My Liger Learning

August 8, 2020

Mammals Study | STEM Class

Do you know that bat is the only mammal that can fly? It is alright if you know the answer to the question or not, the significant key is that we are always learning — everywhere and every time.

Another new topic began, we were focusing on mammals. Last round, the topic was the animal’s phylum. Then, surprisingly, we would be going in-depth toward mammals because they are the largest class in the world. Learning about mammals was genuinely fun and informative simultaneously.

In the class, we did a lot of reading to understand clearly about the concept. Moreover, after we read, we also did some extra assignments. Personally, I could strengthen my memory by doing so and practice what I have learned. One of the best moments of the class was the almost-ending of the round, we broke into a group of three or four. Each of the groups was assigned to research different primate species. Primates are animals like monkeys, apes, humans, and some other ones that belong to the class mammals. Our group got orangutan as our main topic. We created a poster and also a doc to contain our information offline and online.

Orangutans

Orangutan means “the man of the forest” in the Malay language. Its DNA is calculated ninety-seven percent in common to the humans. One of the interesting facts, the orangutan is the largest arboreal animal.

If you want to fill your knowledge with the orangutan, feel free to check out this link:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1izhajWGWbKv0xaHs1b_E3JjbkAcf6my9F6v8uq0UVNU/edit

August 7, 2020August 7, 2020

Marine Species Website | Explore the Creatures of the Sea and WordPress Experience

In round four, another exploration with a new skill has given to me. It was the world of ocean and technology as I would call.

The exploration that I was in was the Marine Species Website. When I initially heard the name, I conceived the image of us all in the group working on our technical skills to develop a website that devotes itself to the marine in Cambodia. Meanwhile, I was mixed with wonders and hopes. I have always been aware of myself that technology is never meant to be my strength, but I repeated in my mind that I would try my best.

Exploration Descriptions

“Sharing Cambodia’s marine environments with Cambodians and global citizens by raising awareness of marine species, promoting scientific discovery, protecting ecosystem services, and inspiring curiosity about the ocean.”

Above is our mission statement, which is our ambition and motivation. The exploration devised to create a website that is dedicated to the marine ecosystem. As the mission statement mentioned, we want to bring appreciation and stewardship to our dignified sea in Cambodia. Its essence has brought our lives to comprehend the word “convenient”. Many fishermen in Cambodia earned their living by the marine’s life. Therefore, the sea needs to be preserved by all of us, and together, everything is possible.

What did we learn? What did we do?

“In order to understand deeper about the marine’s life, I then studied and researched about the morphology of the great creatures living beneath the sea’s blue”

In the exploration, we did discover and learn many things that we didn’t realize until now. It was like we were diving deeper into the ocean to explore the environment and the living life down there in the mysterious world. Specifically, we allowed ourselves to be acquainted with the phyla that can be used to identify the appearance of any species. Those phyla were Chordata, Cnidaria, Echinoderm, Porifera, Arthropoda, and Mollusca. By making it easier and useful, we utilized the lessons we had learned in our STEM class effectively. Certainly, it was a very helpful aid to our exploration.

What we did in the exploration was involving a lot of teamwork and efforts. We had been researching a lot to get a good grasp of everything including ecosystems and website layouts. In addition to the research, I have now known the difference between seagrasses and seaweeds. Seagrass is considered as a plant that has roots, stems, and leaves, whereas seaweeds are algae that neither has roots. We also did some discovery on marine websites to find any interesting points that we liked and wanted to incorporate in ours.

Moreover, we also got help from the LMRT team in our school. LMRT (Liger Marine Research Team) is a group of students in our school that conducts research and survey on Koh Seh in Cambodia. While being facilitated by them, we also took the pictures from their trip to group them into the right phylum. For instance, I saw an octopus in the picture, so I would store the picture to the phylum of Mollusca. That was how we group the species.

On the website side, we were introduced to WordPress, where we have the right to pick any templates that are free and we do not have to do any coding works. Then, in partners, we began to test and learn about WordPress, so that later we will need the skill to build our own website. It was a very enjoyable moment, even though I do not favor coding. I customized some fonts and colors because tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, I would be going to give my best into our own website.

In the hardest moment

“In an unexpected time, we rise and we fight.”

As a token of my thank, I want to express my lovely gratitude that I was given the chance to try something new and step out of my comfort zone. This was the bravest moment I could feel. Plus, getting to observe the greatness and mystery of the ocean, were so special to me. All thanks to Liger! I am very thankful for everyone including my facilitators, Kieran, Max, and some of the first-cohort students. Every one of them would never give up even when we were facing the hardest time. That’s why nothing had halted us to work and express our love to one another. Hopefully, I hope that we can foster this fantastical project to the next step in the future.

March 16, 2020March 16, 2020

Community Cleanup Campaign | Workshop Organization Experience

In round three, I had another exploration which was Community Cleanup Campaign. I can say that this exploration is a relation to changing Cambodia with the education of raising awareness. I had practiced my leadership and time management skills in this exploration.

The introduction of the exploration was explained by a senior, Somphors as our facilitator in the exploration. We have the intention of spreading the awareness of waste and plastic to people in this developing country. I have thought doing so was a crucial solution to excessive plastic usage in everyday life. That’s when I was working in the exploration.

We had the ambition to give a workshop to those. Personally, I am really fond of any kind of workshop and I also have involved in some before as the attendee. The workshop has boosted my experience and confidence and I also assume the same for others. Fortunately, this time I was preparing the workshop with my fellow members in the exploration. As we had six stations regarding plastic waste and mine was Storytelling and Visualization that I named.

Honestly, I am a person that prefers and likes to be organized with my school work and personal work. Therefore, I genuinely gave everything I got into my own station. Seven weeks were long enough as I thought, but in the end, things weren’t going correctly of what I had thought. I needed to have four short stories that went under the theme of plastic waste. Luckily, I asked for three of my friends to write three stories and I have written one. In addition to the story, I and another friend drew some pictures for our stories. That denotes the visualization. After preparing everything, I realized I have learned a new lesson of life. Despite we didn’t get to initiate our workshop, but we have learned and experienced the way we prepared our own workshop. I now know that seven weeks are no longer short and using them wisely is the proper way of using them.

I can feel the growth in myself as the time moves on. This exploration has improved my confidence in working individually. I have always afraid when it comes to working alone. I would fear to confront my mistakes and flaws. Although, who in life don’t, so I have reinforced and obtained them in myself. Importantly, time managing skill is a very vital skill that I would also need later on. Therefore, this exploration has opened a new door for me to explore and learn.

February 25, 2020February 25, 2020

English Literacy | Mental Illness

“I don’t talk about my anxiety and depression for attention. I don’t talk about my panic attacks to look cool or edgy.” Emily

Do you know there are over 284 million people had anxiety disorder in the whole world according to Ourworldindata.org, Many people have been through this mental illness in the stage of their growth. Therefore, in round two of our academic year 2019 to 2020, the theme of our module was mental illness. Initially, I did not understand what mental health or mental illness were at all. I was worried and struggled in class instantly. However, after resuming with nonstop I reinforced my strength to steadily pursue this module. After a moment then, I realized the module’s topic was very outstanding and compelling to me and also for others I believed. Do you want to know what is a mental illness, don’t pause here continue until the end.

As we all know, we all have physical illnesses such as muscles pain, fever, and many more. Mental illness is a serious disorder in human behavior and thinking due to many factors. Mental illness is divided into many illnesses including anxiety, bipolar, sleep disorder, schizophrenia, and etc. Moreover, stigmas are rooted in those who live their life with mental illness. Some of them that I have known are, “people with mental illness are scary”, “they are weak” and much more. These stigmas generate immensely negative effects on the patients, by letting them feel vulnerable and may do unwanted things. That will be the time when grief and trauma occur simultaneously. Happiness is replaced by Sadness.

Emily, a 34 year-old-woman, described how difficult it was in her teenage years on Time-to-Change. As she told in the article, it was a very hard and tough time for her because she didn’t have the right people to talk with. This denotes a very essential problem in real life that we have confronted in our life. Most of people with mental illness find it’s quite challenging to look for the right person to talk to. They feel neglected and useless in themselves because of this critical problem. As a consequence, “That’s why Time To Talk Day matters so much. It’s not enough to learn to talk. We have to learn to listen too.” from Time-to-Change.

In conclusion, we are all people and we should learn how to relate to those people in the world that are needing our help. Therefore, we should all provide a comfort zone, where people can release their hardships and express their feeling. We do not have to worry about how much have we helped our friends or strangers, the fact is helping less is better than helping nothing at all. Let’s all form a convergence of help to anyone who is needing our help right now.

Resources if in need:

Emily Story: https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/blog/talking-about-mental-health-isnt-attention-seeking

Picture Source: https://medium.com/@Mentallyawareng/when-it-seems-like-no-one-truly-understands-your-mental-illness-427959a33328

—————————English Literacy Round2———————————–

February 8, 2020February 8, 2020

Storytelling and Communication | “The Creativity of a Girl’s affection for art”

“I encourage people to love art” a quote from Panha, a 13-year-old girl was sitting on the bright-comfortable-blue sofa, where she could expose her creativity by saying so. She was born in Kampong Thom province, Cambodia and was selected as a Liger Leadership Academy student because of her potential embedding with her side. Her hobby is precious and valuable to her, revealing her talents which she could never discover. Many people perceive art is a complicated subject, although Panha considers the opposite.

In this whole year, she has been drawing lots of pieces, knowing there’s no constraint to waylay her from her hard-working work. She loves her art pieces and her expectation for people to do so. But what inspires her and why?

The stage of letting the art comes through

Don’t be afraid to love art, just because it’s a challenging skill requirement. Panha before was not interested in art either. One day, she was sitting in the car, seeing the beautiful aspects of shops and buildings. When the car passed by a glamor, she focused on it and now she knew it has been her inspiration. she captured the picture in her brain and felt it deep in her heart. It was a stunning wedding dress, displaying in front of the shop. She can feel the beauty of the dress was spreading inside the car. Therefore, she decided to ask herself this question, “What is it like to be a designer?” She determined to herself that she wanted to make something even more beautiful than that.

A great experience of discovering other types of art

To own a meaningful answer, she started to welcome art to enter her life, slowly and slowly. Panha said, “ I do model design a lot, draw those stuff, so let draw other stuff too.” She exposed her smile and hugged the pillow on her lap, such a joyful view. Furthermore, art also helps her to define who she is, what she wants to be in the future, and what she likes. Therefore, she dedicates her time to her artwork.

The emotion within the artwork

Art has the ability to alter her emotions from sadness to enjoyment. Thus, her passion for art will present there while sadness may be arriving at any time. Moreover, she said, “My mom wanted me to be a lawyer. No one have I tell that I love art. My mom told me my art is good. I don’t know [the answer] when she asked me “what is your future dream job?” Panha turned her face to her left gesture, glancing at the transparent glass while peacefully release a small laughing voice. Despite the love and practices, she also can feel the failure a lot of time. As she mentioned, people have different tastes in every particular field. When she found out that her artwork is not quite matched with her goal, she would feel desperate. As such, she gives up on her artwork for a few days. However, because art is what she passionate about the most, it probably would appear into her mind back, to think of it. I asked her, “What is the most successful part of your artwork?” She said, “Art is her lesson of life, it is what she needs to improve on.” Her facial expression was filled with determination and fondness.

“Art is not relaxing”, I never knew that

I asked Panha this question, “Does art truly boost our feeling of relaxation?” and the answer was unpredicted. The answer I got from her was, “ Doing art is very stressful. When it’s good, it makes you happy. Not relax doing art.” Her face was looking straight at me, so she could awake the memory of herself while drawing. She then continued, “When it turns out good, feel proud. Coloring makes me feel relaxed, but drawing is not really.” Her eyes opened wide as she finished talking, like trying to get my attention toward her.

For Panha, “Art is the core of her happiness and is what takes up space in her heart.”

Written by Cheatra Chheang

Interviewing with the art topic

January 24, 2020February 25, 2020

Khmer Children Book Exploration | Thrive in Khmer Literature

NOTE: This post is the combination of the same exploration that I had in two rounds together.

Khmer Children Literature was the exploration that I was in for the round one and round two. The ambition of the exploration is to motivate Cambodian children to love reading. We are also hoping to thrive in Cambodia’s literature. Many people perceive literature in divergent perspectives; for me, I perceive literature as my happiness and treasure because I will always enjoy it when doing things regarding this topic.

Round one, the process of writing and illustrating

To ensure the audiences, there are six books that we have been progressing on and each group is responsible for each book. The six books depict the theme of our school’s core values: Integrity, Determination, Ingenuity, Stewardship, Appreciation, and Optimism. My book’s theme is optimism.

After knowing the theme already, we started to brainstorm the structure of our story. Brainstorming is a very productive strategy to start writing the story, for me I don’t jump straight to write, I always prepare for the upcoming by brainstorm. After brainstorming, we started to write our kid stories. Initially, we did not expect the children’s age of our book to be 10 or 11. Although, after the writing session, we have found out that the target audience’s age is from 10 to 15. I did not expect this and I was a little shocked. Despite the audience’s age, we were still working with passion and determination together. For the illustrations, we only did a little in round one because we were focusing so much on our writing in both English and Khmer.

Sharation round one of the year,

On the Sharation day of our school that we have every once in seven weeks. It is the day when many guests enter our campus to get to know what we have studied in the seven weeks’explorations.

This was the first sharation of the 2019 year; my exploration, we didn’t have the books published yet so we showed the writing and some illustrations pictures. Moreover, we also had characters game for them to entertain themselves. We heard many compliments and encouragement. I wanted to give them a big thanks for visiting our school’s sharation. It was a very phenomenal day with many voices spreading out over our school’s atmosphere.

Round 2, the process of publishing

Round one finished and round two began; where we were focusing on publishing the book. We also worked with a senior, Rithy, he has taken the exploration as his impact project relating to Khmer Literature. Therefore, we tried to finish our book by this round so we can publish it.

Within the full round, my optimism group just did all the art by painting with gouache. Likewise, we edited some of the Khmer writing in preparation for the Bamboojaya’s trip.

Bamboojaya trip

The trips was so awesome and productive. Bamboojaya is a children school that provided child-led project-based education. We went there to read our Khmer stories to those kids. The teacher there told us that she could not really find some Khmer children’s books that suit her kids’learning level because some contain difficult vocabularies which turn out hard for the children to read. Therefore, we hope to strive for succession in the future with these completed six books.

Kampot Reader and Writer Festival

We had so much fun during the trip to Kampot for the Kampot Reader and Writer Festival. Despite the event is a huge difference from what we have expected, we still managed to read our books to the kindergarten students and met some new writers also. It was a successful trip because I feel the reading activity to those young students genuinely made us all feel happy for the moment and we have enjoyed our new experience in Kampot.

Image may contain: one or more people

At last but not least, I hope we can distribute the six children’s books around Cambodia because remember “READING” is always essential for your life. After reading this, go and read your book.

——————————-Khmer Children Books———————————-

October 19, 2019

Mathematics [Slope-intercept Form]| How I gain my Confidence

“You should be effortful into the difficult exercise and make mistakes rather than sitting there without doing anything” Jeff always says this phrase to us.

The first year of school and the first round of the class, here the first time for studying with Jeff. We were focusing mainly on the topic of slope-intercept, which initially I had no idea what it is at all. Although, with a multitude of practices inside and outside the class, I was able to understand the materials. At first, I was a student who had no confidence at all and I also was desperate with myself.

The most grateful moment in class, Jeff always settled me down whenever I became overwhelming. With Jeff’s precious words, I’m sure everybody in the class would be energetic for the whole day. I could gain my confidence in the math class, even the answer I said was not right, but I have learned from my mistakes. As a result, I understood, need to learn and learn and learn. Only this could help me to develop my math comprehension and to be confident in answering questions.

Slope-intercept form, I had never heard of this math term until Jeff introduced it to us. As we always know, math requires thinking to have a solution for the prompt. I am a slow-speed student in the class, and I need a bunch of times to come up with a solution. Occasionally, I just feel so stressed and I can’t tolerate the problem that I am facing. However, studying with Jeff is not only covering only with the math world but he expands the class to the lesson of “life”, too. I was really impressed with the fun learning class in the last hour here.

Hopefully, we will continue our journey of this math class to a harder level at each pace we step.

———————————–Mathematic—Round—1—————————-

August 18, 2019

How to be happy when you get a fever

“How to be happy when you get a fever”

by Cheatra Chheng

Happiness is defined as a state of pleasure and contentment. Furthermore, happiness comes from the feeling that is influenced by the environment. Also, being happy is not only about the smile we cannot be absolutely sure if this person is happy or not based on one clue: their facial expression. Therefore, everyday conditions including health, hobbies and many more, may consider how do we feel toward them.

Health is one of the factors that create a happy feeling for all of us. Unfortunately, not everyone lives with good health which can lead them to be unhappy. That is okay because life is not constantly about happiness but there’s also some sad stories that you will need to face. In addition, fever is one of the illnesses which causes you to be unhappy. However, there are two common phrases that you might find encouraging: “problems always have solutions” and “you cannot change the situation but you can change your reaction”. Despite the fact that you have a fever, it doesn’t mean you cannot enjoy the time it takes you to recover. We know that the situation doesn’t appear to be good but importantly you can change your reaction. Moreover, there are some steps that you may like to try while you are sick.

Step 1: Take a relaxing warm shower

Feeling relaxed is all that we want for the summer break, going to the beach for an example. Getting a fever can make you feel unrelaxed. Wikihow is an online community that wrote about how-to guides for online people to explore and read, has mentioned that “baths wash away dirt and grime, and they also help you feel better when you’re sick.” According to my own experience, when I had a fever, everything that is negative came to my mind which made me hard to rest and worried. However, taking the warm shower will help you to let your mind sits, relax and can lower the temperature inside our body. Importantly, when you are taking a warm shower, you should be thinking about the positive things that you ever had in your life. For instance, you could think of any good memories that you had and enjoy with the shower.

Step 2: Rest

If you are a student, you will perhaps have some assignments that your teacher gave you. If you are an employee you would need to think about your work. Fever brings you tiredness so you will be exhausted for the whole day. If you are exhausted, you need to rest because you won’t enjoy doing your work. In this situation, you can lay down and give yourself a mental and physical rest. You do not need to worry about anything that could distract you including homework as well. Centennial Medical Group (CMG) is a group practice of caring and helping the community to be better at knowing how to do self-help when having an illness quotes “ Medicine and fluids can help make you feel better when you do get sick, but what your body really needs is bed rest. “ Even if you don’t feel exhausted at all, but probably you will recover soon after the rest.

Step 3: Spend some time in nature

During the time you are having a fever, you do not really want your body to do any physical actions. However, it is a good idea for you to get outdoors and relax in nature that is around us. Very well mind, trusted online resources that improve the mental health condition of the right guidance provides, states that “Green is thought to relieve stress and help heal” and “Green is often used in decorating for its calming effect.” As such, in nature, we can sit down, relax or reading books. Importantly, the air that we get inside our house is different from the fresh air that nature gives so we could recover faster and also release stress.

All in one, fever is also not a bad thing for us, though it kills all the bacteria inside our body. When you have a fever once, be happy and you can follow these steps. One last quote from Julia Roberts wrote “ A fever is an expression of inner rage. “ Therefore, we can consider fever as a good thing to happen for us and we are lucky to have a fever.

August 17, 2019

Negative Numbers, (-1 and -2)

Negative numbers are the essential part that we use in everyday life, without realizing. Within this round, we learned about the negative numbers that some of us have known before but this lesson could remind us, too. I have learned it in the past, but I forgot some of the basic things in the negative numbers. Negative integers are used to represent things as temperature, money purpose, and etc.

Want to know more about negative integers, Click here: https://www.onlinemathlearning.com/integer-number-line.html

August 14, 2019

Comfort with Uncertainty

These outdoor trips help me to learn and grow myself.

As apart of Outdoor Leadership exploration, I got to learn the main question is” How to lead ourself when we are in outdoor?” This question got solve when diving deeper into the exploration. The topic that related to the main question I asked myself is the survival skill. We learned about how we could rescue a victim when the victim is in an emergency. If we are not sure what happened to the victim yet and using traditional medicine or don’t know what to do in that situation, we could kill the victim immediately. As such, I got to learn the steps to rescue a patient in an emergency situation,

1- Scene Safety

2- Primary Assessment

3- Secondary Assessment

4- Rescue Plan

I learned about all of those steps in class and we practiced the lessons on the campus also. This could be a helpful reference because it appears that I want to be a doctor. Furthermore, we had two trips in this exploration which we went to Kirirum and Mondulkiri. I love the two trips so much because I have experienced many brand new things that I haven’t tried out before, and the trips have made my thoughts open to hundreds of stories which I interest in.

In Kirirum, I really love the weather there, it was drizzled and a little cold. The cold breeze that blew to me every time has strengthed up my power to continued walking to my destination. I remembered once when I was sitting down and I was so exhausted and suddenly the wind just blew across me. I closed my eyes and just got the touch of the wind to my skin. I also love the landscape there, the trail in the middle and the sides are the trees stood straight in lines with small green grass on the ground. This scenery really caught my attention and boost my relaxation and calmness level. My third highlight is when I got to sit and watch the sunrise. It was the greatest moment ever to watch the sunrise with my friends and my facilitators. While I was watching the sunrise, the hornbill flew nearby on the trees under the cliff. I got a binocular and I zoomed in to see the hornbill clearly. Luckily, I could see the hornbill, it was lovely to use the binocular following every movement of the hornbill. In Mondulkiri, I got so interested in the waterfall. The water was quite cold and it can refresh many negative thoughts out of my mind and inscribe with the beautiful piece of art in my brain. I didn’t want to move out of the enchanting waterfall that I faced. The waterfall melody can awaken thousands of surprise to me. It’s a hard way of trekking but in the end, it paid off with the delightful waterfall. Another highlight is what I have never tried before and it now becomes one of my favorite food which is Phnuong soup, I got to taste the soup and the soup was very delicious. I wish to myself I could taste the food several more times and cook it.

Even though the trips sounded really fun, there were still some obstacles that I met. One of my difficulties in Mondulkiri was the leeches. I was the first one who got bitten by a leech. At the first time seeing it, I was not quite scared of them but when the whole group started to panic because there were more of them, I started to feel anxious even more. At this point, my mind started to think of some types of wild creatures that I afraid of such as geckos. I tried to calm myself in the situation while I was really uncomfortable. That didn’t really work. However, the relaxation worked until we came to the waterfall. The touch and the harmony of the waterfall – the coldest water ever – aided me to increase my calmness and relaxation. Therefore, the solution got solved and I was very impressed with myself that I could be relaxed and calmed down. This was a big challenge for me but I overcome it – I had to use my bare hands to pick it out of my legs. Thanks to the waterfall for letting other people relax by the music you have created.

Moreover, leadership roles are essential for me because I need to use those in this exploration since we were in a group of different personalities. Once, I have shown my leadership role which is a designated leader. At that time, I saw everybody was quite busy with all of their works. I thought that it was really busy for themselves to wash their own lunch boxes. As such, I’ve decided to speak up ” Ok! Let’s wash all of the lunch boxes for our team,” In fact, I have never been a designated leader before but that situation appeared to me that I could use the designated leader as my leadership roles. I considered being a designated leader does not need to be a tough or strong person. I could start being a designated leader from this experience.

Being part of the group in Outdoor Leadership exploration was a new experience for me. It allowed me to give love and to see the beauty of nature that I have never focused before. The way that it designed itself to be. Challenges were being accepted by me so a solution must be accepted too. Comfort with Uncertainty is now what I understand and I learned. This journey was the best moment in my life that I could find my true happiness. (One more photo to go through for the end)

—————————–Outdoor Leadership Exploration—————————