Schools Around The World

Yesterday I was walking down an outside hallway when this budding Yankee fan and his posse ran by me, knocking me off my balance in their passing.  I laughed and said something like “HEH!”.  The Yankee fan abruptly stopped, looked down, and said, “Sorry, mam!”  His and my responses to the familiar encounter amused me, and I asked him to stay put so I could get a click of his gang.  They are precious.  Seeing where some of the students in this country go to school, and what resources they  have (or don’t have) when they get there, makes me wish I could go to every country where students immigrate to Iowa City and take photos to send back to my colleagues at Weber Elementary.  There is a wealth of knowledge in just the visuals of their environments that I know they would appreciate.   Children are immediately adaptable for the most part, but parents bring with them the comfort of how things were in their home country and the intimidation of the American environment. If teachers could see how different those environments are, they could understand the parents a little better.

As we are driven back to the airport in the south, I pass a typical rural dusty, uninviting, cement secondary school with small, glassless windows, and imagine the crowded, meager interior. Outside the front door (actually a curtain) uniformed students mill about pools of muddy water, garbage, and large, uneven rocks, and chat as adolescents do everywhere.  I wonder if those students should see a movie that depicts an American campus and classroom, what must they think?  Are they incredulous at our resources and excesses, or envious, oblivious, angry, unfazed?  Do they question the chance of fate that put them here and not there? I see the children walking to or from school arms around each other, sisters, brothers, all friends. They seem content, and happy. I decide it’s an impossible question, but I conclude I do miss hanging out with the up-to-the-waist variety of student that keeps me on my toes, literally.