Last year, Rotary Club of Picton sponsored a young person in Bangladesh who helps teach children in that country who otherwise would never have an opportunity to learn basic reading and writing skills. Her name is Kohinoor Akter and this is the second letter from her. To read the first letter, please refer to our website – https://pictonrotary.ca/page/introduction-of-kohinoorakter.
July 2023
Kohinoor Akter
Khulna, Bangladesh
Dear Members of the Rotary Club of Picton,
It is my pleasure to tell you about my life, community work, goodwill initiatives and the children who study in my micro-school. We are enjoying our lessons in school. Today I want to tell you a little more about my micro-school. I enjoy my teaching to the little children. I am doing this as a volunteer mother. Actually, this is a home-base teaching learning activity for own and neighborhood children. In our slum 25 micro-schools are operated for 125 children by the Amarok mothers.
You know my 5 teaching children are Misty, Nusrat, Ruhul, Al-Amin and Shaim. Many parents aren’t capable of teaching or appointing tutors for their children. Sometimes they send their children to school but become dropouts soon because they could not pass a grade as the teaching learning in the formal schools are boring too, just memorization without any understanding. We want to educate all children of our slum and want no child to be excluded. What I learn from my mothers’ school, I teach them following the same method and process. 5 children from my little school are in grade-3 level and 2 are beginners. So, I have to consider 2 levels while teaching. I attend school for 5 days a week. I make a plan on how I can teach the lessons to them. In our school we learn language through songs and stories. In our mother school we have an MP3 and sound box. Last week Amarok's teacher taught us the song “5 little Eggplants”. Now I am teaching them how to make new sentences with the words of the song. Last week I taught them English names of vegetables for the beginners and the seniors to help them with writing and speaking. Among them Misty is brilliant, she is 8 years old. I am teaching her how to make long sentences by using different conjunctions. Yesterday she made a long sentence, “We have no eggplants in our kitchen but have some potatoes”. Listening to her sentence, my happy tears came out and I felt proud of her. I strongly doubt that students of grade-6 in our government school can make such long sentences in English! My goal is to prepare her as a child-teacher for her neighbor children. In 2 years, I might see her become one of the best child-teachers of our slum. We need many more child teachers for our children. You will be happy to know that every year about 20 children are graduating from 25 micro-schools and many of them are developing themselves as child-teachers. They are teaching their siblings and neighbors. Some are teaching their parents and grandparents.
I will be happy if you come to our slum, visit our houses in the morning or evening. You can see, children are studying at their home. Mother is sitting with her child or a group of children, which makes me happy and gives us hope for a better future.
Thank you for your kind support to my education and to our mother-school.
With love and respect,
Kohinoor