A World Away from Concordia...Migrant School Visit

Abigail and I had the opportunity to visit a local migrant school in Shanghai this week.  In case you don't know, a migrant school in Shanghai is full of kids whose parents come to Shanghai looking for work.  These student generally come from poor villages within China.  They are not allowed to attend the public Shanghai schools.  The parents have very little money.  These schools are generally very poor schools.  The classroom we visited had 50+ students in a very small room.  Very little room to walk down an isle, the kids had to crawl over one another to get to their desk.  We visited a 2nd grade classroom...it was surprising to see my amazon 2nd grade girl compared to some of the "2nd" grade children in this classroom.  I was told that these are the lucky kids...many others do not go to school because parents move around to find work or other reasons.

Concordia works with the Giving Tree organization that provides gift bags to local migrant school students.  Our girl scout troop helped fill the bags.  Over 950 bags were supplied and filled from Concordia for this migrant school.  Abigail was one of the students chosen to represent Concordia and participate in a cermony at the school and then go to the classroom and help hand out the bags to the student.  The bags were filled with a new coat, new tennis shoes, gloves, a couple small toys, milk, choc. treats, teddy bear, etc.  The kids were extremely excited to see us and get the bags.  We all got special scarves tied around our neck from students at the school during the cermony.

As sad as it was to see these kids, it was a good experience for both myself as well as Abigail.  I don't think she expected to see something like this.  It made her wonder why she goes to a beautiful new school with only 16 kids in her classroom with brand new computers, colorful walls, multiple gyms, selections of what to eat for lunch, etc. etc. etc.   Hopefully, she saw a little bit of a lot of childrens reality and realized that right now, she is living a very nice but non-realistic, charmed life of an American expat. 

Here are some pictures that I took.  The kids LOVED getting their pictures taken and wanted to see their face on the screen after I took it.