Krousar Thmey Deaf Schools There were no deaf schools at all in Cambodia until 1997 when Benôit Duchateau-Arminjon started the first primary school for deaf students, under the auspices of his NGO, Krousar Thmey (New Family), in Phnom Penh. Now he is building a second deaf school to open in November 2000 in Siem Reap and he is establishing three deaf classrooms in his school for blind children in Battambang.

24 July 2000   Meeting of Teachers of Deaf Students Krousar Thmey had to recruit quite a few new teachers to staff the new deaf school in Siem Reap and the three deaf classrooms being established at the blind school in Battambang in November. None of the new teachers have any experience in a deaf classroom so they were brought to Phnom Penh to observe at the deaf school here. I had a chance to meet with them today to talk about some of the problems they are facing in the classroom. I had not planned to become involved actively with the deaf community here until I finished language school in November, but Prum Thary, the Krousar General Director of their 21 programs, asked me to attend a meeting this morning and then to plan a workshop for Saturday before the teachers leave for their hometowns.
Prum Thary, Krousar Thmey's program director, and the principal of the Phnom Penh deaf school.	The annual rains have begun in earnest and the flood waters of the Mekong River are already surrounding the school buildings.
For the past few days it has been necessary to move between some of the school building on wooden walkways above the flood waters.	The school cooks continue to prepare the students' meals with the waters lapping beside them.
At the meeting with the teachers, they asked questions like how to keep attention in large classes like this.	At the meeting, the teachers were asked to mention the problems they encounter in the classroom with deaf students.

29 July 2000   Workshop for Teachers of Deaf Students The general director of Krousar Thmey asked me earlier this week to have a workshop with the KT teachers who are gathered in Phnom Penh this week for teacher training. The teachers from the new programs in Siem Reap and Battambang have never taught deaf students before so they have been observing the Phnom Penh staff during the last week of the school year. I was not anxious to start my involvement with the deaf community so soon because I am not yet half way through language school, but I agreed to a simple 1 1/2 hour session this morning to talk about general ideas of deafness, communicating with deaf people, and deaf education. We started at 8:00 AM at the Krousar Thmey blind school because most of the deaf school campus is flooded by the Mekong River. The session went reasonably well with the program director interpreting for most of what I said.

Some of the teachers gathering up the newsprint used during the workshop

Charlie with three of the deaf teachers at the workshop in the blind school

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