After a wonderful weekend...Saturday in the mountains at Jarabacoa and Sunday at Sosua Beach...we returned to classes on Monday. At lunch time we had the opportunity to meet with a large group of Dominican public elementary school teachers who were on campus for a math professional development day funded by US Aid. We had a question and answer session with the coordinator of the Dominican group translating for us. We found out the the Dominican students are in school for 4 hours a day and there are two sessions each day. Their text book resources are very limited and few had computers in their classrooms. The teachers expressed a lot of frustration with the lack of government support for public education. Many families with enough financial resources opt to send their children to private schools. Most schools do have libraries, although we have learned that their are no public libraries in the DR. Tomorrow we are going to visit a volunteer organization that attempts to help the street children. We have lots of homework so I'll say goodbye for now...more soon!
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