School

A foreword to this post:  This trip is so incredibly packed with experiences that it takes quite a bit of time and energy to process.  We are doing our best to keep everybody updated, but a number of our blog posts will probably come after the trip is over.  We are excited to share many things!

We visited a school in Port au Prince, one which pretty well embodies the paradigm of the local school system.  There were no students and very little staff present at this day.  The current school year has not yet begun.  The grade range is approximately K-8.  This is typical for many schools in the area.  Like many structures in the city, the construction is mostly concrete with a gated entry in a stone wall topped with razor wire that encloses the building with little space to spare.

Above is a picture taken in one of the classrooms.  There is no electricity or climate control; the rooms are lit by holes in the cement block walls, so the rooms are essentially directly exposed to weather.  The students sit at benches that are arranged in various ways so as to accommodate about 60 students per classroom.  The back row must be at least 40 feet from the chalkboard, and the front row within a couple feet.  You can see the rooms are very crowded.

As grim as that may seem as an educational environment, the students are very passionate about learning and are very proud to be able to afford school, because many children cannot afford the opportunity.  They freely work much harder than many American students, and seem to excel in this simplified environment that is devoid of many distractions that Americans may have grown accustomed to.

On the third floor, we were greeted by a chalkboard that had not been erased from the previous lesson.   I was ecstatic and surprised to find that the students were studying chemistry.  In the picture above, I was explaining a bit of the lesson to our team.  In this lesson, they were learning how to figure out how many liters of hydrogen are needed to convert a given amount of copper ore into pure copper metal.  Keep in mind that the students in this lesson were probably 6-8th graders.  Chemistry at this level is normally taught at 11th grade through freshman year in college.

The experience was amazing, seeing how students thrive in a very simplified learning environment.  The space is cramped and the staff is loaded with students well beyond the limits deemed acceptable in American schooling.  But the sheer desire of the students to learn overcomes these obstacles, and they study material far advanced for their grade level compared to the American system.