The Peace Corps Creative Writing Olympics have officially made it Cambodia! This is the first year that Cambodia had participated in a Peace Corps Sponsored Writing Competition that is now in 14 countries around the world. This is how it works:
Schools are invited to hold essay and creative writing training courses at their schools and in February, PCV teachers give the assigned topics to the kids to write an essay to submit that will compete internationally.
Essays go to Phnom Penh to be graded by Peace Corps and Host Country judges. They choose one winner (from all the combined schools' essays) per grade (grades 9-12). Each winner per grade wins a slew of prizes (thanks to Aaron and Billy), including books, t-shirts, a certificate, and materials for the school. They will go on to compete with other essays of the same grade level worldwide.
Prizes
I also chose winners per grade in my school just to get them excited about writing.
The competition unexpectedly took off at my school, I had over 100 kids come to write essays. This was somewhat overwhelming and I did not get a chance to photograph the writing process. I did however take a bunch of pictures of the winners with their prizes.
Grade 7 Winner and my co-teacher
Teaching writing was not easy in the beginning for me because it is simply not part of the curriculum in the English book series. The book focuses more on the writing structure of sentences than longer passages and creativity. The process was great, my writing class soon became one of my favorites. I still find it is difficult for the students to step outside of the box. They have never been asked to do that before so it is hard for them to understand. I hope that next year I can really get them to go crazy with their writing!
I had a winner from grade 11 that will go on to compete internationally! Her name is Seng Vichheka and her essay was about whom she respects most (her parents). The essay will go and compete in April 2011.
Winner for grade 11 in all of Cambodia!
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