Wrapping up an amazing teaching stint

Working with this group of students has been so rewarding and inspiring. It is hard to put into words the connection that I have grown to feel with them and the qualities that they radiate. They are among the most diligent, earnest, polite, kind, generous, funny, hard-working, joyful, and optimistic young people I have encountered in my nearly 25 years of teaching. They have also bonded into a model community of academic effort and intellectual inquiry, of collaboration and play, and of mutual support and care. They are going to make a great founding core of ILAE's first class. School will resume for them in September, and they - and their classmates - will be offered a full grade 9 academic program.   

As cheerful and delightful as these students are, they are also quite smart and savvy and are in no way naïve about the obstacles they face in their lives - both in Ethiopia and in the world. They are not from the privileged class in their own society, and they live in a relatively quite poor and marginalized country on the world stage. And yet they dream, they are proud, and they believe - in the transformative power of education, in their own potential, and in bright future possibilities for themselves and for Ethiopia. I wish I could feel more confident that the forces at work in the world - and in their own country - will in fact afford them adequate opportunity to pursue these dreams. I fervently hope so. If not, I will feel some guilt for having contributed to nurturing these hopes and dreams...   

In any case, I can't thank ILAE enough for the opportunity to participate in this project. I am also grateful for the ever-supportive NWS community. It has also been wonderful to find so many supporters and friends here in Addis, especially the volunteers who have joined the ILAE team as well as so many on the Hope University College campus. As sad as I get looking at this picture of the empty main classroom, I am excited to think of these students once again filling it with their personalities and energy in just a few weeks.