Papua New Guinea......The Situation in Schools

   In 1954 is when the Papua New Guinea (PNG) government set up schools to educate the children of the country; prior to that missionaries visited villages to educate the kids, unless the village was remote.

   One of my good friends from PNG is Solomon who invited me to go up to the June Valley (his home town) to stay. Actually I did not stay with him because he just has a bed at a friends house; instead I stayed at his relatives; Namuck, Ibo, and their children. I felt like I had time to spare since I was only going for walks in the town, and up the hills behind our row of homes; so I went to the school and asked them if they needed any help. The principal at the school said he definitely did but said I would have to ask at the board of education office. The staff at the board office were ecstatic and the boss said that "June Valley School has a grade 5 class that only has a part time teacher that works in this office half the day and the other half of the day she splits her time between 2 classes". So it looked like my next volunteering in PNG would be as a grade 5 teacher.

   I showed up at the school the next morning and the children were going wild; I was swarmed at the front gate...it seemed like most of them could not believe their eyes. Some kids would touch my arm and then run off smiling with wide eyes (happy to have survived the experience I presumed). My class had 36 pupils and the first lesson of the day was grammar and spelling; the night before I had thought about a lesson plan and figured that there was already some type of curriculum in place. The kids were incredibly cooperative and down right sweet. There were not enough text books to go around so kids had to share. When we moved on to English the problem with school supplies was evident. I dispersed kids into groups of 3 (for book sharing), once we had to turn to the next page some books were missing that page; this is when the teacher has to spend valuable time to re-disperse kids so they could all see the text. Half of the kids were bare foot; many of those children did not have a pencil, that makes for slow progress. Near the end of that first day I announced to the principal that I would run a soccer clinic after school. Over 100 kids stayed after school for soccer; there was one under-inflated ball. What we did as a group was exercising; like running around the compound, up and down the stairs in the school, sit-ups.......each child got to take two kicks of the ball, at a target.

  PNG has a problem with unemployment and lawless behaviour; every so often when the behaviour worsens there is a curfew. The next school day we discovered that the one grade 4 class was destroyed during the night, thieves ransacked the classroom stealing anything that was not nailed down. Supplies were very limited at the school to begin with so when there is such an act of vandalism and theft it is the children who suffer. The kids seem to take things in stride and our classes were very enjoyable. After school was also fun, interacting with all the children is something I will always remember. I was happy to go to school every day; I really looked forward to seeing the children. Although my time was brief at the school, I hoped that I made some difference. On the last day I got a nice letter from the kids and little gifts (whatever the child's family had ).

    Throughout the world we can never go wrong when we surround our self with children; it is the adults that complicate harmony.