Thursday, August 24, 2017

VillageTech: 5/28 - 6/2 (Grant)

Grant Dumanian
6/1/17 10:30-3
VillageTech Solutions
Skip Stritter
skip.stritter@villagetechsolutions.org

Having finished up the last of our seven school visits, it is incredible the disparities in both school resources and how schools treated John and I. At Shivapuri Secondary School on the outskirts of Kathmandu, which was a relatively poorer school for one in the city, John and I were treated like long lost friends. We were immediately given drinks and ushered into our own classroom with ample time to prepare, and then greeted by a class full of the five brightest students from each grade (the school really pulled out all of the stops). It was at this school that we had the most fun teaching, found the kids most engaged, and were able to have the most thoughtful interviews with both students and teachers. At St. Xavier’s, which is a very wealthy private Jesuit school, our reception was different. We waited for about an hour only to be thrown into a classroom full of students and had little time to prepare. The one interview we were able to squeeze in was from an unenthusiastic English teacher who remarked “she'd seen better”.

The disparities between schools only reinforced my passion for helping the rural schools with less resources- not only did they tend to actually have more use for Looma, but on the whole the poorer schools were far more warm and enthusiastic about both Looma and having outsiders in their school.

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