FAQs for the JPA Prospective Teacher

I feel like I'm writing the same email over and over responding to prospective teachers who are lured by the description of JPA, as I was. Thus, the reason for this Q and A.

The Good Stuff

How many days per week and what hours are teachers expected to be at school? 
You are expected to be on a bus that leaves Siem Reap at 6:30 AM. You will arrive at school in Tachet around 7:10 or so. School starts at 7:40. The final bell rings at 3:20. You are expected to tutor and do other after school activities until the first bus, which is at 4:30. There is another bus that will leave at 5:30. Total time: 11-12 hours.

Did the school provide housing? Or an allowance?  Are there modern living facilities/options available locally for teachers?
Yes, yes, and yes. This part of the package is nice. All "benefits" offered by the school in terms of money are fine, amazing if you live in Cambodia. We received a settlement allowance (the number may be different now) of 2,000 USD to find a place and buy furniture. The thing is, you are expected to pay two months rent as a deposit and the first month's rent up front. That uses up most of your 2,000. Some places are furnished, others are not. Some teachers chose to live in "modern" apartment buildings with swimming pools. Others opted to live in older colonial homes, similar in price to the apartments.

*Edit: A teacher from last year wrote me saying that the stipend is now down to 1,500 USD, and salaries are being renegotiated to become lower than what they have been. I don't know how much new teachers received in the past. If you are an experienced teacher, your years of teaching are capped at 3, and you're paid about 3,000 USD a month (net), the highest salary. Well, I've heard those numbers are going down for the 2014-15 school year. If anyone has verification of what the new salaries are, let me know. 

It's important to note that Siem Reap has little to no infrastructure. If your house is robbed or if you have a heart attack (worst case scenarios), the police may be of little help, or the modern international hospital in town may not have the necessary doctors on call. One teacher broke her foot and needed to be medevaced to Bangkok because no one could take care of it in Siem Reap. Good thing it wasn't urgent.

Many of our Cambodian neighbors were very kind to us but we can't really "fit in" or befriend the locals. Simply being a privileged westerner (or easterner too) gives you the aura of "colonizer" or "source of income." So, we became friends with the JPA Cambodian teachers. But be careful...once you do that, you see the unequal treatment and abuse they put up with from Steve and it becomes harder to ignore.

Is there a summer and winter holiday for teachers?  How long? 
Yes. JPA runs like a school in the US. Six weeks or so in the summer, two weeks in the winter, spring break, all US holidays and most Khmer holidays. There is a summer school that some teachers feel pressured to do, but it's not mandatory and it pays extremely well.

What is it like teaching the kids? 
Amazing. They are absolutely the best aspect of being there. The students are eager to learn, polite, kind, smart, etc. etc. etc. I can't go on enough about them. When teachers leave any school, they feel like they are abandoning the students. When teachers leave JPA because of political problems, that feeling of abandonment is deep and profound. We teachers all have stories about how students from JPA reach out to us for help after we'd left, and what can we do to help? We can't take on the Pritzkers. We can't fire Steve. We can't pay for their college tuition. It's heartbreaking.

The Bad Stuff, that Outweighs the Good Stuff

Would it be worth a visit to the school? 
If you visited, you would fall in love with the place. The problem is what happens after you start working.

What kind of contract do they offer?
It's not a contract. It's a letter of agreement stating that you are hired at-will. This means the administration has the right to fire you at anytime for any reason. And they do. In 2013, half the foreign staff were fired before Christmas.

Was everything bad about working there? Or was it just the personal problems that you had with the principal and other admin?  
As I wrote above, many aspects of the school were great, the students especially. There are unlimited supplies for teachers, three meals are served at school, and teachers who were there before Steve took over, under the two other principals, they felt a great sense of purpose, of doing good work. You worked hard, but you felt good. I'll answer the second question with the one below.

Even if you don't get along with the principal or dean, is it possible to just keep your head down and do your job and try to stay off of their radar?
This is what I tried to do. Many of us tried to do this. So far as I know, only one teacher has been able to successfully keep her head down and work, and she is the only westerner at the school married to a Khmer person. For her, JPA is the best paying job around, and she chooses not to care about the problems below. The problem is multifold, so I'll try to be as clear as possible.

You can't keep your head down and work because...

1. Steve gets in your face. This was the biggest problem most teachers had with him. He has no credentials to be the leader of this school. He has no college (thus no graduate) degree, no teaching certificate, no real training. He was the head of operations (buses, cafeteria, campus, custodial needs) before being promoted. Many random employees were fired. He always said they were alcoholics. He hired and fired Khmer workers like he was Donald Trump. He is a business owner. He owns a restaurant in Sihanoukville. He has taught ESL on and off for the last 15 years or so in Cambodia. He speaks conversational Khmer fluently for a foreigner, though the kids say he makes all sorts of mistakes. I tell you all this because as the head of school, you figure he'd let people who are more qualified take care of the curriculum and teaching, and he takes care of the general needs of the school. Not true. He will poke his head into your classroom and make all sorts of unwelcome, unhelpful suggestions. Okay, well, you try to just get on with your job. Then you realize, these are not just suggestions. He expects you to carry them out though they may even be harmful to your students' learning process. His expectations contradict with CEO Jeanette Dibella's expectations, contradict with your curriculum, and contradict with your teaching ethics. If you see past posts, I wrote about a few of them here and here. He invades your classroom. One teacher used to complain about how he would come in, disrupt class, walk around the room and correct students' grammar mistakes while they are trying to take notes.

2. The injustice becomes too big. Sure, you feel for the teachers, i.e. your colleagues getting fired mid-year for little to no reason, i.e. simply for disagreeing with one of Steve's suggestions. The next level is your Khmer colleagues, whom Steve holds to a ridiculous standard of work. They work way more than you do (which is hard to imagine) including weekends, they get paid way less, they have to listen to Steve humiliatingly berate them in Khmer, they can't take days off, they are belittled by Steve for speaking imperfect English to the kids. The highest level of injustice is with of course, the students. Steve, Jeanette, the Pritzkers, whomever, love to promise things. We'll counsel students and help them get into colleges in the west! We'll keep all kindergarten students and not cut the number in half! We'll organize trips abroad for the students! Then, they disappoint. Always. No college. Cut kids. No trip. Let's keep them a 13th year and prepare them for the service industry. How many times can you raise your expectations, for the students, then be denied? And you have no power to do anything about it. If you speak up, you're on Steve's hit list. You'll most likely be fired.

3. Testing defines your worth. Teachers who are held in high esteem by Steve for whatever arbitrary reason, are in danger. At JPA, they have standardized tests every year starting in kindergarten. When Steve saw the numbers of his model teachers, he specifically humiliated them, made them feel like they were complete failures. Shared how disappointed he was, about how he must have overestimated them, about how they failed their students. Many of those teachers quit after that. They could not work for a man who treats teachers this way.

4. Lack of professionalism. He has told teachers at staff meetings to be more "stoic" and stop missing school. It's Cambodia. People get dysentery, dengue fever, food poisoning. If you miss school, he accuses you of lying (no joke). Once, he told a male teacher to "be a man." He asks teachers if they like him before he fires them. I'm attaching part of an anonymous student submission here so you might hear a student's voice:

It is very painful for me to see my schoolmates, Cambodians, become so scared in expressing their opinions in front of what they believe to be right and wrong on our own land.Since Mr. McCambridge became the head of school in Jay Pritzker Academy, many students lost their engagements in studying. The first day we knew he became the principle, many friends already blamed god for making such a huge mistake. Through his previous actions in school, we were scared that he would terrify us through his power. It came out to be true. Using his absolute authority and mean facial expression, Mr. McCambridge threatens students with words and punishments while heavily disrespect our culture. 

Some examples: 
-He lies to students to write essays for abroad summer school, but he autonomously selects only his most favorite and smartest students to go. 
-He forced one of the student to open the mouth for him to check the teeth while he was eating. 
-He makes students feel ashamed in public when they do things wrong. 
-He punishes students too heavy and out of logic, like telling students to clean floors for six weeks when he saw them riding motorbike without helmet.  
-He said on [this specific date] that "not all the students have the same brain" and he will support only some students to go to university despite how hard everyone of us have worked.                              
-He said to us when we got scholarship to study at a university in Phnom Penh “You don’t have enough experience to go and study in Phnom Penh, so you should not go. You can go to better university.” Now, many of my classmates could not go to university and started working because they don’t have enough money. 
-He disrespects our culture, showing condescending toward us and creating the cheapest examples for JPA students to see.
-He interrupts teachers while they are teaching without respecting their right during class or not asking for their permission.
-He spies on teachers while they are talking.   He sneaked next to the door that is opaque from the teachers’ eyes to listen to their conversation with students to make sure no one criticizes his inappropriate actions.

Well, I hope I've answered all your questions. I just realized I haven't even mentioned Jeanette, who is like the Michelle Rhee of JPA and PSM and messes with Steve's leadership (if he weren't bad, I'd feel bad for him). One quick example: She sends PSM teachers who are loyal to her, to work at JPA and uses them to find out information or spread misinformation. It sounds so... unreal, but it's true. Or Naomi Lane, the academic dean with three years of teaching experience, no higher degree, very timid, and happens to be Steve's wife. Oh well, this is long enough already.  I miss everything good about JPA, yet all the bad has left me traumatized. One day, maybe JPA will become a righteous school, but until it does, I suggest that you find employment elsewhere. 

Sorry for the delay

I'm still waiting on confirmation from students. They are scared, and rightfully so.