Learning Centers

For those of you who read my blog and who aren’t teachers, I will apologize in advance that there is soon to be a lot of teacher talk as school here is restarting. I have had a lot of time to brainstorm ideas for the school and things that I would love to see happen here in our school.

One of the burdens that I have is the village kids. They struggle the most in school, and they are the ones who are most likely to drop out of school—especially girls, who might have to leave school because of pregnancies. These children have so many factors against them that will prevent them from receiving an education. They are not exposed to much English, they may have parents who don’t value education, they have work to do at home that keeps them from studying, and they have no one to help them with their studies.

I want to spend a lot of time focusing on helping these children in the villages. Once the school year begins, I have picked three of the smaller villages that I will go into once a week and have tutor time with the students there. Something else that I would love to see one day in these villages is a place where these students can go to study, where they have flashlights or candles they can use to study at night, where they can have books to read. I am not sure exactly what this would look like, but it's an idea that I had as I think and pray through what this school could look like.

Yesterday I went into one of these villages, Senehun, to talk more about tutoring with one of our teachers who lives there and who is a respected man in this community. I began talking to him about coming to tutor, and he said that everyone in the village is excited about the idea. He said that the parents say that they will not send their children to the farms that day. He also said that he and the villagers, once the rainy season is over, want to put up a structure that can be set aside as a study center, where the children can go to focus on their learning. He mentioned this idea before I had even said anything to him about how I would love for that to happen!

That makes me so excited because if it is their own idea, it is something that they will make sure will happens. And they will actually use it as a study center. This is exciting to me. If we can help to create a culture of learning in these places, then it will help the students to succeed in school.