Classrooms Across Cultures

by Ginna Fleming

Afghanistan has scarcely been free of war for the past thirty years. Schools were closed, a generation of teachers was suppressed or exiled, and girls especially lost their chance for education.

In 2002, when opportunities opened for change, Camilla Barry, a science teacher in my home town of Mill Valley, California, began a courageous annual commitment to help rebuild the education system. I went with her in 2008 to photograph her work, and to support the organization she founded: Classrooms Across Cultures.

Our headlines here in America focus on suicide bombers and military actions. What I found was a more hopeful story. Behind the grim headlines is a country rich in history, culture, hospitality and hope. Underground schools have come out into the open. Villages and towns are rebuilding destroyed classrooms, seeking the few trained teachers that remain. In rural areas, high school girls are themselves teaching younger children part of the day. Even illiterate women are opening schools for youngsters to give them a start. All are eager for lesson plans and ideas.

Camilla has a gift for using free or easily available materials to craft “hands on” science lessons that are both practical and tremendously popular with students and teachers. The Ministry of Education is so enthusiastic about this approach that they invited her to spend a month this summer rewriting national science teacher curriculum guides, and making a book of lesson plans that will be used in every school in the country. They urgently want her to come back for more.

Education is the key to remaking Afghanistan into a stable and hopeful country. The work of Classrooms Across Cultures needs to continue and grow, to bring a new generation of students – girls as well as boys – into the modern world.

Ginna Fleming On behalf of Classrooms Across Cultures