“It looks like our school from the main road, and it is only 5 minutes away; however, when you get inside you’ll see that students have nothing. no books, no materials or equipment, no cafeteria, no soccer field, and the bathrooms are disgusting”.—Soraya, grade 10, George Washington Academy
“We are going to help them. We will raise money to build a garden, buy books and a computer lab. But first we need to clean everything because it is all so dirty.“—Youssra, grade 10
“They are so cute and this is so sad.” –Jamila
“Ms…you understand right, why the bathrooms are so bad? They don’t have toilet paper--the old style doesn’t use it, and kids use even the lids of yogurt to wipe with.” –anonymous.
“What is that?” I asked, pointing to a pointer- like 12” baton.
“It is the rod that the teachers hit the students with,” my students answered who were cleaning small student desks. Later, a teacher from the school confirmed this and a colleague who went to a ‘worse’ school as a child, showed me the hand position by which it would happen.
“You know that there are 40 students in every classroom and 700 elementary students in the entire school with only 18 teachers running two shifts of school every day…” I commented.
“Yes, you should tell that to any teachers who complain about how big their classes are”, replied one of my students.
“I’ve truly never seen teenagers work so hard to clean! I learned from them today about cleaning large spaces and windows with a little bit of Tide in buckets of water and using a broom and large squeegee to wash the window…” --myself.
“This is the quickest project I’ve ever seen. We only came to visit last Tuesday, and here it is Saturday and we are cleaning!” –Ali
“ I was telling my Dad about this school and he really wants to do more.” Anonymous. “So what do you think?” I asked my group of 11 high school students at the end of the 3-hour cleaning session. “We made a difference. And we can still do more.” Soraya “They said that they really liked your kids. They were so kind and wanting to help. It is brilliant what they are doing.”-Aissa, the local Moroccan man who first told me about the needs of the school. “Why don’t you all make a Facebook page so we can raise more money?” I asked. “Ms…Moroccan’s won’t give money for this.” Answered Youssra I continued, “I was thinking about people from America who would like to help.”
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