First Day of School…in Zimbabwe Instead!

Math problems for 12 year olds in Zimbabwe

(Emma) Today was the first day of school for all of the schools in Dover. Right now as I type this the middle school bus would be at my house, picking me up for my first day at the middle school. But I am not there; I am in Zimbabwe instead. Even though I am not at school at home I did learn a lot from this one school that we visited today.

The first thing we see when we pull into the school  parking lot (which was dirt) was the kids playing outside with no ball or anything. We get out and go into the classroom. It is a square room with tables and desks and broken windows and around the tables were lots of kids. About 30. They were all staring at us and it seemed to me that they wanted us to do a magic performance. I was nervous but I did know that they were just trying to learn. They were all 12 years old, in 7th grade and trying study for an exam in a month. That exam would tell if they could go into the higher school.

My family and I all looked at the chalkboard and noticed how hard the problems really were. For instance: Name the 3 things that a plant needs to photosynthesize. How do they know that? And that is only one of the hundreds of problems that they needed to solve. It truly was amazing. Here are these kids that live without lots of stuff and yet they are so joyful and so willing to learn because they know that this might be the last chance they get to get an education. And an education is the best thing you can get.

We sang for each other. Here is the video: