TABLE OF CONTENTS
We had an eye-opening and amazing experience in Myanmar, Japan, and Korea over the course of over 2 weeks this past summer! There are many parts of our trip, please follow along and enjoy the photos and videos!
The team members who participated in this international camp were
- Kathy L (Red Cloud, Age 15) - team leader and 2nd time to Myanmar!
- Jaimie C (Red Cloud, Age 15)
- Anoop I (Red Cloud, Age 15)
- Eng K (Orange Cloud, Age 14)
- Olive T (Red Cloud, Age 13)
- Patrick Z (Red Cloud, Age 13)
- Edward X (Orange Cloud, Age 12)
- Sherri W (Red Cloud, Age 12)
- Audrey G (Orange Cloud, Age 11)
There were several goals of the camp:
- Contribute curriculum and content for official Myanmar government curriculum
- Show local teachers and school administrators in Myanmar the benefits and mechanics of creative, project-based learning.
- Help bootstrap a maker space in Myanmar
- Establish and on-going relationship with local students and schools in order to further modern curriculum development and bring change to methods and content of K-12 education in Myanmar.
- Cultural exchange and immersion for our student leaders
Prep Days
We spent each week designing and testing projects that were fun and interesting but also feasible given the various constraints of trying to do projects in a new environment without all of the tools and materials we have at home.
Let's go to Yangon!
We spent nearly 24 hours in transit from San Francisco to Yangon!
First School Visit
One of the primary goals was to visit various types of schools in Myanmar. Yankin Education College Practising Middle School is one of the top public schools in Myanmar. Our team spent two hours running projects for 7th grade students in this school. An interesting aspect of their schools is that the students are grouped into various class by percentile - so the top 7th graders get put into class "7A", the next group with performance in the 60th-80th percentile is in "7B" and so on. They print your grade and percentile right on your uniform along with your name so everyone knows your grade and how good of a student you are!
Second School Visit
The second school visit was to Myin Thar Myo Oo Monastic School. Monastic Schools are run by Buddhist Temples and consist of mostly boarding students and orphans. Boarding students are generally from the countryside and come from poorer families who send their children away to school for a better life. The students here didn't speak much English but were very curious about us and ended up having a great time getting to know our team! They even wanted to skip lunch to stay with us just a little bit longer!
Third School Visit
Today we visited a school outside of the center of Yangon. It wasn't very far but road conditions make getting around very challenging. The school we visited was on a military base and is a place very few outsiders get to see or visit. We didn't do any projects here as it was quite rainy and the school was having examinations but we did get to visit students and classrooms to see what life is like for a typical student in Myanmar!
Fourth School Visit
Our fourth and final school visit was to Sein Khant Kaw Pwint Private High School - small private school that uses Myanmar's national curriculum but has much smaller class sizes. Our team had such fun with these students as some of them spoke English.
Yangon Life
Between our very busy schedule visiting schools, developing curriculum, teaching students, and training teachers, we had some pockets of time to visit Shwedagon Pagoda which is over 2500 years old, ride the circle train to experience life like a local, and have a tea break in a bus converted into a cafe! We also did lots of other fun things including being some of the only people in this area to have gone bowling in Myanmar!
