Alan went for his second morning of teaching at the Railway Primary School today. The school largely serves the local slums and street kids and there are a large number of orphans. The children seem genuinely delighted to be at school and appreciate any input. Despite Alan's best efforts with reading them some of his favourites, it was too much for some to stay awake. But with school hours of 7-5 and school lunch probably the only meal of the day, who can blame them?!Teaching here is still somewhat along Victorian lines with a lot of rote learning, not helped by class sizes of 100+. Last week the classes were significantly smaller as over half of the children had been sent home for not paying overdue school fees (£10 for the term to cover food and other essentials)
The school has a large library consisting mainly of empty shelves and so if you have any old childrens' books you are looking to put out, please keep them back, as we may be looking to have some sent out here. They would be so well received and the kids are really hungry to learn. It is a privilege to facilitate this in some way
Doesn't it make you realise how fortunate we are in our part of the world, taking school for granted and moaning about class sizes going above 30. Unfortunately I can't find any spare books here, the problems are similar. In fact one of the tribal schools in my NGOs district locked the doors of their school and campaigned against the authorities until the supplied another 2 teachers to add to the 1 struggling to teach 100 kids.
ReplyDeleteBrilliant! More than happy to send a load of books out .. Just let us know how best to do it and i will! Well done to Alan
ReplyDeleteDan Jen Oli
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Alison,
ReplyDeleteWould you like me to organise a package of books from Fleetville-based people? I'm sure there would be plenty of donations, and if people gave them to me I could bundle them up and send them over. Let me know if you think it's a good idea, and what age/type of books you want.
Catherine xx