Girls School

I have had the awesome privilege of volunteering at an all girls Afghan school. The mission is to create fun and easy English lessons, teach the lessons to the teachers that instruct English, and then have the teachers use the lessons in their classes. I went for the first time this past week and it was very fulfilling. To be able to get away from behind the computer and help out others was a joy.

The school has about 8,000 girls. Each class has approximately 50 students in it. The teachers move from class to class. In the English department there are about 20 teachers. On a trip 4 to 5 volunteers from NKC will go. We have a simple lesson to teach them that we go over before we leave. This time we went over an exercise that teaches past tenses of regular and irregular verbs. We also had a reading exercise that was based on present news stories. Once we get to the school we have to go up to the principal’s office and say hello. They serve us tea and we have casual conversation through a translator. This time they showed us the library as a possible bigger room to work with the teachers. The library was pitiful. It was about nine tall bookshelves with a variety of books. A couple shelves with English books but I found most of them to be too advance reading materials for the teachers and the students. We told the principle it would hard for us to get Dari (the local language) books but we could get English books for the children that were more appropriate for their reading level (approx. kindergarten to third grade would be my guess). So before I go on if you have any books laying around for beginner readers definitely send them my way J ! After our visit to the library we went to meet with the teachers. There were 13 teachers and the four of us crammed into a small room with a wooden picnic table in it. At first it was overwhelming. Everyone crammed in this small space all talking at the same time. The teachers were very excited and receptive to everything we said. I thought they might be shy but they weren’t even close to being shy. They talked continuously and over each other. To be frank they knew more about the English language and its crazy grammar rules then I did but they liked to know what each word meant and how to use it in a sentence. Their eagerness to learn was extremely admirable. We got to spend about an hour with them and then it was time to go. It definitely didn’t seem like enough time. I’m excited to go back. I have tons of ideas and can’t wait to learn more from them.