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“Hello all, since I am in a special circumstance, I am going write about the school where I currently teach. I am going to tell you guys about the lovely school and about my lovely students.

Background:  I am currently a senior at PSU, on a break, so that is why I have an opportunity to go back to my country and participate in a non-profit program for teaching in a rural area. The school I am teaching is named Kim Dong. Due to the population of the area, and the limited resources, the school consists of both elementary and junior high grades. The school is located on Central Highland in Vietnam which is called Kom Tum. The population is diversified, including ethnic Vietnamese, and other minorities groups such as GiaLai, Ede, etc..

I teach both second and third grades, and there are a total of twenty students in my class - nine girls and eleven boys.  They come from second generation of minority groups, but speak Vietnamese fluently. They don’t have Vietnamese names, and I have a hard time to pronounce their names right.

I have been teaching them for at least 5 months. Since the school is located faraway from the city center, I have no choice but to sleep at school. The school has 10 classes, and we don’t have chairs like other schools. The only thing that we have is the old blackboard and a low table. We use the local made clay as a marker to write on the board, and we sit Japanese style to study, since we have no chairs anyway.

School always starts at 7 am, but most of my students have to wake up around 5 am or earlier, depending on the weather. Since we live on the high hill, there is always fog every morning, and most of my students walk to school - about 5 km per day. Some students use a cow to get to school, to save energy, and after school ends, they take their cow to the farm to be fed.

I am teaching Vietnamese and Math to them, just simple Math, for example plus and minus. We don’t really have any text books, since everything is written by the Vietnamese Education Board. They give us a package and ask us to teach according to the information in there. I don’t like method to teach, but I have no choice since we have to follow the rules.

One good thing is since minorities are poor, they don’t have to pay tuition for their children to go to school. Most of my students’ parents don’t really hope that their children will be successful in school or go to college, or anything. They just want their child to know how to speak and write Vietnamese, so they can help them in business. I think it is so unfair for my students. They should have an opportunity to pursue their goals, but due to financial and family cultures, they really have no hope. More than half of my students want to move to the city center and attend college, some of them want to be a doctor since they think a doctor is great, they cure diseases and the main important thing is that they cure the sickness of animals in town.

Anyway, back to the school. After school is ended, all the instructors and students gather together and cook together. We don’t have to buy foods since we plant on a school farm, and some foods are donated by parents. It is thanks to them that I know how cook, since I don’t really know how to cook in the U.S. We do the dishes together, and take a nap after that. When we wake up, my students leave to their farm to help their parents, and we instructors have to grade their works and prepare for tomorrow.

Most of my days follow the same routine. I love being together with the students, and it so sad to leave them, but since the program is ending. I have to go back to U.S. for spring term. I hope I can be back with them soon enough in the future.