This is the beginning of a case study related to the
professional teaching of the tourism section at Saint Francois Technical
School.
Let's start the case study with the "toolbox" with material such as books
teachers and students are provided with.
I will use the “Provide Food and
Beverage Services” unit toolbox.
This is the topic I have been assigned to teach
during Mrs. Tongsy’s leave for maternity for year 1 semester 2 of the tourism
section.
It is a great opportunity for me to comprehend these
materials provided in order to reach the ASEAN professional standards.
Each unit has a set of books:
A Trainee Manual :
A great comprehensive manual including absolutely all the
details about the subject matter it covers namely “Provide Food and Beverage
Services”
A Trainer
Guide :
Consists of the Class Power Point with teaching notes.
An
Assessor Manual:
Contains all the oral and written questions to assess
students’ knowledge, as well as an observation checklist for practice
assessment.
A Power
Point to use in class. (editable)
Analysis at the
beginning of that case study:
At first glance, these books and materials are good but not
usable as such with our students.
The trainee manual for example is at least tricky to use by
our student. It is overloaded with detailed information and giving this book to
our student could only overwhelm them. → this book would be great to help the
teachers prepare their lessons as it provides a really detailed content.
The Trainer Guide includes a Competency Standard list which
clearly gives all the aspects of knowledge the students should master at the
end of the unit. This is really helpful for the teacher to build his course and
lesson plans.
The Trainer Guide is mainly made of the slides from the
class Power Point with some specific teaching notes including possible
activities for the students and other pieces of advice.
The Power Point to use in class follows all the unit. I’d
say that some of these slides would be OK to use in class but that most of it
is not adapted to our specific context. Some teachers spend a lot of time translating
them in Khmer.
All this material is in English only. Even our teachers have
problems using and understanding it! How could it be usable with our students
when even the teachers have problems with it?
It doesn’t seem realistic to use them as such with our
students.
We therefore have to adapt them. We must use them in terms
of content of our lesson but definitely not as they are provided by the ASEAN.
Problem: It requires some hard work and competency from the
teachers….
Between the Khmer New Year and the end of the school year, I
will create new material and hopefully something that could become a kind of
model to guide the teachers in doing the same in their subject matters,
especially from the next school year, 2020/2021.
Ideally, I should come up with an original set of documents
that could be combined into a book. In the next school years, this book could
become the student manual.
