Teaching in Cambodia is a learning experience

The Angkor Wat temple complex. Photo courtesy of Helene Tyler

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via CAAI News Media

By Adam Wisnieski

A trip to the poverty-stricken nation of Cambodia has led to dramatic changes for one Riverdalian.

“I’ve never worked that hard in my life, and I can’t wait to do it again,” said Helene Tyler, a Manhattan College math professor who spent the month of December teaching a graduate course at the Royal University at Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

The last Riverdale heard from Ms. Tyler, she was boarding a plane on Thanksgiving Day to help rebuild the education system of Cambodia, devastated during the reign of dictator Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge. Almost 30 years later, the country still relies on the generosity of volunteers such as Ms. Tyler.

Her three-week course in differential equations was different from any class she’d ever taught. Each of her 11 students had a different educational background, some with gaping holes in certain areas. Ms. Tyler had to prepare entirely new lectures every morning and spent every afternoon in stifling classrooms in order to get the lessons across.

“You know, a lot of people have asked if it’s changed my life, and I feel like it sounds kind of trite to say it, but it did,” she said while enjoying french fries at the Riverdale Diner last week.

Now that she’s experienced life on the other side of the globe, some of her priorities have changed. She uses the Internet less and loses patience with friends who complain on Facebook about waiting in line at Target for too long. Observing life carrying on in Riverdale is far different from watching children fight to survive on Phnom Phen’s streets by selling souvenirs to tourists.

“It was difficult because every bit of extraordinary beauty was right next to something extraordinarily ugly. On the road that led to the hotel we stayed at, the beach was this little shanty village. I just couldn’t believe that people live that way.”

Some of her students were so poor they slept in nearby temples with the monks, unable to afford the fare to get home to their families.

“They have a whole different attitude about everything. A lot of the drive to succeed is tied to an obligation to help their families,” said Ms. Tyler, “What they sacrificed to be in that class is unbelievable.”

They don’t take the opportunity to learn for granted, she said.

“I mean no disrespect to my students here. I have never had a harder working, more earnest, eager, hungry group of students anywhere. I didn’t work that hard when I was a student,” she said.

After her teaching was done, Ms. Tyler and her husband Ron Zwerdling traveled around Cambodia. They attended a traditional family wedding of a language instructor Ms. Tyler had befriended and visited the magnificent temples of Angkor Wat. To reward her students for their hard work, she treated them all to dinner at a nice restaurant. When she was leaving, the entire class showed up at the airport to say goodbye, regardless of how significant the cost of traveling there was for some of them. She boarded the plane in tears.

When asked if she would return to Cambodia, she said she hopes she will. Her husband has already been pushing her to return next year.

This is part of the February 25, 2010 online edition of The Riverdale Press.