So Many Students, So Little Space
One of the benefits of being a Friend of the Grady Grossman School is the opportunity to visit a remote village in the Cardamom Mountains and be entertained as an honored guest by the teachers and local community. Jill Hunter and Jim Mitchell of Lander, Wyoming, just returned from a visit with our friends in Charuk Tiek.
Jill reports that the school is becoming overcrowded, there are at times 80 students in a class and more leaning in the windows. Today, the school serves 485 students in the primary grades 1-6, ranging in age from 6-16 years old. A recent survey revealed that there are actually 1,370 school age children residing in the five surrounding villages. So, with an overflowing school, we are educating less than half the children. In response, the teachers have requested another school building and they are willing to sacrifice the food stipend and support we send them to help us reach this goal. Bless their generous hearts.
It has been amazing to watch the fabric of a tattered society rebuild. Two years ago, the teachers often didn’t show up to work. Now they have become fiercely dedicated to their students and to the progress of education by the small amount of support we provide. The English teacher, Din Narith, has even found time to squeeze in an extra English class for the 35 students now attending secondary school via the bicycles we provide. He has asked to stay on at our school for a third year and we will honor his request by donating his salary to his employer, American Assitance for Cambodia.
Din Narith also asked Jill about the Internet Computer Lab we plan to install. He is very excited to have this new teaching tool and all the access to communication and information it will provide. But mostly he just wants to be able to teach more kids. Currently, because of the limitations of only one computer, he must pick only the 40 top students to study in his class. The rest are left to lean in the windows.
More computers will mean more space for more students, and an Internet connection will provide access to communication with the outside world, bringing tele-medicine, e-commerce and e-learning to the village. But there is a price to pay for this progress. An internet computer lab will draw even more students to a school that has no room for them. So which comes first the new building or the computers?
With help from our Friends and book sales from Bones That Float, A Story of Adopting Cambodia, hopefully, we can do both.
