Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Help Me Buy New Chalkboards!

Tsinandali Village School (where I teach now) and Telavi School 6 (where I taught last semester) are both fairly typical of Georgian public schools.  The buildings were constructed while Georgia was still part of the Soviet Union and have not been renovated since.  Windows have broken or missing panes, so rain and snow blow into the classrooms with the cold air.  The only sources of heat in any of the rooms are small, wood-burning stoves that fill the air with smoke and soot but not much warmth.  Students and teachers alike have to wear coats and hats during class all winter.   Floors are made of planks that are very uneven where they are not missing altogether, making walking around the classrooms a rather hazardous endeavor.

This is Telavi School 6

However, everyone manages to work around all of this and go on about the business of learning despite frozen fingers and tripping.  The chalkboards are another matter entirely.  Even the newly installed boards are made of the cheapest material available, so only the students in the first few rows can see what the teachers write.  Several of the classrooms have chalkboards that are so old, worn, and pitted that they are simply unusable.  Anything written on them is completely illegible, causing students to copy down incorrect information during their lessons.  In Grade 1, I just have to bring in paper and markers to use in place of the board that does not show chalk at all.

I can't renovate the floors or replace the heating systems, but I can work to buy these schools new chalkboards.  I need your help, though.  New chalkboards cost about 100 lari, which is about 80$ US.  If you can, please click on the link below and help me with whatever you think appropriate.  My goal is to raise enough money to  replace the five chalkboards that are the worst in these two schools by the end of the year on 14th June.  Any help you can give is greatly and sincerely appreciated!



                                                              


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