Razia will be soon be on her way to Canada to start her new life. Everyone misses her terribly and will never forget her smiling face and lilting laugh. But life in the Garden of Flowers continues apace, and her place is empty! So it is time to find a new teacher.
This is an enormous challenge in Kabul these days for a number of reasons:
- No one can be found with proper Montessori experience and most highly skilled individuals have left the country.
- Formal teachers often have so much to unlearn from traditional teaching methods that it can be very difficult to find someone open and like-minded who is ready to learn the Montessori approach.
- Women can indeed work in Kabul, but the Taliban requires that women always be accompanied by a male relative. This rule places a hardship on families when a husband has to escort his wife every day to work and back.
So hiring is a challenge, but not impossible. Our partner organization, HEWAD, is coordinating this effort, since they have extensive hiring experience. It has meant placing an ad for the open position in the centralized employment website (acbar.org), conducting written exams to check for candidates’ literacy levels as well as experience, and then interviewing short-listed individuals.
As of February 3, 2024, this process is underway. Interviews will be conducted by Fatima as the most experienced Montessori staff member in order to discern if a candidate has the flexibility of mind and heart needed to work well with the children and to also be a positive addition to the Garden of Flowers team.
Candidates taking the written exam in HEWAD’s office.
Some of the ‘exam’ questions.