Safety Conscious ACE Samdech Pan Campus

By Harry William Ranger, ACE Teacher

The recent economic boom in Cambodia has caused the amount of vehicles and traffic accidents to skyrocket. For that reason, over the past three years, the Australian Centre for Education (ACE) has been actively promoting initiatives to update and inform young people throughout the country about how to stay safer on the roads. An initiative of IDP Education (Cambodia), ACE has been providing high quality English language training in Cambodia since 1992.

The first campaign promoting road safety was initiated at ACE Siem Reap campus in 2016, when it became clear that many students travelled to and from the campus without wearing helmets on their heads. With great enthusiasm and support from the Siem Reap Management Team (notably William Coward and Raninn Sinketh), a project and four accompanying lessons were run in the Young Learner’s (YL) Program. YL students were asked to create a “cool crash helmet” poster, which they would later present to their classmates. The campaign met with moderate success and helped to create some awareness around road safety in Siem Reap.

In 2019, this project was picked up and further developed by ACE Samdech Pan Campus Manager Nick Millward, Lead Teacher Kanha Tep and ACE Samdech Pan campus as a whole. Teachers were instructed to design new projects that would raise awareness in both the YL Program and Children’s Program (CP). The results have been outstanding. ACE Samdech Pan teachers have managed to create age-appropriate projects that reach the whole ACE community: students, parents, staff and the general public. Featured below are some examples of what our talented young students have produced this year. Their inventive work ranges from posters to essays, road sign designs and even websites such as PictoChat.

Our CP students have been introduced to vocabulary about roads and traffic. CP teachers came up with the idea of having their students re-make existing Cambodian traffic signs. This has helped students to gain important driving knowledge by engaging their creativity, as well as their English language skills. Displayed below are some of the most attractive and creative examples:

YL teachers also participated in this idea. Borany Nhim, for example, had her students create cardboard cut-outs of traffic signs. Their beautiful designs can be seen here:

Special recognition should go to teacher Matt Leigh, who has worked hard to improve existing materials for the YL project, and has also conducted surveys on YL students’ attitudes to driving. He discovered that nowadays, most students don’t wear safety equipment for what they see as “short journeys”. This inspired Matt to build upon an existing helmet safety project and shift the focus to complete road safety. YL students now have improved knowledge about why it’s important to protect all body parts from a traffic collision. Students were asked to design all sorts of road safety equipment, including helmets, gloves, driving suits and appropriate footwear. Examples of these can be seen below:

Teacher Tracey Lange took a different approach to promoting road safety. She gently introduced her young learners to IELTS writing concepts, which were then applied to the topic. Notably, students were given the opportunity to assess the role of society and their own individual role in staying safe on the roads. This proved to be an effective way to introduce advanced writing techniques in a context to which these future road users can relate personally.

As for the most technically creative idea, teacher Kiet Brak created a project using the PictoChat website. Young learners created presentations using images and text from the internet. This is a particularly interesting approach to raising awareness, in that it places road safety in a relatable, computer-based context. It has created a huge amount of student interest, as can be seen in the following examples:

The high degree of student and staff engagement in these important initiatives is very encouraging. Younger learners at ACE Samdech Pan campus now leave their classes with not only greater awareness, but also better knowledge of road safety. Examples of our students’ projects can now be found all over ACE Samdech Pan campus, and are also accessible on online platforms. Just activate the QR code below to find out more!