Spring is almost here! In a season of holidays, the Muslim holy month of Ramadan has begun, which means the vast majority of our students are fasting. Ramadan precipitates some changes to the school day schedule. Our fasting students stay on campus during the lunch hour, while other students walk to Agnes Scott College for lunch. Students who are fasting have the opportunity to pray, rest, or learn in different classrooms. It means more staff and volunteer engagement to accommodate the different needs of the students.

This year, our students also taught us how we can support members of our community who are observing Ramadan with some important lessons:

• “Don’t listen to music and don’t say bad things.”
• “Respect people’s privacy.”
• “Don’t laugh at each other if they are not fasting.”
• “Don’t talk loud, don’t say bad words, and be kind.” 
• “Understand, we don’t have energy to blah, blah, blah.”

In the classrooms, Ms. Johna’s Form 1 class is learning how to write comparative essays in ELA. “We learned about adjectives,” says Ms. Johna. “They learned how to describe themselves, then they chose their favorite animal and learned how to describe it. I gave them a factual article, then we did a thinking map to describe ways they are like their favorite animals and ways they are not.” The students all had funny and insightful essays. One student wrote:

“Me and cats have similarities and differences. One similarity is that we both like sleeping and have legs. The difference is that cats have big eyes. I am a human and the cat is an animal. Cats have fur but I have skin and hair.” Another student, also writing about cats, wrote: “One similarity is that the cat sleeps like me. The cat and me both like to eat. We are both cute. The cat and I are nice. The difference is that the cat has a tail and a mustache and I do not.”

Ms. Olivia’s Form 3 class is also writing essays. One prompt was “At what age should teenagers be allowed to use social media?” Surprisingly, the students leaned toward older ages, with many of them recommending that teenagers not have access to social media until they are 17 or 18 years old.

Writing is not the only subject where students are making progress. They are also making progress in Ms. Anne’s reading classes. It is not uncommon to see Ms. Anne sitting on the hallway floor with a student, coaching her through her lesson. Our teachers amaze us with their capacity to attend to each student’s individual needs.

On Fridays, Ms. Danielle’s Technology class is learning how to discern real from fake news on the internet using certain criteria: Is the story believable? Were there eye-witnesses? Do the quotes sound real? Have the photos been photoshopped?. Our students are learning to be responsible consumers of news.

An exciting new development is that more and more of our alumni are returning to GVP in other capacities. Ms. Aya, who graduated from GVP in 2019 is serving as Women’s Health Instructor this semester. She is following GVP’s assigned curriculum on this subject, from January through May this year. The Women’s Health curriculum covers general health and behaviors like exercise, sleep, nutrition, alcohol and drugs, as well as topics like female anatomy, puberty, periods, pregnancy and contraception.

In preparation for parent conferences, Ms. Hope has been working with her students in SEL (Social/Emotional Learning) class to write letters to their parents. They are beautiful; most of them in their home languages or in combination with English, including Arabic, Pashto, Swahili, French, and Spanish. In these letters, the students write what they have gained: “In Ms. Hope’s class I am learning how to take care of myself. I love this class so much because it teaches me so many things, like how to call 988 [the emergency mental health line]… This class is the best!”

Finally, our students continue to amaze and amuse us every day with their creativity. They inspire us by the ways they find to appreciate and celebrate their teachers. Hanging in the office is a beautiful new piece of art: a drawing by one of our students in which she caricatures all of the teachers. It is a beautiful reminder that we are all the same, and that we are all different.