Continuation

Living Conditions:

I'm sitting at my desk in the computer lab here at school. My major concern is checking up on my social network pages and replying to emails. I hear the din of kids walking through the halls, see teachers coming in and out of the computer lab. I'm currently researching information about grants, as my school is interested in an outdoor sports court.

So I live in this backwards, primitive village. Yet I still have access to decent internet at my school. There are 7 decent computers here, all with internet access. The speed is about 40kilobytes download per second, decent by my standards. However, in the same school, there is no running water, even in the kitchen. All the water must come from buckets outside. The school is heated by a huge coal furnace, which requires intensive amounts of labor to keep burning. Although electric heat could be an option, the building would be prohibitive to heat in this manner. The wiring is old and outdated, there are no carpets to retain heat, and the walls are made of concrete, not exactly easy to wire and install a central heating system in. Ironically internet is possible, but the comforts of the states are noticably absent.

At my university every single room had a projecter, a screen, at least one good PC, many computer labs, both for general use and specific use, etc. etc.

At my school here in Ukraine there is a different situation. Although we do have internet, which is a great thing, the teaching aids stop there. The teachers at my school still use chalkboards, as most rooms don't even have a white board. There are definitely no projecters in my school. The textbooks are poorly written and outdated. The teachers lack the visual aids, resources, and support to always command the attention of the students. Although I'm not saying the situation in the states is great at public schools, there are definitely more resources for creating an enviroment that demands attention from the students.

Although they lack a lot of resources, there are still many wonderful teachers at my school, and I look forward to working with them in the months to come. I hope to bring in some money and resources to fix the issues, but the main obstacle for me is to see solutions instead of problems. My approach to problems is normally quite pessimistic, and doesn't include a solution and action. I'm definitely changing the longer I'm here, but the change isn't exactly fast. It's always easier to complain and whine about a problem than it is to take action and fix it.