Montrose - Daily Press

MONTROSE  — With their hands tucked in the sleeves of their sweaters, students held onto their class papers rippling in the breeze. Though Thursday was sunny, the crisp air and high 30s temperature made it hard to concentrate on what the teacher was saying.

Sixteen-year-old Mandy Boyd said she wouldn’t attend class everyday — just the sunny ones — if they were held outside on the ground.

Yet, a normal village school in Pakistan may have 100 students sitting on the muddy floor looking up to a teacher who has the only chair and desk in the whole class. Others may look up and see sky and tree limbs above, blocking the heat or rain as they sit on wooden planks ready to learn.

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It is these conditions that some Montrose High School teachers are trying to portray to their students — the conditions of school education in Third World counties.

“I tend to teach kids that don’t always see the value in education,” said Michelle Cimaglil, MHS special education teacher. “This is an opportunity to see what they do have and broaden their perspective of what other kids have to go through to get educated.”

Throughout Thursday, rather than enjoying the comfort of their classroom walls and desks, student met in the dirt outside the school’s baseball fields.

“We can’t take all of our students to ghettos in Brazil, trash dumps in India, or the mud huts of Afghanistan,” said Spanish teacher Russell Evans in an e-mail about his plans to administrators. “However, we can certainly take them outside in the gravel, let their papers blow away, let them get dirt on their clothes, have them squint their eyes, and then have a brief discussion afterward about what life might be like elsewhere.”

As Evans discussed currency, trade and stabilizing economies with Spanish and French classes, he used stones to help with visualization. Students also used the rocks to demonstrate to their classmates their understanding of the day’s lesson.

During Cimaglil’s reading class, students finished with a regular reading story, but first read a hand-out about education in Third World counties written by Renate Nestvogel from the University of Essen in Germany.

“Of course, I would like to go to school, but how can I? Every morning, I have to help my mother with the preparation and selling of chapatis; I have to do that, because otherwise, we would not have enough to eat.” a young girl, maybe 8 or 9 years old, tells Nestvogel in the streets of northern Pakistan.

Teaching in the dirt, like half the world does, is one thing, but Evans reminds students to remember that another 25 percent of the world doesn’t even receive an education.

“Everyone needs an education,” Boyd said after class. “They want a better life just like we do.”

After their more than an hour class outside, students discussed the experience. Cimaglil’s students mentioned the idea that education is freedom.

“Everyone wants to be free,” Boyd said.

The largest out-of-school population is in sub-Saharan Africa, where around 41 million school-age children receive no education, according to UNICEF statistics. South Asia follows with 31.5 million students out of school, then the Middle East and North Africa (6.9 million), East Asia and the Pacific (5 million), and Latin America and the Caribbean (4.1 million).

“It was a fun experience; we got to go outside today, but what can we do now?” said Cimaglil to her students.

Recently, students, teachers and community members have come together to support “Pennies for Peace.” The program builds schools where there are none.

Students have invited the community to join them Saturday, March 15 at 2 p.m. for a Peace Walk. The walk will start at the Baldridge Park tennis courts, then continue down the bike path, where it will conclude at the Peace Pole at Chipeta Lake.

Evans said the idea is that by helping provide opportunity and education to people in these countries, they might not have to resort to violence.

Contact Kati O’Hare via e-mail at katio@montrosepress.com

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