Arras School

	This is looking back towards the village. From the village it was about a 10 minute walk to the school over a river flood plain. There was no water in the flood plain when we went across it but there will be during the snow melt in the spring.
As one approaches the school you walk through the volleyball and soccer areas which are in the foreground. The school has 8 classrooms with 250 students. There are 8 teachers and one director in the school and they offer 20 classes which fit the standard fair for any primary school. In Albania, as in may former communist countries, every school in the country follows a rigid and standard curriculum. This means that you can walk into any class in any subject and all the schools in the country will be on exactly the same page in the text book. They do not leave any room for the teacher to modify the curriculum to match their students learning styles.
	From the outside the school looks fairly modern.
But once inside I found out that it had no electricity or running water. Lunch, which is usually a hamburger (a piece of baloney or comparable meat product and french fries stuffed between two piece od bread), is served . The school district has a total of 495 students in 3 schools (2 others like this) and 25 teachers.
	This is the director of the school in his office. His office is nothing more than a storage closet which at this time was storing the text books for the upcoming year. He put the desks on top of the books so that anyone looking in through the window would not see the books and be tempted to steal them. The books are provided by the national government and they do get enough for all their students.
The upkeep and maintenance of the school is up to the village which often does not have the money. This is the classroom that Vlad teaches in. The blackboards have seen better days as have the desks, chairs and yes there is a wood stove in the right corner. All classrooms are heated with wood. This gives the old story we used to tell of how of how our grandparents had to walk uphill to school both ways in bare feet a new meaning-as some of these kids do have too!

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