A Change of Guard

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Tuesday 28 October 2008

Education without borders

Stockton teacher helps build school in Cambodia


Keith Reid

STOCKTON - When Tom Linn first traveled to Cambodia in 2003, the Oakwood Elementary School teacher and self-proclaimed "National Geographic junkie" did so to tour the country's ancient ruins and historical architecture.

Five years later, the 63-year-old's connection to the province of Battambong has been life-changing for him, but potentially culture-changing for an impoverished riverside village composed of small homes, dirt roads, rice fields and one tiny schoolhouse.

Linn, with the help of Oakwood bilingual aide and Battambong native Vannak Hout, donated $10,000 and countless hours of volunteer work to build a two-classroom addition to the Chang-ra Elementary School.

HOW TO HELP

Community members willing to help Oakwood Elementary teacher Tom Linn raise funds to build a library at the Chang-ra School in the Battambong province of Cambodia can contact him at tom30on32@yahoo.com.

Not much more than eight walls and two white boards, the addition doubled the size of the school and opened access to an education 200 village children there never would have otherwise received.

"It was a small chunk of my salary to do this but such a value to this small community," said Linn, who also hopes to build a library at the school. "I never in my wildest dreams thought I'd be part of something like this. But, I started seeing a larger Cambodian population in my classrooms, met Mr. Hout, and I felt like there was no question that I had to help."

Expanding the schoolhouse was a monumental achievement for the village, said Hout, who lived there the first 17 years of his life and still has family there. The village leaders appealed to the Cambodian government for education grants to build a school, but officials declined. There is no electricity in the village, no other amenities that would accommodate a school in the government's view, Hout said. If villagers wanted their children to attend school, they could send them to the provincial capital of Battambong, which happens to be Stockton's sister city, a 30-minute car ride away.

"They don't have cars, they would have to walk, so they just wouldn't go to school," Hout said, noting that teachers in Cambodia make a meager $30-a-month salary. "Having a school in the village is life-changing. The families that had their children working the rice fields now send them to school."

Linn said the welcome he has received in the village has been priceless and has renewed the spirit that drove him to be an educator more than 25 years ago.

"They are so appreciative of the opportunity to have an education," Linn said. "I love teaching here, but this schoolhouse ... this is why I'm a teacher."

In the Cambodian village, where Linn travels now as often as he can with suitcases full of school supplies, books are treasured items, he said. Children dream of the day they can have a career - not working for a pittance, or doing the dangerous work of extinguishing explosives in the live mine fields left over from the Khmer Rouge regime, a violent spread of communism from the bordering Vietnam in an attempt to trample free trade.

"Here, you see books here and there, thrown all over the room. There, when they hand you a book, they use both hands in fear they would drop it," Linn said. "It's the path to success. They want to get good jobs and return to give back."

With the school expansion complete, Linn is now turning his attention to raising enough money to build a library. He's unsure of the total cost to build a library because the value of the American dollar continues to weaken.

However, he has commissioned his Oakwood students to collect and donate their recyclable cans and bottles from home and is building a personal donation as well.

"It's something I can do. I can, from time to time, be a courier of money and medicine for this small portion of this country," he said. "They need a library."

Contact reporter Keith Reid at (209) 367-7428 or kreid@recordnet.com.

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