7.0%), Kachok (2.7%), Kavet (1.9%), Kuy (0.5%), and Lun (0.1%). Ethnic Khmers made up 19.1% of the population, and ethnic Lao made up 9.6%, and Khmer. Most of the ethnic minorities people, they still got the less education and they just thought of doing the farm to support their family. The official language of Ratanakiri (like all of Cambodia) is Khmer, each indigenous group speaks its own language. Less than 10% of Ratanakiri's indigenous population can speak Khmer fluently.

vogelschoolEzra Vogel Special Skills School (EVS3) is located in the Banlung Referral Hospital in Ratanakiri province. This primary school is provided the general Khmer curriculum from kindergarten to grade 6. The school not provided only the public school curriculum, but we provides also enriched extra curriculum classes such as English learning and Computer technology to the students. During the free times from school, student must attend to the part-time course according to their grades and capacity. In our school we have five classes for the amount of the whole 319 students (student’s statistics in 2011-2012). Nowadays we still need more classes for the students because the students are increased so much from year to year. As a result last year and this year, we condensed students from two classes (grade 5 and grade 6) to study in one class, the school principal is responsible in teaching this class. Beside these we have a bathroom for students and teachers, two well at the side of the school (one is a deep well located behind the school that recently we cannot use it because it's drained dry and another is a drilling well is at the side in front of school that we can use it to watering the vegetable and trees  surrounding school) , and a generator house, in the previous time we use the generator to support for studying computer because we don't have enough electricity but nowadays we changed to use the provincial electricity because we can save more energy.

library

The Library

With the library, the students are free to study or research something to strengthen for their extra knowledge. In the library we have comic books, tale story books, general Khmer study books, dictionary (English dictionary), and painted books. Event the library is small and we have less books for students to study but all the students still be happy to research with these books. We hope we will have more books for them to study next time. This library is also used as the office for the school principal because we still have less classes and the office for the school principal to implement his job.   

Farm behind the school

corn farm Every year we plant vegetable and fruit behind the school. When time up to harvest the vegetable and fruits, the students are free to take these vegetable and fruits to their house or we will prepare the party in school together with teachers and students. As a result, we usually prepare the corn party every year before the long vacation is coming. It's the annual school party culture, this party is participated by all the school children. From the morning till the afternoon is the time to be happy to join the corn party, we collected the corn to boil and grill at the side of the school. This is a very special party or event for the school children after taking very hard and long time to study and also to say good bye for the grade 6 students who will move to high school for the new academic year.

 English Education

learning englishWe provided students the English learning until they graduated from grade 6. Nowadays we have 5 groups that started from morning season till afternoon season

  • In the morning season, we have two courses are English for Children and Let's Go 2 for the young schoolboys-girls from grade 3 and 4.
  • In the afternoon season, we also have two courses are Let's Go 2 and New Headway Beginner. Most of them are from grade 5 and 6, they have enough capacitly so they can study Le's Go 2 and New Headway of Beginner Course. All the levels we focus to the four skills of learning English such as: reading, listening, speaking, and writing but for grammar we do not focus it because they are in a younger age so we don't want them to mention deeply about grammar.

In every Friday, we have schedule for the students in all groups to learn the English song which prepared by their techer of English or draw the picture.

Computer Skill

learning computerWith the computer skill was classified by grades from grade 4 till grade 6 because these grades most of them are better to read and write Khmer and English so it’s easy for them to catch up the computer lesson. All the students are divieded into 4 groups, two groups in the morning season and two groups in the afternoon season. The programs for teaching are: LibreOffice and MS Office, Basic HTML Code, Basic CSS Code, Xara Designer Pro, Basic Web design by using Joomla, Movie Edition by using Camtasia Studio, and the special skills of Hardware and Softwere installing and repairing. With the Hardware repairing, we used our old computer PC and the broken computer PC to teach students. With Software installation, the students will learn how to install window XP, window 7, and other operating systems.
We arranged the students to study through the following description below:

  • Group A & B: They have to study LibreOffice (Writer, Cals, and Impress) and Xara Designer Pro.
  • Group C & D: They have to study the basic HTML and CSS code.

Advance Learning

  • Before grade 6 students move to study at high school, we sellected some outstanding students to train (training in 2010 & training in 2011) with us a week of how to teach English. After the hard training they will use what they have learned to apply with the younger students from grade 1 and 2 during the long vacation for two months.
  • We sellected some of the outstanding students to learn how to design website by using Joomla, movie edition by using Camtasia Studio, software installation, and hardware repairing. 

Other Event

These few years we have taken movies to join the Festival Contest with the school of Miraizu in Japan. Last year the movie in Rainbow-Kawasaki-Primary School was the top movie but this year our movie become the top movie in the festival contest.

During the free times from school, student must attend to the part-time course according to their grades and capacity.